Transition, tiles and difficult choices
Since I started working at Radio Prague as a reporter, I have used the phrases "before the fall of communism" and "after the fall of communism" countless times. And I hate them. Each time I say it I feel I shouldn't look back so often, I shouldn't constantly compare things to what they were like before 1989. It's more than fourteen years ago, and I am still using November 1989 as a point of reference.
But despite my aforementioned aversion to comparing what life was like before and after 1989, I'm going to make one such comparison in my Letter from Prague today.
I am renovating my bathroom. I have taken down the ancient hospital-like cracked tiles, and now I need to choose new ones and have them laid. Buying new things for one's flat sounds like the fun part of any renovation. It is fun for me - I like shopping and browsing through home improvement magazines. It's the variety on the market that's bringing me down.
There are Czech tiles, imported tiles, ceramic tiles, floor tiles, wall tiles, mosaic tiles, bathroom tiles, kitchen tiles, fake marble tiles, fake granite tiles, pale coloured tiles, brightly coloured tiles, cheap tiles, expensive tiles, hundreds and hundreds of different designs. I just cannot decide.
I remember back in the 1980s, shortly before the fall of communism (see I've said it again) my parents decided to buy new tiles for the kitchen. A major problem at that time. A friend of a friend told them then that another friend, a tile-shop manager, had some imported Spanish tiles in store and he would keep them "under the counter" for us, as the popular phrase went then. I remember going by car with them across Prague and then my father carrying funky looking boxes of tiles. How happy we were that they got them, how proud we felt, even though they were ordinary grey tiles!
After a year or so they started falling off the wall one by one, because the cement was bad quality and anyway they were floor tiles, as we later found out. But that feeling of happiness when we got them was worth the later troubles.
Today I'm agonising over the multitudes of tiles on offer and I know that whatever I choose - I'm bound to have doubts about my choice the next day. But that's the responsibility that goes hand in hand with freedom of choice. And that's something I believe the whole country is still slowly and painfully learning. For some people it is still difficult to understand that finally being able to buy a fast car doesn't mean they're allowed to break the speed limit.
That brings me back to what I said at the beginning. It is not time yet to stop looking back, to stop referring to the fall of communism as an important milestone. Everything is still changing. Transition still continues, no matter how many different types of tiles are on offer.
