Being Czech abroad

But if most of Europe is a part of an accessible and similar world, what makes a Czech different? Whenever I spoke to people here, I would find this sort of a question misleading, young students do go through roughly similar experiences no matter if they are in Barcelona or Tallinn. It is those experiences that then go on to make us into what we are, Erasmus and

other programs being the evidence of that.

My view, however, changed about a month ago while sitting in a Thermodynamics

class. Whilst discussing the entropy of the universe, our lecturer digressed into remembering how he made a friend who was from Czechia during on his postdoctorate in the USA. He told us that Dr. Vasek Vitek was a student in Oxford during the late Sixties and, come 1968, he then, like many others, had to decide whether to come back or stay following the Warsaw pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. I can hardly imagine the situation Dr. Vitek must have found himself in that year. My experience feels menial and inconsequential compared to those hardships, mainly because studying abroad does not equal leaving for twenty-one years without the possibility of return.

The story kept going through my head. I kept thinking what it means to be Czech

abroad all the way till the next day when I had a shift at work. The café where I work happens to be called August 21. The name is simply the date it was first opened and has nothing to do with the 1968 invasion, however, a lady happened to ask me about the name that day. I saw that she was referring to the events of the Prague spring, so I went along with the conversation and before I knew, I realised I am talking English to a Czech person.

Well, at least sort of.

She told me that her mother had left during the Spring of 1968 and married a Briton. As the

17th of November, the date of the revolution, was in a few weeks, I asked what she thinks of the current political situation back in Czechia. It was interesting to see how the ideals of the Spring of 1968 and the bitter disappointment that followed had marked her view of the country and of being Czech.

As I was closing the shop that evening, I realised that by leaving one’s home country,

we make an imprint of its time and its situation on us. To be living abroad is thus more than

anything dependent on the time of departure. I’m glad to have so much in common with

the people I meet here. We each have our national identity, but that is more of a

personality trait or an attribute rather that a deterministic factor in the nature of a person.

This is why it was so interesting to listen to others and to learn how much more of an

effect their nationality had on them. I think that, thanks to the parents of our generation

that tore down the walls in Europe, we don’t have to be lonely or uprooted when abroad.

We no longer have to look at home from the outside and for that I will always be grateful.