Dream Prague: A Youtuber’s take on the Czechs
Dream Prague, a popular Youtube channel, was started by Jennifer Preston. Her videos dissect Czech culture for expats and even pose a funny mirror to the Czechs themselves. Jennifer and I sat down to talk about her take on Czech culture, the beginnings of her channel, and the current stage of life she finds herself in, after living in Czechia for a number of years.
So, I thought to kick things off, we could play a little quick game. I'll ask you rapid fire questions about your Czech experience. You'll just tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.
“Sounds good.”
Okay. So what is the first word that comes to your mind when I say Czech?
“Real. No, facade. They're not trying to hide anything. They're just trying to be themselves. Very direct. I love that.”
What Czech stereotype is the closest to truth?
“The customer service is bad. This is an American stereotype of Czechs. Czechs have customer service on another level and Czechs just aren't here to serve. They're just here to do their job. And we might expect a little more and we should just kind of expect a little less.”
Can you name a bad character trait that the Czechs have?
“I think the Czechs are very opinionated even when you don't ask for their opinion. They would say that they're being honest and that they have the right to speak their minds. And that's true. But in other cultures, let's say British culture or American culture, we really don't like to be so honest if it seems negative. So it's not a good or bad thing. It's just something that our cultures differ in.”
Can you name a good character trait the Czechs have?
“They have a great sense of humor. Really dry. Really, dark in a way that, again, like it's too dark for maybe my home culture. But I love that. They're not afraid to bring out the darkness, in something that's tragic and make it funny.”
If Czechs were a color, what color would they be?
“Right now I'm thinking gray.”
Okay. Interesting. Something to do with communism and how the buildings were all gray before and now we're slowly starting to make it more colorful.
“Oh, that's really interesting because the buildings themselves have started to become more colorful in the 13 years I've been here. And it's been peeling away sort of the oxidation of the old buildings and giving them a fresh life. So they're slowly coming out of that. That's a great point.”
What do you think is the most popular Czech food amongst Czechs?
“They really do love 'svíčková', which is, I would say, one of their only totally authentic foods. They love 'řízek', but you could say that that's Viennese. I would say 'svíčková'.”
And do you like svíčková yourself?
“I am going to tell you something that I have not mentioned on my channel. I do not eat meat. I never mentioned it because I thought that made me less endearing to the Czechs, but it's true. I do eat fish, but I haven't eaten meat since I was living at home with my parents as a child.”
Wow. I know there's vegan substitutes for svičková. Have you tried it?
“I have and they're delicious. Now, any honest Czech is going to say there's no substituting for a real svičkova, but I've had it and I think it's great.”
What do you think is the most popular food amongst non-Czechs?
“Interesting. I think everybody goes for the pork knuckle, the vepřo knedlo zelo, when they first get here, because it's so delicious and it's so ubiquitous. But I think at least for my friends, they've started to wean off that as it is quite heavy. Oh, we had the most amazing Češnečka the other day, a garlic soup. And I think that that's really popular amongst non-Czechs.”
So maybe have that at night so you can go about your day without having that breath, huh?
“The breath, you're absolutely right.”
What, when I say Czech politics, what comes to your mind?
“There seemed to be echoes of corruption earlier when I got here or just dissatisfaction with certain leaders. I'm not quite sure what Czechs think of Pavel. I think that he brought a bit of uprightness to the role. I think that we as Westerners, we as Americans really appreciate that he is in that role now. I think it's looking up.”
Do you yourself focus on politics? Is that something that you've recently gotten into?
“I am very fascinated by politics. I got a Master's in International Relations, before I moved to the Czech Republic. I look at Czech politics, sort of how it fits into the EU. Coming from the United States, we have about the population of Europe. And so I don't focus on California politics. I focus on how California politics fits into the US. And so here I focus on EU politics more and how Czech leaders factor into that, how they factor into NATO.”
What do you think is the most popular film amongst the Czechs?
“They really love Pelíšky. And I know why. It's so funny because every time I watch it around the holidays, I think, oh, it's a funny film. I think of, like, the traditionally funny Christmas films in America or in England. And then I watch it and I remember it's so sad. It's a tragic film. So I always go in appreciating the humor and then I leave with this tragedy, but I think that that speaks to the Czech humor, of deriving humor from just absolutely tragic situations.”
We need that humor to cope with all the tragedy that has happened. When I say vesnice (village) what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
“Oh my goodness, in one of my early English lessons we learned “venkovský balík”. I think it's derogatory to mean like a country bumpkin, or as we would say like a redneck. It's a derogatory term about someone who lives in a village. I found it not to be true, that was obviously before I'd ever been to any villages. I think it's a very important thing to have these stereotypes about people who live in Brno for example or people who live in villages. But I think that the people who live in villages just prefer a slower pace of life. I had a gentleman who had to tow my car once and he drove me out from the vesnice where I had been stranded. He drove me back to Prague and he was like “How can you handle the noise? How can you live here?”
“I love the noise. The noise is in my blood. So I think they're just Czech people who appreciate a little bit more silence, a little bit more nature.”
Can you picture yourself living in a "vesnice"?
“We used to think about that, but I think both me and my husband, Honza, are both city people. We like to go outside and encounter people on the street, to have things at our fingertips and to kind of feel like life is happening, even if I'm not the one living the interesting life. There's people living interesting lives all around me and I can live vicariously through them.”
So my last and final question is, what Czech phrase or word is used way too much?
“Ty vole!”
“Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of slang and I think that's what makes Czech quite hard for a Czech learner because you learn all these beautiful ways to express yourself and you go out on the streets and nobody is speaking that way. They're just speaking with a lot of slang.”
Yeah, is that one of the first phrases you learned?
“Yes, definitely.”
“I feel like that's a phrase that when people are like, teach me Czech, that's the first thing people usually say is, “Ty vole!”
Okay, so Jen, your YouTube channel has gained an impressive 82,000 subscribers. Am I right?
“That's up from last time I looked.”
Wow, that's great! I really personally enjoy watching your videos. They're not only hilarious, but they're really informative as well. They have an immense knowledge about the local things happening in Prague. Before we dive into the specifics of your channel, I was wondering if you could just brief us in on what brought you to Prague?
“We tell a story of one night with a bottle of red wine, a dart and a map, which is really kind of how it happened. My husband and I were living in the United States. We had just returned from living in Japan. And we were bored. We loved living abroad and we wanted to do it again. And he was just about to change jobs or to leave his current job at the time. And we thought, what about Europe? And of all the places in Europe that either of us had been, my husband, Honza, John, but we call him Honza, had been to Prague for three days in 1999. And he said it was the most beautiful city in Europe. And that had always stuck. I just kind of said, "What about Prague, and it must have been the wine because he agreed.”
That is a crazy story! So fun! That's almost like from a movie. So what inspired you to start your YouTube channel in the first place? And what were the early days of content creating like for you?
“I was teaching English for several years. And as a teacher, you get the same questions over and over. And so I started making videos to explain certain grammar points to my students. I could refer them to them after class, and we wouldn't have to go over them again and again in class. And then I thought, oh, you know, there's a lot of things that I teach new people who come here. I should make videos about that. I believe my first video was how to ride the metro, which is one of the easiest things to do in this country. We have the best public transportation system in Prague, but foreigners, you know, they just get confused. They don't know. Like, does someone stamp my ticket? You see them all the time just standing around like, how do I do this thing? And I thought, I'll make them a video. So it started out as instructional videos about what to do when you get here.”
I'm sure that at first there were so many ideas because you were in a new country, a new culture. Did you have Czech friends that were helping you come up with these videos?
“Well, no. Interestingly, you would think that Czechs would be helpful, but Czechs can't see what is interesting about themselves. People can't tell what's interesting about their own culture. So you really needed an expat's view of life here to get to the nut of what is strange about living here. And honestly, Honza and I were walking around every day. We'd come home, we'd say: “You wouldn't believe what I just saw! You wouldn't believe what this guy said to me!” And so those experiences formed the basis of this kind of gee whiz! isn't this an interesting place?
You were doing it full time at one point. So what did that look like? How did you structure your day?
“Yeah, so there comes a time in every content creator's life when they have to figure out if it's a hobby or if it's going to be full time, you only have so many hours in the day. And the type of videos I was making were taking at least 20 hours to do. I mean, you're only seeing a 10 minute video, but they say that it takes one hour of editing for every one minute that you actually watch. And so that right there is 10 hours of editing. And I like to turn it up by doing some animations or sometimes I'll have costumes and sometimes they can get bigger and bigger and bigger and take many, many, many hours. I quickly realized that I was going to have to devote all of my time to this. And so I took a gamble and decided, OK, I'm going to try to do this as a job. And that includes, earning money from doing it. And to do that, you have sponsors and we can talk about that later if you want. But it basically meant a full time job.
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“So it would take about a week to produce a video because you have to think of the idea. Mostly I wrote them, very rarely I spoke off the cuff. And then I had to film myself. I had to edit. I had to do a lot of the sort of back end things on YouTube that actually take a really long time to get a video up and released. And because my release schedule was every week, I would have to start all over the next day. Usually I would release a video on Wednesday, go to the pub, relax and then start all again on Thursday morning.”
That is wild. So you were doing all these positions of not only writing your own script, but acting, directing, editing. Did you have any help at all?
“Yes. I was doing everything, but my husband is just a hilarious person. And so we make each other funnier. We would often sit down and discuss ideas that really helped me get to the point of what I was trying to say. He would even help write scripts. He was my primary help there. Last year, I did have an assistant that helped with a lot of the business management of the channel. But, before that, it was just me.”
Also, I want to just talk about you in front of the camera because you seem like a complete natural. Was this always the case? Did you have prior experience with being in front of the camera?
“I would say two things about that. I didn't have experience being in front of a camera, but like I said, I taught English. And when you are trying to explain English to a non English native speaker, you have to clarify your meaning. There's no room for ums. There's no room for, you know, you know, you know, there you have to be a very clear speaker. So I honed those skills as a teacher. That was probably the single most important thing in making me a good speaker and making me comfortable in front of people. Now, remember, when I'm filming, nobody's there, but it made me more comfortable.”
“The second thing I would say that really made me better on camera is having to edit myself. The first interview I did with another person was my friend Sarah, the owner of Lya Beer Cafe down in Vršovice. I was so interested in what she had to say, and I wanted to make her feel comfortable, so I would affirm everything she said by saying, yeah, totally, I get you, I completely understand. And when I was editing that, it was almost impossible to edit those little ticks out of the footage, and I never again made that mistake. I learned to be quiet when interviewing someone. And so every single time I edited myself, I was able to point out flaws and learn from them.”
Yeah, I find the same thing when doing interviews. You really learn from watching yourself and you learn from your prior mistakes.
So I totally viewed you as a celebrity when I first met you on the street and I was like, that's the funny lady I've been watching now for a few years. Do you often get recognized when walking around?
“I remember that day so clearly when I met you in Riegrovy. That was really cool. Yeah, I do get a lot of people. Just now, someone smiled very big at me and said, hi, Dream Prague on the way here. So that was very nice. People call Prague like one big village. It's kind of a village. And especially when you live in one of the neighborhoods where you circulate and you see the same people. I very frequently get recognized or stopped by viewers.”
Do you have some crazy story of someone from a foreign country stopping you and saying, I know you and I've seen your videos.
“Yes. I was coming home from the gym. So I was not looking my finest and I was just trying to sort of discreetly make it home and this lovely gentleman in a suit stopped me and he had a Spanish accent. He was the ambassador to Argentina. And he said, we in my embassy, we love your videos. We watch them to help us get used to what to expect here. And I was just flattered and completely embarrassed because I was basically wearing gym clothes. That was quite flattering.”
Cool story! So running your YouTube channel can be challenging. What was the hardest aspect for you? And what was the aspect that was perhaps the most rewarding?
“I think the hardest aspect we spoke about is keeping up with the weekly schedule. Now, of course, you're putting your own videos out in the world. You can do whatever schedule you want. But the truth is that YouTube really benefits you and prioritizes your videos if you publish every week. If you don't publish every week, you see a significant drop off of people who even get to see your video. This is how YouTube incentivizes people to constantly create. And I already spoke about the weekly sort of grind. It was just very hard to be creative on a schedule like that. Any creative person knows you kind of have to sit and mull over your ideas and release them when it's right for you. So that was the hardest part.”
You have been doing your videos for five years now and you're taking a little break. Do you see yourself returning to creating some content? Maybe perhaps from a different perspective or a different lens because you have lived here now for 12 years.
“Yeah, I do see myself returning. I think that the reason that I have stopped was because basically it had to be a job or it wasn't going to be anything. Um, and so I had to find other work and I did, and that has pretty much prohibited me from being able to give more than, let's say, five hours a week to it. And like I said, that's really not possible right now. I do think about sort of teaming up with someone that's interested in giving a different perspective because let's be honest, I have been here for almost 13 years now and the things that used to shock me just aren't aren't shocking anymore. In fact, I'm more shocked when I returned to the U.S. So maybe giving other people the ability to share their impressions instead of just projecting what I think about this city and this country might be more interesting.”
I really admire that because you have such a big platform now and you could just continue, but instead you choose to take a break and really do the content creation when you feel like it's fresh and when you also feel like there's that inward spark in you and you want to share it with the other people. So what is the hardest thing, though, about not making these videos now? Because I'm sure you must miss a lot of aspects.
“There's just an incredible high when you make a creation and you put it out into the world and people appreciate it. There's really nothing better than that as a creative person. And, you know, there was one video where there was some meme going around about Kaliningrad actually being Kralovec, which was sort of a Czech joke that this area should actually be part of the Czech Republic. And this meme had a shelf life of about a week. And my husband said, we have to make a video about it. I said, yeah, what are we going to do? So we went to our local pub and we were thinking about it. And he says, I got it, but you're not going to like it. And his idea was costumes and me acting and me doing this whole big production, pretending to be, you know, a Russian living in Kralovec. And it was four straight days. We did nothing but that. It was so intense and so exhausting and so fun. I swear it was four days and it's about a five minute video. And it was one of the most memorable experiences. And I miss that rush.”
What a blast. How much fun! What is the biggest piece of advice you would give someone who's looking to start creating content, especially for Czech people or the expat community?
“When you look at content out there about Prague, about the Czech Republic, you're going to see a lot of trdelník, you're going to see a lot of Old Town Square and some of the basics, which is what strikes people when they first drive the basics. But not everybody can be an honest guide, you know, a very popular YouTuber. They do that very well. What you need to be is the creator of the things that interest you in Prague. If you're really into baked goods that's what you should specialize in. I saw this creator the other day, she's Czech but she focuses on everything Japanese in Prague, she is the specialist of that.”
“I think that was one of my biggest problems, that I knew what would get a lot of eyeballs and that was like - top five crazy things about Czechs!
“But my interests and my passion are politics and history and those were the videos that I'm most proud of even though they didn't get the most views. So if you want to create something about this place and this culture, don't try to be the most popular person that talks about the basic, generic Czech things. Focus on what it is that you're interested in and you will find your viewers.”
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Yeah, I think that's so important being able to find your niche and what you're passionate about. That's such great advice, thank you. Having lived in Prague now for 12 years, what advice would you give to Jen who had just moved here?
“Oh, man the top advice that any expat will tell you is - just start learning Czech! You're just going to have a better time. It's going to deepen your experience. But I would also say, taking the metro or probably the tram is better, out to a stop you've never been to. Get a meal out there, get a beer and then walk home. Learn about the city, don't just say, I moved to Žižkov and all I know is Žižkov. Go and experience the other places.
“In that vein we're right in the center of Europe, and we think I have a vacation, I'm going to Amsterdam, or to Berlin, or to Paris. Instead of that go to Brno, go to Liberec, or Mikulov and get to know the country. And not just Prague because it's taken us a long time to do that. We did all the big international stuff when we arrived. It's always going to be there. But you're living here now. Get to know this country better.”
What is the key thing in making Prague feel like your home?
“Well it's really important to have good friends, and I think there's a tendency, I see this not only amongst my American friends but also my South American friends, people from Ukraine, people from other European countries. They hang out in little packs of their own nationality. And I'm totally guilty of that. If you want to make this feel like home you want to surround yourself with Czechs. You want to reach out to your teacher, maybe to your students, to your neighbors. You want those relationships with the people where this is home. And that will make you feel like you're not just on a study abroad program. It'll make you feel like this is your home too.”
