tuckova

A friend asked me what makes Czechs different from other nationalities. As I'm on the cusp of getting dual citizenship I've been thinking about that often. Because I like lists, I came up with three things.

I told her that Czechs seem to think that a lot of negative things that make them unique are actually… just human things. Or anyway certainly not restricted to Czechs. For example they say that they are very bureaucratic, or that the bureaucracy is slow and inefficient, and while I do agree that I have had to stand in my share of lines here for a lot of fancy rubber stamp action, it's not really any worse than your standard US visit to the DMV, and the Japanese obsession with rubber stamps is simply unparalleled. And they talk about Czechs being xenophobic … well, there is a fear of foreigners, sure, in terms of job-stealing and culture-smothering types of things. But Czechs are not lining up at their borders to shout at children, and even though I know that's not really a majority in the US, I mean: I can't imagine ANY Czech doing that. Rude waiters, incompetent or corrupt civil servants, sexism? Maybe even this is not a distinguishing characteristic, but it does seem to me that Czechs will regularly tell me something negative is typically Czech when in fact I think it's just people, and I don't feel like most other countries claim the negatives as distinguishing them. 

The second thing is that I think Czechs, certainly compared to the US and possibly compared to other Europeans (haven't seen enough of other continents to say) are really loyal. They make friends for life, honestly. This MIGHT be a remnant of Communism, the sort of lack of trust from that time, where you had to know somebody for a really long time before you trusted them and so if you'd known somebody for a really long time, you didn't let them go. I have friends I only see once or twice a year, but I know they'd come in a heartbeat if I was in a crisis; I have other friends who took me in 20 years ago and I know them like my hands. It does take a long time for Czechs to open up, in my experience, but past that first opening is such warmth and generosity that when people say Czechs are cold or closed I feel nothing but baffled. 

Finally, and this is the one that I hope getting citizenship will magically bestow upon me: Czechs are incredibly good at accepting individuals as a whole. They may judge a group harshly, and the ease with which people express racism here sometimes stings me horribly, but they are so forgiving and even loving of individuals. This is something I see on a personal level — people putting up with their friends' flaws with an equanimity to which I can't even aspire — but it's also reflected pretty broadly in their art. Most of the "typical Czech" films have to do with people (people who look like regular humans, too, for the most part) who are oddballs in one way or another, finding love and acceptance (not even tolerance: acceptance), not despite or because of their oddity, but as a whole. One of the things that really delighted me when I first came here was how people could be friends with each other even while disagreeing on major issues — lifestyle, politics, art, hobbies — I mean, they can have, to my mind, NOTHING in common other than a few shared values, and they manage to get along on that basis and see past the differences. The main requirement seems to me to be that the person must be kind; if they are, then all the other things don't matter. It's not that they don't see all the other differences, it's that they see past them, somehow. I see this tolerance less in the younger generations, but still more than I see it in myself: with me, if somebody likes a musician with a sexist song I'm not sure we can still be friends. I'd call it discerning but there is in it an element of snobbery that I'm not entirely comfy with. And yet in Czech literature and films, and in Czech pubs, I see over and over someone who has strange habits, or is relentlessly stupid, or smart and screwing up royally, but as long as they're well-intentioned towards their fellow human, they're loved, handed tissues, treated with kindness.  

Now if they could just make the weather as consistent and warm as their hearts, it'd be perfect.