“What do you think is the biggest difference between Europe and America?” a Czech friend of mine asked me one night, as we sat drinking large beers in the dimly-lit mezzanine lounge of the theater where she worked. My first answer to her was language—I said that Americans take pride in their English, and that an inability or unwillingness to speak it in the U.S. sometimes breeds xenophobia, intolerance, and racism. But in Europe, at least in my case, navigating in English seems expected while also feeling wrong. I know I can’t learn a new language for every layover I’ll have here, but I do expect to speak a little French when I’m in France and to speak a little Czech when I’m in the Czech Republic, though it’s presumably all right if I don’t. Europeans are willing to accommodate by using their second and third languages, while Americans want their first one everywhere.

There’s something more obvious than language here, though. There’s heritage. There’s nationalism. And I don’t mean something political. I mean the difference between an Italian saying, “I’m Italian,” and an American saying, “I’m Italian,” when their family hasn’t set foot in Italy for three generations. Since the U.S. is so young, not even 250 years as a nation, this may be why Americans are always reclaiming, or trying to reclaim, our past heritages—to connect ourselves to history, and to feel a little less homesick.

Europeans don’t have an issue with lost history. They rarely need to retrace their steps, and they have a security in identity that Americans haven’t gained yet. Even since the formation of the EU, it isn’t as if their borders have melted. The Czechs are still Czechs, and the French are still French.

 

I once took the most wonderful walk in Prague that I think I’ve ever taken here. I decided to revisit my old stomping grounds in Prague 7 near the first place here where I lived. I walked from tram station Strossmayerovo naměsti to an uphill street, Janovského, to Umelečka, then past the pension where I stayed at twenty-two. I made my way through a park just down the street from there, and decided I wanted to try and make my way back to my starting point, before I’d boarded the tram to Prague 7 down at Staroměstska, by foot.

I walked along an empty pathway, children sledding on a hill to my right, passing only a young mother pushing her child in a stroller, and an elderly woman walking with her hands held behind her back, as many of the elderly here seem to do. And then there was a man, maybe thirty-something, in the park walking his dog.

“Prosím,” I said to him. “Anglicky?”

“Just a little bit,” he said.

“Uh. . . .” I began. “Pendulum?” I motioned with my hand slowly, letting it dangle in the air. I felt stupid not knowing which word they used for what I was looking for.

“I don’t know,” he said. Then he noticed my hand. “Oh! Metronome!”

“Ano!”

“Uhh. . . .” he pointed off to his right. “Čechova,” he said. Then, “¿Hablas Español?”

“Un poquito,” I said, pinching the air.

“No,” he said, a worried look on his face. “Čechova,” he continued. “Then, Letenska. And about one kilometer.”

“Čechova, to Letenska, then one kilometer,” I repeated. “About fifteen minutes?”

“Yes. Maybe.”

“OK,” I said. “Děkuju.”

“Prosím.”

“Čau!”

“Čau.”

So I walked. And as I walked down Čechova to Letenska, I passed buildings I’d seen before and thought of how familiar they were to me, about how lovely I thought they were because they were visible reminders of my not being in America. A man yelled from his window down to a woman on the sidewalk, while another woman shook a blanket out of her own window. The cars parked along the side of the street were miniature. The street signs were in Czech. The buildings ahead weren’t made of American glass.