This piece was written as a collaboration between Joanna Yip, a member of NYU Prague Now, and Anna Vařeková, a student from a Czech high school who writes for their magazine ALEO. Joanna writes about her transportation experiences in Prague which are greatly different from her usual route in NYC. Anna explains her commute in Hong Kong, where she’s currently studying, which also varies from her typical routine in Prague.
Coming Home in Hong Kong and Prague
By Anna Vařeková
While my head leans on the yellow pole, my eyes alternately gaze at some other passenger’s exposed tattoos, trying to decipher their meaning, and at a young girl’s falling plushie. It was inevitable – I was expecting the plushie to hit the floor at least two stops before. It finally did, and a tiny hand began to frantically wave at it.
Tuen Ma line is incredibly long and with no means to block out the annoying sounds streaming from the advertisement screen just above your head, also very tedious. It has been about 50 minutes since the interchange in Diamond Hill and 32 since my phone died and I’ve been forced to stare either outside at the smearing buildings in the distance or at just a couple of blurry lines as we enter another tunnel. It’s also been about 10 minutes since I first thought “the teddy bear cannot dangle like that any longer.”
Thankfully, as we speed into more of a “countryside,” as anyone outside of Yuen Long and Tuen Mun calls these places, the crowds start thinning and I can finally rest my head on that pole I’ve been eyeing for quite a while. As we leave the enormous apartment complexes of Tin Shui Wai, only a couple of us remain. I feel the next station approaching. The trilingual automated voice too lets me know, after already informing Cantonese and Mandarin speaking travelers, that it is indeed going to be Siu Hong next. Now I’m getting up, and checking my tote bag for the dead phone, before stepping off onto the platform.
I walk across one in a million footbridges I’ve encountered and gotten confused by during my time in Hong Kong. I automatically avoid the next one and head towards the small family houses, here called village houses, and stroll along a housing estate stacked on top of a shopping center. Two-thirds of the time of my exchange program is over, and I can’t help thinking about how I’m going to miss it here. Even the omnipresent smell of chicken feet every time I walk near the wet market will be thought of fondly when I go back home to Prague.
Maybe it wouldn’t happen if I actually lived in the Prague everyone admires when I mention I’m from there- but no. I might be spending my afternoon strolling around and admiring the old architecture hiding behind a flock of tourists I accidentally found myself in. I might put on fancy clothes, head into Žofín Palace, swing my arms almost to the rhythm as the dance master wipes the sweat from his brows. But every time I’m still going to return to the concrete hell, the suburban housing complexes. Just like here.
Yet, walking home in Prague I’m now going to look way too far up, expecting more and more units to be stacked all the way to the sky, searching for the poking window frames and clothing hangers, getting out of the way of fewer people than I’m now used to. I’ll return to buses half the size passing under the lone footbridge. There will be no pathways connecting everything and everyone, reaching out more and more into the further settlements, breaching the sea, now driving me all the way to… “next station Siu Hong.”
Prague and New York City
By Joanna Yip
I am on a red plastic seat, with the number 22 above my head. I hear different languages surrounding me, inviting me to think in my own head rather than eavesdrop on conversations. I can pick up on a Czech word here or there – “dobry den, na shledanou, pivo” – the essentials of my Czech dictionary. We get to the Stepanksa stop, and an elderly woman walks on, giving me my cue to stand up and offer her my seat. I go and take my place, holding onto the bright yellow bar for dear life.
It is like our tram car is a can of sardines, and I am in with the bunch. I had already anticipated a packed tram seeing that Narodni Trida, where I got on, always has a flock of people right around 4 pm. I can just barely peek out of the window and see that the sun is setting beautifully over the field by Karlovo Namesti. I hear the now-familiar automated feminine voice “pristi zastavka, Jana Masaryka”, which has become a jingle in my head, and instinctively check for my phone and keys before preparing to step off.
I take my short walk back from the tram stop, and continue my usual route home. I can’t help but admire the architecture of the homes in the neighborhood, and despite having been here for over two months they never fail to make me feel giddy. It’s bittersweet knowing that I will have to leave this beautiful city in just over one month.
As per my usual route back home in New York, the scene is much different. Familiarity is the strange smell of cigarettes, sewage and greasy pizza rolled into one when I step out of a subway. Whether I am taking the R train to 8th Street Station or the 6 uptown, the smell lingers and sticks onto me. I have fond memories of ending up in Alphabet City when I had meant to go up towards the Lincoln Center, and that marked the beginning of my time at NYU. What used to be a maze and impossible to learn has become my own underground backyard. I comfortably sit on the yellow line’s old red and orange seats, blast music in my ears to cover the sound of metal against metal, and keep to myself as every New Yorker does. I naturally avoid the drunken crowd which surrounds their one friend who is asleep against the grimy metal poles, and sidestep around mystery puddles that have an odd rainbow-like reflective streak. I make my way out to Astor Place station and avoid the temptation to “treat” myself to Starbucks, cut through Cooper Square and pass the huddle of pigeons pecking at their latest McDonald’s meal, and finally reach the street I call home.
Meanwhile in Prague, the stocky MTA buses and the metal uniform subways are traded for bright red and white trams that move in a clunky, yet fitting, fashion. My instinct to jaywalk has been recalibrated as the trams here won’t stop for anyone. Recalibration has been an important theme – the then eye-catching red trams have now become routine to my daily life, yet still hold their Prague charm. Being above ground and absorbing the streets of Prague has drawn me closer to the city, and now the sing-song voice of “pristi zastavka, Jana Masaryka” is my new cue that I am almost home.