Megan Stielstra's Blog

About a year ago I had to take one of those personality tests. One hundred yes or no questions, such as Do you require structure (yes) do you keep your thoughts to yourself (no) would like some level of fame (d’uh). The last question was a fill in the blank: describe your self-image? I got stuck on that one for a while, I mean, how can you sum it up in a single word? I am a writer. A teacher. I’m blonde, I’m tall … in a relationship, a child of divorce … and on and on and how you fit all that into an inch-long fill-in-the-blank is beyond me.
But then, I moved to the Czech Republic.
I teach in the fiction department at Columbia College. We have a study abroad program and I’ve spent the past two summers teaching in Prague. Yes, it’s just as great as everyone says. It’s so great, in fact, that last summer I decided to stay. My boyfriend, Christopher, and I got ourselves a furnished flat on Belgitzka in Namesti Miru, a primarily expatriate community. Our landlords were Yugoslav, a French couple lived on the second floor and the only decent Mexican resturant in the city was across the street … Had I, at THAT time, been asked to fill-in-the-blank my self-image, it would’ve been easy: I was an American.
Prague is the only major European city left in tact after the war—it’s a true fairytale, all castles and churches and curving cobblestone streets—hands down the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. But, as you know, beauty attracts, and every summer Prague is over run by tourists. Many, if not most, are American, and they (WE) are easy to spot.
I’d be writing in a café, sitting next to a table of girls. They were American—I could tell because of 1) the accent and 2) the pants. Great fuckin’ pants, those American girls, especially those with credit cards who are fully made-up, who speak very loudly—“what do you MEAN they don’t have skim milk? Are you SERious?” —who flip through entertainment guides, who will go to the Roxy later, who talk about Doug calling last night, “he’s, like, coming to visit in November and I, like, cannot WAIT,” as they reapply lip glass, high-end lip gloss—
I’ll pause to marvel at my own hypocrisy, sitting here in my Chanel, my Ralph Lauren. How am I different than those girls? Maybe you can answer that question, certainly I can, but what about the Czech people? To them, the tall blonde writer/teacher was insignificant. My image was the same as those girls—we were Americans—at least, to most people.
“You are not American,” said my waitress at Cartouche, a steak restaurant that Christopher and I ate at nearly every week.
I assured her that I was.
“No, American’s they talk like this,” she said, and then, in pitch-perfect valley girl: “What you MEAN I must eat potato, you know how much the carb in potato?” Looking back on it, maybe I should’ve been flattered that she didn’t think I sounded “American”, or maybe offended that this bubble-gummy voice represented my countrymen. In the moment, though, I was very drunk on Frankovka and all I did was laugh.
“You eat here long time,” she said. “Why you in Czech Republic?”
I told her I was teaching Kafka.
“Io, Kafka,” she said. “He was bug. You smoke the water pipe? Yes, you must. Tomorrow you come to my house, we smoke water pipe okay bye bye.”
This was Marketa, our first Czech friend.
Since we’ve been back, everyone has asked, “What do they think about Americans?” This was actually our first question when we arrived. We were picked up at the airport by Vahog—his family owns the pension that Columbia College lives at during Study Abroad—and we asked him, “Vahog, what do people here think about Americans?” This was June, the war in Iraq was going strong and the campaign for November’s election was just underway. Foreign anti-American sentiment was much publicized and some of my students had sewn Canadian patches onto their backpacks, just in case. “We like the American people,” Vahog told us. “We know it’s not your fault that your president is idiot—Bush he stole election… it will all be right in November.”
Bookmark that, okay? I’m going to get back to it.
I remember thinking, on the way to “smoke water pipe,” that I’d finally get to see how the Czech people lived. Marketa lived in a studio apartment with her boyfriend. There was a mattress on the floor. The table was a piece of plywood laid horizontal on a crate. There were candles everywhere, and she pointed out the different countries she’d bought them in: Tunisia. Morocco. France, Croatia—Marketa speaks six languages and was living in Sarajevo during the war. Is this typical of how Czech people lived? Is my new friend typically Czech? No: she’s an individual, just like me, which became more apparent with every story we told that night.
“One time, I wait on your president,” she told us, pouring wine into teacups. “He was here for party and I am catering. We must keep our arms like this—” she clasped her arms down at her sides — “so his soldiers can see our hands.”
“His soldiers?”
“Secret Service,” Chirstopher said
“Yes, and he just sit there all night with this look on his face—” she set her expression in a creepy, Joker-type grin — “he is really … what’s the word, uhm … smiley?”
“Smiley?”
She flipped through the Czech-English dictionary. “No, here,” she said. “He is … ray-dec-oo-lush, no, LUS, ray-deck—”
“Ridiculous.”
“Rideck … ah, my mouth does not do this word. Here there are more—” she looked back at the dictionary. “Laughable. He is laughable, yes?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. There was the obvious: yes, he is laughable. But there was also this unfamiliar thing growing in my stomach: confusion, how I could feel pride in my country and disdain for my president at the same time and, moreover, explain it to someone else?
Marketa interrupted my thoughts. “There is election soon in your country,” she said. “For which do you vote?”
“Kerry,” I told Marketa. “I vote for Kerry.”
“Good,” she said. “Now we may be friends.”
Our friendship with Marketa had two main parts: ONE. she took care of us. When Christopher and I got food poisoning, it was Marketa who explained to the pharmacist what we needed. We’d get text messages that read my Megane, tomorrow is state holiday so the stores they will be closed so shop today, please. TWO: We dispelled her image of what “America” was.
“Chicago is dangerous,” Marketa told us. We were on the train to her hometown of Podebrady. “There are gangsters there.”
“No,” Christopher told her. “Not like Al Capone.”
“There are gangs,” I said, and she asked, “What are gangs?”
This happened over and over, these words in the English language that I’ve never had to explain because I’ve always lived them. But, lived them how? What is a white, middle-class girl doing explaining Chicago gang culture?
I thought of teaching creative writing and all the gang stories my students told. There was one kid who came up to me after class with a map sketched on notebook paper in different colored highlighter pens.
“You said you lived in Humboldt,” he said, pointing at the map. “Pink, it’s okay if you go there. Yellow, it’s okay in the daytime. Green, you stay clear of, okay, Teach?”
So, tell me: how do I tell all this to my Czech friend? How do I explain this side of my city—my country, for that matter? I am an American, and gang culture of part of America. So is farming, and Republicans and XBOX and factory work and millionare CEO’s and all these things I can’t possibly understand, let alone explain, but yet I am being asked to.
That really came to a head this past November. Our Czech friends would say, “Why do the American people vote for this man?” And they waited for us to explain. It forced me to have to think outside my shock, my anger, my own political affiliations. I’d say, “There are some people in my country who feel …. XYZ” and in doing this, I like to think I learned a little. About the farmers and factory workers and CEOs and all these people who are the same as me except totally different.
Marketa sent us a text message the day after the election: Oh no! It’s very bad! I would like to cry! Shit! I don’t understand people who want to have so bad president! Don’t be sad please, I am sorry about your bad president and I still like you.
Marketa still liked us—because she knew us. But there were many others who did not—who saw us not as individuals, but, as Americans only. On the same day that Bush asked the Czech government for soldiers to replace Americans in Iraq, Fahrenheit 9/11 was released in Eastern Europe. Afterwards, Christopher and I attended a panel discussion which was silmotaneously translated into English, and it became very clear just what the Czech people thought of our government, and, by association, us. I felt more and more disconnected, which made me homesick, which just perpetuated my confusion: how could I be homesick for a place that was pissing me off so much?
A couple weeks before we returned to Chicago, Christopher and I were walking through Old Town Square. It’s was a beautiful night, a little cool, but we were warm from the wine at dinner. I looked up and followed the line of buildings like a great circle in my mind, taking in every A-frame and tower-top, spot-lit in the sky like a theater set. In the center of the square was a huge crowd of people, I’d say a hundred at least. Christopher and I pushed closer, wondering what was drawing them. There are street performers everywhere in Prague but whatever was bringing together this large of an audience must be truly extraordinary. I stood on tiptoes but still couldn’t see over the crowd. I could, however, listen:

Cue Music: Another day in Paradise, Phil Collins

All around us, people were singing. I was singing, even Christopher was singing and—he swore later—he didn’t know the words! When we finally got close enough, we saw one guy and a guitar, which he played badly by the way, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the song, a single, stupid song that every person— whatever their nationality—knows the words to, and in that moment we were all together. There were little kids and older people and couples holding hands. The woman next to me had on a sari and she smiled, and we sang, and I didn’t feel confused, or disconnected … that night, I was part of something greater.
The night before we left, Marketa gave me one of her candles. “Don’t worry about being American,” she told me. “It is more important that you are my friend.”
If someone were to ask me NOW what my self image is, I’d still say Writer. Teacher. Blonde … but I’d also say American. What I’ve got to come to terms with is what that means for me. However, if there’s only room for a single word to fill-in-the-blank, I think I know what I’d put:
Friend.