Three days alone in Prague

 Three days alone in Prague is enough to make you want to kill yourself, you think, as if the thought had, for the first time, only just occurred to you. You’re standing in the shower, letting the hot water warm you even though you’ve already been warm for hours. Lying down in the overheated Airbnb for two that only you have occupied for as many nights as there were supposed to be people. 

Spending your last night inside instead of out exploring the city, to see what the jazz clubs have to offer or what might be up on the roof of the club just down the street. You’ve already crammed a lot in, haven’t you? And you do have many more days of outside to come. 

It’s because of the weather, you reason, back to defending the state of your brain. The cold biting chill of November when you’re dressed for Spain, and the city hasn’t quite reached Christmas but the frost has set in - even if the festive spirit hasn’t. 

You blame the baroque architecture, and the theatres on nearly every corner, or else critique the cobbled streets, and complain about the sound of tyres rolling across them, almost rattling. 

Not enough absinthe you convince yourself, or beer jackets to stave off the shivering. Too difficult to find a cup of mulled wine, or a stranger happy enough to smile at you, pretend that you’re old friends, and that perhaps you might run into each other again. 

Or maybe it’s that it’s too easy to seek solidarity with a fellow solo traveller, despite so few of them having anything interesting to say about the places they’d been or the people they’ve met. And you find yourself thinking, how did you get here? What have you done? 

When you’re only too happy to share in new experiences and new places, safe in the knowledge that the time you have together is fleeting, but that their knowledge of this as well makes them see you as a part of their experience in a wholly different way, once which you’d not anticipated, and that the suggestion of which, when you let yourself stop to think about it, kind of ruins the rest of your city break. 

“Once you’ve done one walking tour you’ve done ‘em all”, you imagine explaining when you’re back home, and your friends ask why you don’t have more stories. The same goes for jazz clubs, pubs and the castle on the hill. Didn’t fancy walking up again, you lie, ignoring imaginary retaliations like “doesn’t Prague have trams?” Yeah, and a vernacular. Or, “but usually you love exploring mediaeval architectural structures.” You’re lucky that some of your friends really do know you like that. But what’s it to them anyway? They weren’t there. You were. 

It must be the city, you lie to yourself. It definitely can’t be because of the men, who either want to take you to a museum or fuck you, but never both. Or, at least, never the ones who you want to want to do both. Not even the nice ones who help you with your bags and seem nervous about asking for your number, or the ones just like all the others, who hear what they want and pretend they can’t do math, because if there’s anything you’ve learnt over the years it’s that chivalry died a long time before you first step foot on a plane, or lay in the arms of a man that wasn’t your father. 

But you know it’s definitely not the men who pass you on the cobbles, because it’s strange to say you feel safe here, when you wouldn’t understand a cat-call in Czech if it accosted you on the street, but it’s like no one notices you passing. And though it makes you feel invisible, it’s also kind of nice, not to feel like unwanted eyes are following you and unfamiliar hands might try and touch you, even when you speed up your steps and try not to look round. Willing them to leave you alone but dreading that that might mean their attention finds someone else just trying to get from A to B. 

Here’s there’s more a feeling of anonymity, that if someone speaks to you you’ll know it because it’ll be a shout, or at least a sharp tone, telling you to pay the fine or give back the menu if there’s nothing in a restaurant that you can eat, refusing explanation and intent on making you feel like you’re wasting their time. 

Other times it’s kind of nice, that feeling of not mattering. The external ambivalence means that you won’t have to sift through your day for the highlights, or present your life in a way that is hopefully interesting. It means you can do what you want and go where you feel like, if you have the time, if you can afford it, and if, by the time you get round to it, you’re not already sick of yourself.