Lost in transit

Unsettling In

For the second time since I moved to Prague three and a half months ago, I've had to find a new place to live at pretty much the very last possible minute. The good thing is that I don't really have any furniture here beyond a futon mattress, a reading lamp, and a little wooden bedside table; the rest fits in a couple of suitcases and a box or two. It was a little over a year ago that I sold off all of my furniture in Chicago, shoved the rest of my belongings into my hatchback, and drove back to New York to save up for my move to Europe. Although I had loved my apartment there, it was such a relief to no longer have to be responsible for all those big heavy things that had to be moved up and down stairs and dusted and cleaned and such. And then four months ago I sold my car, which meant no more worries with insurance, or gas, or parking tickets. I feel like my life is floating downstream, moving with the current, and the more ballast I can throw over the side, the more buoyant I am — in every sense of the word.

Although I moved here because I had to settle somewhere for a bit, I'm trying to do as much traveling as I can. In January I'll be going to Australia for about 6 weeks to visit a dashing young Aussie I met here in July (and hell, because January and February are summer there, and it's only October and Prague already has below-freezing temperatures at night), which is really a dream come true — I'd always wanted to travel to Australia, but it always seemed too far and too expensive for me to be able to get there. I had really wanted to hit Asia on the way going or back, but after dealing with the web of international flight reservations, it looks like I'll have to make it a separate trip at some point, maybe next spring. But damn, there's an entire other world out there, and I'm tired of just collecting other people's postcards.

And who knows? Maybe I'll end up moving again. I had no plan, five-year or otherwise, when it came to moving to Prague; in fact, my actual plan was to Have No Plan. I would move to Europe and just wait and see what happened next. Prague has gotten much more expensive (no real surprise) from the combination of rising prices and a falling dollar, so I've been thinking of looking into a move to Asia, to make my money last even longer. People I've spoken who have lived in Asia (Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam) talk about how beautiful it is there, and how incredibly cheap it is to live if you have U.S. money in your pocket. Although people tell me Australia is wonderful, too — more than one have told me that I might "get the bug" and never want to leave — although that seems a more remote possibility. Also, it wouldn't be quite so cheap, and I'd probably have to wrangle getting a working visa and some kind of job, although at least I wouldn't have the language disadvantage. I'm not planning anything for sure; I just want to take a look around another part of the world for a while, and all my stuff will be here, so I'll definitely be coming back to Prague to start. But for the first time in a long time, I feel like I have possibilities ahead of me, something I lost along the way back home. No possibilities mean no future; no future means not much of a present, either. I don't know if things are necessarily looking up, or down, but the main point is that they're looking somewhere at all.

So here I am, living in Prague, but at the same time, living out of it, in a way. It's strange to feel so transient, especially for as long as I have. It was more than a year ago in Chicago that I last owned any real furniture or housewares, or had any utilities in my name, or even a set address. Though as much as I like not owning so many huge things — remember, what you own owns you back — I find sometimes that little things bother me, like not having certain kitchen utensils, or any tools to use around the house; I don't think I've ever lived anywhere where I didn't have at least a basic tool kit, and now all I have is my mini-Leatherman keychain. Naturally, I'm not going to go buy myself a whole kit here, or an entire set of kitchenware, but it does make me feel unsettled when I realize I don't have these things. And there are other things that you just always have lying around — because you've had them for ages, they're just always there — that I had to go out and buy for myself all over again. Ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, cooking spices, a vegetable peeler, ice cube trays, plastic bags, tin foil, scissors, scotch tape, envelopes, paper clips, etc., etc. Thankfully the fully-furnished flats here tend to come with your basic pots, pans, dinnerware, cutlery, kitchen towels, etc., or I'd really have had to lay out some crowns on stuff like that.

But that's the nature of living here as an expat, it seems. I live in this weird sort of self-enclosed pouch, just my own little thin slice of the life that all the Czech people here can experience, like getting a multi-tiered Jell-O dessert and eating only the top layer. I'm surrounded by people and signs and magazines and newspapers that I can't understand (although it's a blessed relief to be oblivious to all the advertising), and as far as the city goes, I tend to stick to the paths I've already navigated out, going to new parts of town if someone recommends it to me, not simply getting on a tram and seeing where it takes me and trying to figure a way back. (Although of course, truthfully, plenty of areas are just regular, mundane residential neighborhoods, not much to see.) Even my communications options are on-the-go: I lug my laptop to the internet cafes on a regular basis, and my cell phone is practically my whole world here, containing the numbers of everyone I ever have to speak to, plus even some people I barely do. None of us expats have land phones listed in our names (they're in the landlords'), so if you didn't have someone's cell number, you couldn't even look them up. At some point in the first month, I realized that I only knew all of my new friends' first names, so I had to make the effort to get their last names for my address book, an attempt to somehow strengthen our acquaintance, as though because I didn't know their surnames, they were in danger of simply blowing away in a strong wind someday.

I don't know when I will feel settled down somewhere again. Sometimes I wonder if it won't be for another few years, that it won't be until I get back to New York that I can do so; but I do know that I'm not ready to settle back there just yet. New York is still "home" to me, when I ever talk about anything "at home", but of course, in a way it's not really my home because I don't live there now. And yet, where I do live now isn't my home either, so just where am I?

Perhaps if you have no place to call home, it means you can call every place home.

I think I like the sound of that.

Posted by wildsoda at October 23, 2003 12:09 PM