'When President Obama arrived in Prague this weekend, Prague Spring was waiting for him.'
A bit obvious and kitsch, I know, but that was the lede I mentally considered yesterday as I stood, along with tens of thousands of others, at Hradčany Square waiting for the president to deliver his speech to the expectant city in the heart of Europe.
Looking back, I should have said I was there -- or at least as close as I managed to get-- by a happy coincidence.
As we entered the square, with the dawn breaking over St. Vitus Cathedral and a hazy mist surrounding the far away spires of Vysehrad, a hush settled over those who would be near the podium when the president made his speech, three hours away.
'I can't believe this -- can you believe this?' said an American guy next to me, as he thanked his host.
His excitement was justified.
After all, it was a gorgeous spring day, the sun casting the statue of Tomas Masaryk, the First Republic president, champion of democracy and friend of Woodrow Wilson, in silhouette; indeed, later when Obama delivered his speech, the podium was positioned thus that it seemed the ghost of Masaryk were looking at Obama, considering every word.
But it was more than that. This spring is significant, the year marking the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution which ended a half century of Communist rule, and also this year began with the Czechs assuming the EU presidency. Thus, this particular gorgeous morning, slightly over 40 years since the 1968 Prague Spring, that brief flowering of democracy and intellectual fire that was crushed later that same year when Soviet troops invaded the city, it seemed to me that yes, finally, Prague Spring had returned, and with poetic convenience, in time to reflect the excitement and hope of Obama's first international tour as president.
Certainly these feelings were reinforced when, about a quarter after 10 a.m., the president and First Lady Michelle ascended the podium, which was beautifully decked out in an array of spring flowers. The multitudes that had been waiting since dawn exploded. On the speakers, the chords of Smetana's 'Vltava,' the Czechs' unofficial national anthem, swelled and rolled over the sea of people.
I still wanted to pinch myself. By a stroke of luck, one of my students, Jitka, has a daughter, Andrea, who was working the event as a volunteer and had given me an invitation to be in the special section near the podium, about 10 meters away from the president.
Actually, it wasn't quite that easy. Thousands were already squeezed into the narrow streets around the castle, and all were expectant, like when you're waiting to get a visa. All were determined to get in. A girl with a bull horn entreated the crowd, in Czech and English, to move aside to let those with invitations pass through. This process went slowly, but just as the crowd threatened to get sullen, an army of police, in perfect, quiet order streamed by. The procession, single-file, took the better part of 10 minutes to pass entirely (a reminder that reports indicated 4,000 police would be on hand). This display subdued the crowd, and just then my mobile rang. It was Andrea. She asked where I was and when I told her, I began jumping up, gesticulating, over the crowd. Then I saw her wave. It was the very same girl who was doing crowd control. Seeing this, the crowd, at turns generously and grudgingly, let me pass.
Andrea handed me the invitations. There were three.
Actually, I'd brought only Islam, my Bangladeshe flatmate, and I'd lost him. One minute he was behind me, then he was gone. I scanned the crowd.
'He's very short,' I explained to Andrea. But there were more people coming and it was impossible to see him.
'So you can wait,' Andrea said. She wanted to help.
'They are expecting maybe 30,000,' she said as we both scanned the crowd
I waited for a few minutes, still scanning the crowd. After a few minutes, hating myself for abandoning my friend, I went on through the security gates.
The crowd was a tossed salad of nationalities, more than a few Americans. The closest feeling I could compare would be at a summer festival. Or a trip to the Foreign Police (see Via Prague, July 2008). Everyone, at least in the invited section (perhaps we were subconsciously 'earning our tickets') looked at each other and exchanged little grins of expectation. Unfortunately, the dense crowd wasn't for everybody. One young woman feinted, perhaps from lack of air, and had to be taken away and helped by personnel on hand.
Beforehand student volunteers had passed out Czech and American flags, and these waved in the air covering the crowds like red, white and blue confetti. I was waving an American flag myself. Surrounding me were a German family, a young man from Brussels working at Exxon in Prague, an elderly American woman and her granddaughter. The German family were very excited. 'So in America Obama is much more famous than Bush?' the German man asked. By 'famous,' a slight language mis-transfer, I gathered he meant 'popular.'
At one point, I turned to the elderly American woman and, in somewhat incautious reference to the Bush Administration, said it felt good to proudly wave the flag again. The woman fixed me with a reproachful eye.
'Always be proud of that flag,' she said. 'People have died for you to wave it.' The granddaughter pulled the woman aside and whispered something. 'What?' the woman said. 'I'm right, I think.'
All of this was stampeded out during the Obamas' entrance. The president flashed the smile we'd seen so often on TV, in news reports. Michelle Obama shared the spotlight with ease, giving her husband a 'go on and do it' pat on the arm before retiring off stage. It struck me that I'd always found the couple attractive and charismatic, but that in person -- was it possible?-- they were even more attractive and charismatic. The crowd seemed to agree, for the response was deafening, like at a rock concert. No, not just a rock concert. It was almost like the Beatles were in town.
Even Obama, accustomed to the mania of such stops, and who earlier looked a bit sleepy on the TV screen showing him arriving at the Castle with Czech President Vaclav Klaus, seemed impressed by the fervor of the greeting.
'Thank you, thank you,' he repeated. 'And to paraphrase one of my predecessors, I'm proud to be the man who brought Michelle Obama to Prague!'
A large video screen offered both a view for those on the far side of the square, and Czech subtitles.
I won't spend a lot of time on the president's speech, which lasted about 30 minutes (to the disappointment of some in the crowd, including the young man from Brussels, who said he'd expected at least an hour). Most of the president's speech focused on the need for Europe and America to work together on reducing and ultimately eliminating the nuclear threat. The crowd listened attentively to this part of the speech, occasionally responding with mild shouts of approval. But the best cheers came, as it always has, when Obama drew upon his own personal journey, a journey that Europeans, Czechs included, have found fascinating.
Pointing at the statue of Masaryk, whom Obama called 'a hero to the Czech people,' the president reminded his audience, many of whom can still remember the life behind the Iron Curtain, that just 20 years ago many people didn't believe that the Berlin Wall would ever be toppled, just as in America nobody would have foreseen a black man becoming president.
'Few people would have predicted that an American President would one day be permitted to speak to an audience like this in Prague,' Obama continued. 'And few would have imagined that the Czech Republic would become a free nation, a member of NATO, and a leader of a united Europe. Those ideas would have been dismissed as dreams.
We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them that the world could not change.'
In light of the current fight to contain the spread of destructive nuclear weapons, Obama warned the audience about the danger of 'fatalism,' that it's impossible to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
'This goal will not be reached quickly - perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change.'
I have a vivid memory of an American man standing a few feet away from me, and listening, shouted, 'So -- Disarm!' which apparently went unheard.
Obama made only one brief mention of the U.S. plans to build a missile defense shield, including a radar in the Czech Republic, in Europe. He called the Czechs and the people of Poland, where the missiles would be located, 'courageous.'
Finally, but most importantly, he won Czech cheers by using the phrase 'samota revoluce,' referring to the 89 Velvet Revolution. He spoke Czech. ('He was well prepared,' some would later remark, in varying tones, both complimentary and with studied skepticism).
Obama's speech, particularly its relatively general tone and brevity in regards to the radar, of course didn't send everyone into swoons of praise.
A glance at Ceskenoviny.cz press survey shows that while many were impressed by Obama's poise, statesmanship and charisma, critics said the speech was high on dazzle and short on specifics and muddled by unclear policies.
'A star-filling emptiness,' wrote Petr Fischer in the daily Hospodarske noviny.
'Barack Obama's stay in Prague was disappointing as he behaved like a desperately undecided man who is only able to speak nicely,' griped Teodor Marjanovic in Mlada fronta Dnes
Others complained that Obama had failed also to respond to Czech Prime Minister's controversial statement last week that the president's stimulus package, in reponse to the global financial crisis, is 'the road to hell.'
But the Czech press also had some praise. All found him an engaging speaker and compelling personality.
Barack Obama is really able to provoke hopes, Alexandr Mitrofanov wrote in Pravo.
President Klaus, on a radio show, praised the speech as 'surprisingly Czech, surprisingly Prague,' meaning he was surprised by the number of references Obama made to the country's history.
Also, my friend Tomas, also a teacher who plans to share the speech with his Czech students, wasn't won over by the critics.
'I see what they're saying about the need for specifics,' Tomas said. 'But with Obama, it's not necessarily about the details. It's the idealism, the optimism I think he represents.'
As for the crowd, most of them (myself included) appeared too star-struck immediately after the speech to be able to comment. Plus everyone was a bit tired, from waking up so early and from the hours of build-up and then sudden release of tremendous excitement.
As I readied to leave, the elderly American woman who'd reproached me earlier offered a warm smile.
'Just remember,' she said, indicating the little flag that now drooped at my side. 'Always be proud of that flag.'
'It was better here than it was last summer in Berlin,' I overheard one American girl saying to her friends, as the throng slowly moved out of the square and down the hill into Prague's narrow streets. She was referring to Obama's famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate.
'Yeah?' her friend said.
'Yeah, (in Berlin) it was too hot and there was no water anywhere.'
I walked down the hill. On the street there were a dozen people, all dressed in white costumes, their faces covered in white, expressionless masks. Signs in front of them indicated they were 'Invisible People.' Indeed, soundless too, for they made no sound, but merely looked out like ghosts in the morning.
'Nuclear Disarmament,' read one sign. 'The 70 percent of Czechs who don't want the radar are invisible,' read another.
At the bottom of the hill I waited for a tram, but then realizing traffic was probably tied up, decided to walk across the Vltava River. The earlier mists had burned off and it was a languid spring morning, and the buzz of the day's events was still strong. A tram came just as I crossed the river at the National Theater. It was packed with people coming from the castle. But as it made its way past Charles Square and up the hill toward Peace Square, the tram slowly emptied and there was room to be comfortable. I noticed an elderly couple, Czechs, sitting near the back. They had just come from the speech, and were dressed in their best clothes, the man wearing a tie, salt-and-pepper wool jacket and a hat, and the woman looked similarly prim and respectable. The woman was holding an American flag, a remnant, as mine was, of the day. They were both looking out the window, a look of dreamy contentedness in their eyes. At the next stop a young Czech woman got off, along with her son, he not much more than a toddler. In one hand he held his mother's hand, in the other an American flag. Watching them get off, I thought again about Obama's speech, and the elderly woman. Perhaps the critics are right; Obama is short on specifics at times, but I would say at this point he's offered something else; not just shining rhetoric, but something that I hope in time will mature and matter. He's perhaps given the heart of Europe, so long on the wrong side of history, a chance to perhaps be on the right side this time.
But wait, wait, hold it -- the 'right' side?
Did I forget something? Like, the fact that just two weeks ago the current Czech government collapsed in a no-confidence vote? That polls had indicated some two-thirds of Czechs don't want the radar?
'Ah, you are very optimistic.'
Yes, this came about hour later at Shakespeare and Sons, where I'd gone to cool my head off with a beer and relate the morning's events to the handful of Czech acquaintances. The man I was speaking to was Vratislav Brabinec, saxophonist for the legendary Czech group Plastic People of the Universe. The group was the country's foremost underground avant-garde group during Communism, and still plays all over the world today. Vratislav, now 66, lives in my neighborhood and hangs out at Shakespeare, but until now I'd always been too shy to speak to him. He eagerly listened to my account, a sparkle occasionally gleaming behind his owl-shaped glasses. We talked for a while about Prague Spring.
'It must have been a very optimistic time,' I offered.
'Yes,' Vratislav said, thinking. 'Unfortunately it turned out to be false optimism. I ended up spending time in prison.'
'Why?' I asked.
He laughed wryly.
'For being a jazz musician.'
'I hope it's not that way with Obama,' I said later. 'I mean, I hope it's not all false optimism.'
'Me too,' my companion said.
I told Vratislav my favorite Czech expression was 'uvidime,' which means, 'We'll see.'
He laughed.
'That's your favorite?' We sat and the barman brought me a beer and refilled Vratislav's wine glass, and we talked about jazz, his band, the economic crisis, the Bible, and Obama. The details aren't important, except to say when we finished Vratislav crowned me 'an optimist,' which I suppose I am, but as always, a cautious one.
When I got home later my flatmate Islam, from Bangladesh, was finishing a meal with his friend Sujit. I felt bad because Islam and I had set out together that morning, but in the crush and confusion of the crowds we'd become separated. So instead of being near the podium with me, Islam had watched everything in the general public section.
'It's OK,' Islam said. 'There was nothing you could do. The crowd was very crazy.'
I asked what he had thought of Obama.
'Very good,' he said. 'Many people were there. If many people are there you must be good. I think Obama is very good.'
Later, I noticed Islam had taken the American flag I'd brought home from the speech and put it up on the refrigerator.