Shhh! Not so Loud

I am happy to be home again, among Czechs. When we arrived, I was struck again by how quiet these people are. Unlike we Americans, who seem to never stop talking, Czechs don’t seem to carry on a lot of personal conversations in public. At the baggage carousel, everyone stood silently to wait for their belongings; a few couples spoke quietly to each other. On the trams, only the Gypsies and foreigners talk loudly. Like many other cultural differences, I suspect that this is a habit leftover from when the Communists were in power here. And although most of those who were old enough to remember the dire consequences of having some opinion overheard during the German occupation are gone now, I’m guessing that such a hard-learned habit is one which got passed along.

Children make about the same amount of noise as American children (of course), though Czech children retain that soft high pitch which we lose by the time we’re five. Even boys as old as eight speak to each other in tones like that mothers use with their small children. It’s very sweet. I am also pleasantly surprised at the maturity level of things marketed for children. Sweet cuddly bears and cute baby animals adorn items which in the States would sport unromanticised super heroes, skulls and zombies, or scantily clad TV stars in makeup for children of nine or ten.

Crying babies are taken from their prams and held, soothed or fed and not left to cry. Mothers and their grown daughters walk close, arm in arm together down the street, and speak to each other with heads inclined, one listening and watching the path ahead while the other one speaks, visions of a childhood intimacy that didn’t vanish sometime after puberty. These are both things which I appreciate and love about this country.

It is a bit shocking, however, to see that just as in big American cities, men don’t routinely offer their seats the elderly on trams and trains, or step back from doors to allow ladies to pass, a habit which we work very hard to ingrain in Bram. Yet, in spite of this particular lapse of what a Southerner would consider good breeding, I can’t help but be enamoured of the way the very young and the very old are allowed their weaknesses, and those of us in between are expected to the be the ones to be accommodating. Babies are not left to cry pitifully and aged parents aren’t left to the care of strangers or to fend for themselves.