Shhhhhh...they're sleeping...

The Czech Republic is filled with sleepy little towns. Places where the pace barely qualifies as walking and it seems if nobody has anywhere to go. The residue of this lazy...errr...leisurely atmosphere is most obvious to outsiders when it comes time to eat. Apparently, there isn't a true Czech equivalent to "fast food" out in the country. Without any elaborate ordering, I've managed to be in a group that has held up our tour bus twice due to slow service. Maybe it is due to the remenants of communism, lack of staffing, or unprioritization of foreigners, it is hard to say. Anywho, you can count on a tour hour lunch in most places--even if you did just order the soup of the day.

Though these towns take their time at most everything, there are other similarities--A central town square for meeting and markets, a towering statue whose meaning has faded with time, a large tower for surveying and protecting the land, a church that in modern times sees little use, and several blocks of houses and shops on the perimeter fading into the countryside. Each one following the same general structure, with just a slightly different flavor. This divergence is usually because of some unique claim to fame such as a theatre, castle, or mine--but these are mostly relics of the past.

Perhaps these towns seem to have nothing but time, because it is the passing of time that they depend on.

Their main attraction is their history, therefore they never seem in a rush to get anywhere new. After their town's heyday, they never really fully recovered. Instead, they resign to a slower pace, slower economy, and slower attitude--merely maintaining the past for people to peer into. It is quaint, yet subtly a bit sad. Usually without a modern-day industry, they host tourists and remain somewhat stagnant in present times because their existence seems dependent on the past.

It is probably much more complicated than that, but it is so surprising to me that a place's purpose two, three, seven hundred years ago still affects so intimately their present state. It is fascinating. While in America we slap a placard onto any house built before 1940, here every building seems to date before the 1800s. Beneath many of the baroque facades, are other Renaissance or Gothic faces from even earlier.

I wonder what it would be like to live in such a town. Would I go to college? What would my parents do? How much money would I have? What would my opportunities be? Who would I marry?

I guess I'll never know.