Prague, My Little Dream

Text: Michaela Pokrupová, Ostrava
Photographs: Jozef Ondzik, Bratislava

The walls from the sad cement-block buildings were forcefully implanted into the green mountain valley during the Communist era. The garishly colourful, discordant buildings with huge advertising signs clash desperately with the historical centre of Ružomberok. The tasteless, gigantic box-shaped halls of the supermarkets are lined with a slope of golden-yellow grain. A rusted steam pipeline winds above the heads of the people walking through the housing development like a poisonous snake. This is what the bygone glory of the city of Ružomberok looks like.

Photo gallery

A middle-aged woman gives a slight sigh as she looks at the framed photographs of her three daughters. All three of her children, daughters, no longer live at home; she has remained alone with her husband in a three-room housing development flat on the outskirts of Ružomberok. In her flat, there is a bit of sadness, just as there is something sad inside her herself. The little former inhabitants of the orphaned children’s room have left their mark on its walls. Two abandoned beds, stuffed bears and dolls – silent witnesses to the childhood and adolescence of three girls – tucked unreachably high on the wardrobe is a sea turtle tirelessly trying to flee from its glass prison… “Jana was drawn to Prague ever since she was small,” recalls the woman.

“Prague is simply Prague…..” says the young woman dreamily. She looks a lot like her mother and is hundreds of kilometres away from her birthplace. “As kids, we came here on all our holidays,” she recalls her childhood, “It seemed like a little dream to me, to get here. This city has attracted me since I was small.”
Jana attended a nursing school in Banská Bystrica. During the three years she studied there, she became independent and went home around once a month. She earned extra money doing part-time jobs in order to help out her parents a bit. She didn’t want to go back to Ružomberok, because she had gotten used to Bystrica, where she had sent her CV even before she had finished school. She sent more CVs to hospitals in Prague.
She was not hired in Bystrica because there were no open positions. “There’s no hope of finding a job in small towns in Slovakia now. Half of my classmates went to Prague,” Jana explains. She herself was not as tied to her family as her classmates who returned to Slovakia after finishing their initial internships. “I more or less planned to stay here. I was probably the only one who didn’t want to go home.”

Despite this, her reason for going to Prague was not that she could not find a job in Slovakia, like the other nurses. “Slovakia had absolutely no draw for me, I don’t have any relationship to Bratislava,” is how she explains why she did not stay. But if she had found a job in Bystrica at that time, she would have stayed there. The only reason to stay in Ružomberok was (and is) to take care of her parents in case her sister Zuzana stays in England, where she now works as a receptionist: “I’m still counting on the fact that one of my sisters will stay home.” But when she received an invitation for an interview at the hospital in Bystrica after working in Prague for nine months, she admitted that she would not imagine returning to Slovakia.

She did not think much more about leaving, and a week after taking her final exams at the nursing school, she was already in Prague. She was not at all afraid of being in a strange city, because she knew she could count on the help of relatives from Prague and the surrounding area in case of trouble.
Jana found a place to live at the hospital dormitory. “It was not financially difficult,” she recalls. At the beginning, an aunt helped her out, and the first month’s rent of 2500 crowns was deducted from her first paycheck. Her Slovak roommate went back to Slovakia after working in Prague for a week. “She couldn’t stand being away from her family, but I’m not like that,” Jana adds. But living at the dormitory was less than idyllic. “Two years in the dormitory were more than enough for me,” above all, she recall having differing day and night shifts than her colleague with whom she shared a room.

Now she lives in a rented apartment with two other nurses, Czechs. Each has her own room and pays around 4300 crowns: “For a furnished room in Prague it’s a great price.”
Her parents pay 7000 Slovak crowns (around 5200 Czech crowns) for their flat in Ružomberok. They take care of the house and garden they inherited from their parents in case one of their daughters might want to come back. As the years go by, however, their hopes shrink. “They’ve already grown accustomed to a different life, they want to live it on their own terms,” Jana’s mother says apologetically as she sits in a chair in the small living room looking out onto the grey housing development. “Here people often care about what the house looks like, what kind of material things they own,” is how she describes the local mentality. In her opinion, people in Bohemia would rather go on vacation, enjoy themselves. This is more attractive for Jana as well, enjoying life. Her daughters themselves advise their mother to have a good time and to leave the garden to its fate. Jana’s generation considers working in the garden a waste of time. This has no effect on her mother though, ever since she was little she has been accustomed to working in the garden and in the field, so she toils away there by herself. “You can’t hound them on account of the garden, times are different, they want to have a good time,” she states resignedly.

Jana simply has no regrets about leaving. In Prague, as she herself, glowing with satisfaction, says: “I have not encountered anything unpleasant. I was pleasantly surprised by the smooth course of my beginnings here, and I’m really enthusiastic about my work.” She also speaks highly of the equipment in the Prague hospital, where there is no lack of special medical instruments, like ventilators, in the intensive care unit. In Bystica, where she did her internship, she never encountered this type of equipment in these departments.
As a citizen of the former Czechoslovakia, she merely reported to the foreign police and received temporary residence in the Czech Republic. A work permit was not necessary. “Two years ago I went to register there again… it’s for 10 years… so I don’t have to deal with any problems,” she says in a carefree tone.
Even though she’s enthusiastic about life in the Czech Republic, at the beginning of her stay she encountered problems she had not counted on before she came. “I’ve felt the aversion Czechs have toward Slovaks personally,” says Jana about the first department where she worked. “Even though half the women working there were Slovak, everyone pretended not to understand Slovak. When I said nadzvihňute zadok (lift up your buttocks), they pretended they didn’t know that nazvihňut is nadzvednout (lift up). I used to think that Czechs liked Slovaks,” she adds sadly. She also had problems with specialised terms in Czech, which it took her about half a year to acquire. Now, in the cardiology department, she has not encountered aversion to Slovaks. She now tries to speak only Czech, and only when talking to Slovak colleagues will she switch into her mother tongue.

“In the beginning, when we were getting to know Prague, we would go out somewhere, usually just Slovak women,” is how she recalls her first weeks in Prague. Of the half of her classmates who went to Prague, there were only three left after four years.
Initially, she went home around three times a year, on the 500-crown bus route directly from Florenc to Rožomberok. Now she returns to Rožomberok only sporadically, once a year, the last time she was home was in November. “I enjoy Christmas here,” she smiles, “my roommates go away for the holidays, we gather up the people who don’t want to go home or who have to work and we meet at our place in Žižkov.”
“I’m sorry that the girls aren’t here. I’d like to have them at home at least for Christmas,” her mother says with tears in her eyes, “Ever since they were little, they were here, on Sunday for lunch, on holidays. I really miss it,” she complains. At the same time, she feels like her daughter has grown apart from her: “Prague changed her a lot, there’s a freer, easier life there. She didn’t allow herself this here, going to the pub.” She herself grew up in a traditional atmosphere, which is why she wants to preserve the family customs even though there is disagreement in the family.
Regarding her free time, Jana says: “I don’t have much of it, I also have second job at a private rehabilitation clinic. It’s like a part-time job for me. I’m on duty 4-5 times a month, on top of my usual 14 times on duty at the hospital.” But when she compares the part-time job to her current job, where she intensively cares for two patients who have recently had heart surgery, she adds bravely: “It’s rest and relaxation for me, the patients just lie there.” Work at the hospital is done using the system of “short week and long week”. “In Slovakia it was different, there we were on duty 18-19 times a month, we were there permanently, here we’re on duty with the same group.” When Jana does have free time, she goes swimming or running, studies English with a colleague, occasionally goes do the movies or to the pub with her friends.

She claims to be a hyperactive person, which her mother confirms: “Jana doesn’t know how to relax, she always has to be doing something, she can’t stand it at home in Ružomberok, because she says she doesn’t have anything to do there,” she complains.
Jana’s entire life revolves around work, which absolutely fulfills her. “I really wanted to study forensic medicine, those are the best doctors in my opinion, but after three years of unsuccessful attempts to get into medical school, I gave up.” She devotes herself fully to her work and is planning her first vacation in four years this year. She is flying to visit her sister in Britain. It even made her mother happy that Jana will have time off and get to rest, adding in a motherly tone: “She should take it easy on herself.”
The salaries in hospitals in Slovakia are about two times lower than in Prague. “Even when I consider the extra costs, it pays off,” Jana stands her ground firmly. She does admit, however, that it is difficult to save money. In Prague, she leads a rich cultural life and often attends festivals. Her cell phone bill also comes to a significant amount, because Jana calls her mother in Slovakia on a regular basis. She knows that with her salary, she will never be able to save up to buy an apartment in Prague, maybe one day she could afford one somewhere near Prague. But she has firmly decided to work in Prague even in the far-off future. Unlike her Slovak colleagues, she did not come here to make money and then go back. She came here to live her life.

Her future plans concern work above all. She would like to take correspondence courses to specialise in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine, and she would like to study to be a head nurse. After the age of thirty, Jana would like to begin working in the paediatrics department, because she adores children. She is also considering working in paediatric oncology: “These kids still have a great chance of getting well.” And she adds: “I couldn’t be in some calm department.”
She does not have much interest in what’s happening in Slovakia, and wouldn’t watch Slovak television even if she had the opportunity to do so. “I don’t have a good sense of the goings-on in Slovakia,” she says openly, “I feel more like a Czech, at least three-quarters. But because I don’t have citizenship or even permanent residence, I have to admit to being Slovak.” She sees her parents more often in the Czech Republic, when visiting relatives, than in the home she grew up in. Her friends from school got married, had children, or moved away. She does not maintain contact with them. Prague, eight hours away, has become her home. She definitely recommends to all nurses the same route that she herself took. “They have accommodation here, they take care of them, they don’t have anything to be afraid of, even if it’s only for a year.”

“This place is ‘Podunk’ to her,” complains her mother occasionally when she looks out of the corner of her eye from the children’s bedroom at the reddish-brown structure of the enormous supermarket. “And she’s glad that I’m not watching her,” she says, trying to cover up her languor with a joke.
Often, she is unable to meet with her daughter in Prague, because Jana is truly pressed for time. If she could, she would move in order to be close to her daughter, but she is not yet retired. What is impressive is that Jana’s mother, when she was young, dreamed of the same life that her daughter now leads, but because her sister studies abroad and did not return after her studies, Jana’s mother had to take responsibility for caring for her parents. She then took care of them until their death. “I had my good times,” she sighs, “I always wanted to go to Czechia, because I married a Czech,” she admits, referring to her wedding photo, “But unfortunately, my husband didn’t want to go to Czechia then.” I always enjoyed going there, I wanted to get out of here too,” she says, not hiding this fact. It is as if her daughter Jana had realised her own past dream from her youth, the dream of leaving Slovakia for Czechia. Her mother wishes her well, but really misses her daughter at home in spite.

Jana’s mother, like her daughter, does not have many friends in Slovakia and is all the more fixed on Czechia, on Czech friends: “We have so many good friends in Czechia, many more than here. I like Czechs more than Slovaks. I have only good experiences with Czechs,” she smiles, several hundred kilometres to the west in her thoughts. Czechia is still a draw to her. However, she has so many responsibilities that for the meantime, she has to postpone her departure. She knows that it is difficult to find work in Ružomberok, a town with 11% unemployment, and that this is why her second daughter, Zuzana, went to Britain. She still hopes that at least Zuzana will return home one day. Even the youngest of the three daughters, Milka, a student, is not spending the summer with her parents and has gone on a student work program to Canada.
And so at home, in a small deserted living room, three framed smiling childhood faces of her daughters look down at her from the bookshelf. Perhaps one of her daughters will repeat her fate.