anniversaries

Anniversaries confuse me. If we met on a Tuesday, the anniversary should be the Tuesday a year later, because each day of the week has a distinct feeling. But the numbers make me follow rules, so:

I arrived in Prague a year ago today on a Sunday evening. Snow covered the fields and paths near the airport. A Czech man taking a holiday home from Bristol guided me to the tram and kept me company into the city: got me to a stop one minute from my hotel. The air was cold, but drier than the humid chill of Welsh winters that used to make my chest wheezy before garlic soup cured it. I took deep breaths and didn't rush to get inside.

After some confusion about payment, the receptionist trusted me to sort it in the morning. I dropped my bag in my room and headed to the nearest pub that looked ike it would have a cheap, limited choice of beer that would get served the traditional, frothy way. My "Jedno pivo, prosím" was so convincing that it garnered a fluent response from the woman behind the bar, at which point I had to admit my Czech accent was now more advanced than my conversational skills and switched to English. It had, at that point, been 7 years since I lived with a Czech. I was there to see her again.

I had three beers (they are tiny when poured this way, after all), some peanuts and a shot of Becherovka as a nightcap, whilst messaging to say I'd arrived.

I forgot how high the bar stool was when I hopped off and almost fell. This made me feel more tipsy than I was. The regulars might have thought the tourist couldn't handle the local spirit, but I knew it well. I was alert. Wired. Cold air: clear mind.

When you live with a traveller (who pops to Berlin for a day cause the flight is the right price if they go via Amsterdam or to Japan because they have to know if it feels the same as the best photographs make it seem) you get used to patience and distance. It's healthy and nurtures trust. But you also learn a precious anticipation for the person being back on the same piece of land as you. Counting minutes til you are in a room and can share the joy of what they discovered and learned. Somehow, in Prague for the first time, I was the person returning.

Originally posted on 22nd January 2024