Prague 1972

I first visited Prague in the summer of 1972, four years after the Prague Spring, 23 years old, horribly naïve, adventurous but ignorant, with a passport, visa, and about $100 in cash. At the border (the Iron Curtain), we exchanged our German electric engine for a Soviet steam engine, and I was required to exchange the equivalent of $10 for Czech crowns for each of my four days, and required to spend that $40 before exiting the country (how could that be a problem?).

In the train compartment with me was an elderly woman (and by “elderly,” probably in her 40s or maybe 50 from my 20-something eyes) who had been visiting relatives in West Germany. We struck up as much of a conversation as we could in my flailing German. When she learned that I didn’t have a hotel reservation and that I planned to just walk out of the train station and hope to stumble into a hotel (there was no phoning into the Soviet Union and certainly no Internet), she said that her son was meeting her and that they could help find me a room. Her son was driving a Volkswagen Beetle, which I found comfortably familiar. They drove me to three or four hotels, but they were all booked. Finally, they took me to a modern ‘50s Soviet gray dorm/hotel in the east side of the city that they said would have rooms but would be more expensive. And I was able to get a room, and it was more expensive than the others – about $4 a night. It was as basic a room as could be: a single bed, wardrobe, straight-back chair, a sink. The bathroom and shower were down the hall, shared by all on the floor. By the elevator was a black-and-white TV, with sofa and a few chairs around it, and each night there would be a group of excited patrons watching the European Cup.

My trip to Prague was something of a pilgrimage. My collection of Franz Kafka books had won me a $200 prize in a University of Kansas Library contest that spring (the $200 covered my airfare), and I thought it appropriate to use the prize to go to Prague and supplement my collection with publications not available in the U.S. It took me three bookstores before I figured out – no one would directly tell me – that Kafka was, of course, banned in Prague then, none of his books, little of his presence, existing. There was a plaque at a small house he lived in briefly up by the castle that was pointed out to me by a tour guide. And after an appropriately Kafkaesque search, I was able to find his grave in the New Jewish Cemetery, which coincidentally happened to be near my hotel.

One afternoon I stopped into a restaurant for lunch (the main meal of the day). There was no menu. Everyone had the same thing: soup, some roasted meat, potatoes, and a vegetable (probably cabbage, I don’t know). The bill was about $1.20. There was no tipping.

I regularly saw Russian soldiers, AK47s slung over their shoulders, especially up by the castle and Wenceslas Square. 

Prague is a city of architecture. It was used as the set for the 1972 (ironically the year I was in Prague) Slaughterhouse Five to represent the fire-bombed city of Dresden at the end of World War II. Prague was the only major city in Europe to be spared from bombing from either German or Allied forces. It remains today – with notable additions since the War – a walking architectural museum. And it remains, for the most part, free.

One night I happened into a basement jazz club (I have no idea how I found it) where there was a black American pianist. I learned that since the ‘20s, American jazz has been much more popular – and much more profitable to American jazz artists – in Europe, including the Soviet Union, than in the U.S. I also was surprised to find the club served Johnny Walker Red, my drink at the time. It was about 50¢ a shot.

The highlight (or lowlight, depending) of the trip was my meeting three college students who approached me as I was standing by the river. I was obviously from the west – wearing jeans – and they wanted to know me. They spoke an English gleaned from western rock-and-roll records. I was an oddity to them, an appealing alien, and after we talked for a while about I don’t know what they invited me to an underground club – literally and figuratively – up by the university that night where a rock group was playing. I ended up being something of an attraction. I sat at a table with my three friends and our group grew as the only American in the club was accosted with free drinks, beer and vodka and Scotch – anything that anyone who was buying me drinks bought me. And I was a rock star. I don’t know if I had talked about it that afternoon or it had come up at the club, but at some point I had mentioned that I played rock-and-roll guitar. Unfortunately, by the time I was pushed onto the stage with the band and had a guitar strapped around my neck – an American rock star – I was far beyond drunk. I recall only standing on the stage in the lights with a guitar. I might have been able to play a chord or two, but I don’t think so. I do recall returning to the table, and after a few moments heaving all the drinks I’d consumed under the table and onto my pants and shoes. I was able to return to my hotel by handing the trolley driver a card I’d fortunately written out with the hotel name and address so that he could direct me to the transfers needed. (I have only a very vague memory of this.) The next morning, I undressed and rinsed out my jeans and wiped off my shoes.

In my four days and nights in Prague, I was barely able to make my $40 spending minimum.