An Expat's Bag

By Beth Green 

My purse and me in Prague, 2004.

When I lived in the States, my purse was always full of predictable contents: a compact, some keys, a pen, and a tube of lip balm that I was never be able to find when I wanted it.

This year marks the tenth year in a row that I’ve lived abroad, and nothing shows the changes along those ten years better than a look back at what I have chosen to tote along with me. 

Let’s spin back, all the way to 2003 when I moved to the Czech Republic to teach English as a foreign language. Fresh out of the U.S. car culture, I was used to being mere seconds away from a huge metal apparatus that comfortably fit not only anything that didn’t go in my pockets or minute handbag, but boxes and suitcases of gear if need be. I had purses, don’t get me wrong, but they weren’t as functional as I found I would need if I was going to rely on public transport in a European city. 

Those first years in Prague, you’d find in my bag: a travel pass, key to the city’s trams, subway and buses; a stack of home-made Czech language flashcards, bound together by sparkly hair elastics; aspirin, because I’d usually been out at a bar the night before; a Czech dictionary, sometimes even two; the paperback novel du jour; a journal; black and blue pens to lend to students and a green pen for journaling and marking students’ papers; scissors, for cutting up photocopiable activities for English classes; and a photocopy of my passport—just in case. After a year or two, I added a laptop to this portable office. So, as you can imagine, my bag those days was more often a backpack than a cute purse. 

My purse and me in Hainan, China.

In 2006, I moved to China. I continued my backpack habit for the first few months, until I met the local pickpocket. He was an apple-cheeked boy of about 10, watched from afar by a variety of hard-faced “handlers,” who worked an intersection I had to cross to get to school. Used to being on the lookout for pickpockets in Europe, I figured out who he was and what he was about pretty quickly. In a country where most children are in school from early morning till after dark, a little boy by himself on the street caught my eye. Especially a little boy who watched people’s bags and then followed passers-by. I tried to switch to a shoulder bag for safety, but one day I felt like it was just too much strain on my neck, so I dumped everything in a backpack and left the apartment. Halfway across the intersection, I felt the back of my neck prickle. I whirled around, risking collision with the busy commuters crossing with me, and found the little pickpocket boy on my heels, hand still outstretched as he went for the zipper on my backpack. 

“Hey!” I said, too flustered to shout in Mandarin. 

He grinned, spun on his back foot, and trotted to the far side of the intersection just as the light changed. 

After this, I began an obsession that I maintain to the present day—finding a pickpocket-proof purse. At first, though, I decided minimal was better. For my job in China, I no longer had to carry school supplies around with me, and I quickly decided leaving my laptop at home was a good idea. Instead, I found a moderate bag with a cross-the body strap and filled it with: a Chinese dictionary; a second-hand digital camera; multiple packets of tissue paper because bathrooms in China are usually unstocked; hand sanitizer for the same reason; eye drops to combat the air pollution; a map of the city; business cards of local landmark institutions, so if I got lost and couldn’t communicate I’d be able to show one to a taxi driver; all the random VIP cards that shops and restaurants seemed to think I needed; and photocopies of my registration papers and passport—just in case. 

Res-Q-Me, key chain size.

I moved to a more rural area in 2008, where bus travel was quick and frightening. I added a dynamo flashlight; a Res-Q-Me tool that can break vehicle windows and sever seatbelts in case of a crash; and a better, shock-proof, camera to my purse. By now, I was using a succession of utilitarian-but-ugly purses, thinking that maybe pickpockets would pass me by in pursuit of a flashier bag. 

The small PacSafe bag.

Then, in 2009, my partner and I took an 18-month sabbatical to travel Southeast Asia. For the trip, I found a bag purporting to be pickpocket-proof from the PacSafe line. It had a reinforced cord as a strap and wire mesh imbedded in its tiny, wallet-sized, body. It fit a phone, rolled-up cash, a small set of keys, a credit card or two, and a tube of lip balm. Finally, I was back to my U.S.-era purse habits. Everything else went in my big backpack—or got left along the way. 

The big PacSafe bag.

Since then, I’ve become a PacSafe fanatic. I’ve replaced the poor dinged-up wallet-bag I took on my long trip with another of the same model for short trips, and for daily wear have purchased a larger one that has RFID-blocking material, a latching zipper, and a reinforced pocket big enough for my netbook or Kindle. 

Now, ten years on, technology has taken over my bag. Depending on where I’m going, I carry a smartphone (combining camera, mirror, flashlight, dictionary, maps, business cards and flashcards), a Kindle, a journal, tissues, pens of varying colors for multiple purposes (blue and black are needed for immigration forms but I hate to write or plan anything creative unless its in color), my Res-Q-me tool, eye drops, lip balm, and photocopies of my paperwork—just in case. 

What’s in your bag when you travel?

Off the Beaten Track: Poetry in Prague

Paul Deblinger

By Paul Deblinger

Our guest today is Paul Deblinger. He is an American writer who, in addition to poetry, also creates comedy and encaustic paintings. He has lived in the Czech Republic and has traveled widely in Europe.

One of the first things I learned on my adventure in Prague is that the word "ano" means yes. You have to listen very carefully--even though Czechs accent the first syllable, it still sounds like "no."

At first I wondered why everyone was so negative--I heard “no,” after “no” as the answer to the most obvious questions. Then, I learned what “ano“ meant. I had to listen carefully. This influenced my writing, my thinking and my daily life as an ex-pat. Listen, listen, think!

I arrived in Prague in June 2003, to take part in a four-week creative writing program sponsored by Western Michigan University. I was 51...and was one year removed from a minor heart attack that left me with severe anxiety...so much so...that after one year I could basically leave my home only for work. Panic attacks in grocery stores, farmers' markets, restaurants, had driven me back home.

Then I found myself scanning writer's web pages and ran across an ad for the Prague program. To make a long story short....somehow though the fog of anxiety I signed up for the Prague program, quit my job, and packed for a four-week stint away from my couch and my home.

Prague Castle. Photo by DC Pelka

Arriving in Prague, a city I had visited once before in 1991, I was assigned a room in a rather official-looking building (turns out it was Gestapo headquarters during WWII) that was now a dormitory for foreign students. It was a warren-like building with long halls that made you want to drop breadcrumbs to find your way back to your room. I often felt myself wandering in endless circles, passing the same door many times. Like my new-found expertise in listening, I needed to force myself to remember the most mundane details.

I was up early the first morning in Prague. I had arrived on a Friday and classes didn't start until Monday. In the early morning light, Prague looked handsome and inviting. As a hilly, river city Prague has unusual, wonderful urban light, light that has been twisted and turned down narrow streets for a thousand years, has bounced off facades of almost every imaginable type of architecture rolling across the many green parts of the city.

After just a few blocks I noticed something about my body: I could breathe. After my heart attack each breath seemed labored as if it was a signal for bad things to come. The mysterious weight of anxiety had removed itself from my chest and I felt as light and free as...well, I couldn't even remember.

Prague Jewish Quarter. Photo by Beth Green

I continued my walk through Prague, crossing the Vltava River, entering Josefov, the old Jewish Quarter. When I say old, I mean old--the Old-New Synagogue dates to the 12th century. The graves in the Old Jewish Cemetery are piled 12 deep and the grave of Rabbi Lowe, the 15th century mystic who gave the Jewish community its mythical superman, the Golem, is packed with folded-up prayers from moderns Jews asking for eternal favors.

On the wall of the Pinchas Synagogue are the inscribed names of Czech Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. I scanned the wall for names, searching for Deblinger, the way I would search for my name in a phone book in a distant city. To my astonishment my name was on the wall: Yitchak (my Hebrew name) Deblinger from Prague, one of the 80,000 names crammed on the walls of the 600-year-old synagogue.

When I was a kid I imagined there was a me in every country of the world. I could sit for hours and daydream about the "me" in Ghana, France, Japan, Burma. Now I was confronted with a "me" who lived before me and had perished in a horrible way.

As the poetry seminars began I already had a plethora of things to write about....breathing this newly liberating Czech air, discovering “me” from a different era, the wonderful light in this old city. And to compound these visions, my teacher for the first two weeks, Barbara Cully, a writing professor from Arizona, introduced me to lyric poetry, specifically, the motets of the 20th century Italian poet Eugenio Montale:

You know this. I must lose you again and cannot

I am like an old wound every moment,

every cry re-opens, even the salt spray

rising from the piers darkening the Spring

at Sottoripa.

Montale had written the motets, short lyrical poems in a lover's voice addressing a mysterious love interest, in the 30s. They are replete with images from Dante, the Italian Renaissance and even the satiric barbs of T.S. Eliot.

By the time I had encountered Montale (and the lovely motets of Barbara Cully) I had noticed the countdown clock ticking. I would only be in Prague...25 more days, 20 more days, 18 more days. It was a looming sentence.

Prague Old Town Square. Photo by DC Pelka

Then the ignition of an idea. What if I beat the rap...stayed beyond my four-week term. What would happen?

Well, for one thing, my marriage was unlikely to survive, said my wife. And there were many other things to consider, or were there?

I happened to mention to the director of the program my quest for temporary lodging in Prague, and he said he would be sub-letting his family's flat for the 9-month academic term. Voila! Or, perhaps, "Zde!" in Czech.

Deal done.

The transformation started....from tourist...to foreign student...to full-time ex-pat.

Due to the four-week poetry workshops I had amassed dozens of new poems or at least partially written ones, and the program itself gave me a kick in the pants to writing: poems, short stories, essays.

Of course, life doesn't stop because you decide to, at least temporarily, reside in a foreign place: marriage must be dealt with, parents get sick, money starts trickling away, then cascading and your new ex-pat life begins to be fully-formed. A new city and culture and language, new friends, new lovers, new problems: source material for a sheath of poems, a memoir, stories, films or as someone once wrote: "Life is what happens when you're making other plans."

But my heart, which had momentarily failed me, and my writing, which had been on an extended furlough returned: new strong beats, a new voice...a new way of looking at the world...the Old World, at that.

Blood-Red Moon

by Paul Deblinger

On the overnight train to Prague we argue

about the color of the moon.

At the stop at Auschwitz

the moon slips between two buildings on the platform

Photo by Ricardo Wang

and exposes its metaphoric blood-red hue.

Standing in the corridor,

head and neck out the window I call

you to come look at the moon.

You sit twisted, pretzel-like in the compartment,

hand holding a cigarette out the window.

It’s not blood-red, it’s amber, you say—the color of the little ring

you bought in the market in Krakow, the amber stone,

a dome nestled in a swirl of silver.

You hold the ring up to the moon.

Blood-red, I say.

The train pulls out from the station,

passes just meters from the Birkenau killing

fields. The blood-red moon hovers over the camp,

half-lopped off by the earth’s shadow. People

really live here, you ask?

Yet we ride these rails of horror from Prague

to Krakow and back for a hedonistic weekend

while history-jabbing body punches

sway me to numbness.

In the old Jewish Quarter in Krakow I imagined an ancestor,

perhaps a great-grandfather, traveling from Eastern Galicia

for business, for pleasure, or maybe to meet a mistress of his own

to toast the moon with Polish vodka. With the thrill of earthly

pleasures coursing through his veins, he momentarily forgets

the daily miseries, can’t even comprehend the racial future.

And I can’t comprehend my aching

bones; my mundane pain clouding history. In the train’s

cozy compartment I turn to you for comfort

and touch. You don’t touch.

You don’t comfort. I stare again

at the blood-red moon, trying to find

a way to navigate this tortured history around your skin.

The smoke from your cigarette plumes

up and out the window. We stare at each other

with hollow, uncertain eyes. The blood-red moon

rises above the plain.

Icy Days

by Paul Deblinger

This morning, the purple-turning

pink smoke drifts,

gathers across rooftops,

crystallizes the abstract

expression grafted to the panes.

Later, walking to Sinku tears flow again.

In the kavarna I try to talk Czech

but it comes out French. Wine

Photo by Eva McDermott

finally loosens my tongue.

Owl-earred knit hats,

puffy marshmallow coats,

hands jammed way down

in pockets, people stiffly exit the tram.

I’m at ease with high pressure

days, flat smoke, leaden skies sending

icy tears down all the Czech faces.

What in the World

by Paul Deblinger

When I was a kid

I thought there was another me

In every country in the world.

I dreamt about the me in France,

In China, Ghana and Ceylon.

Tonight walking down the narrow

Cobbled streets, I saw you gliding

Down the hill, bouncing, laughing,

With a curly-haired boy half my age.

I followed you down the hill,

Photo by LifeInMegapixels

As you headed into the cinema,

Curly-haired boy in tow.

I ducked into the casino next door,

Tried my luck at 21, lost

Each hand.

Dashed back to the cinema,

Just as the doors flung open

To you and the curly-haired boy.

With the bright city lights smacking you

In the face, I could clearly see it wasn’t you.

And it wasn’t me

Or even the other me

Walking down the cobbled slope

Wondering what in the world

I was doing there thinking of you.

The Austro-Hungarian Jewels and Their Jews

Prague

Traveling through Prague, Vienna, and Budapest earlier this year, I admired the three jewels of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for their rich history and striking architecture. I was also impressed how inevitably intertwined were the local traditions and the Jewish culture. I thought I knew enough from literature and cinema, but it took the locals to have the history really unwrap for me.

Named after the Emperor Josef II who granted the Prague Jews the freedom to engage in commerce and attend state schools, Josefov, the Prague Jewish Quarter, is wedged between the Old Town Square and the Vltava river. The Jewish presence in Prague dates back to the 10^th century; so does the first pogrom, shortly after which Židés gathered within the walled ghetto and eventually gained a self-administration status. Old and new, truths and legends are tightly interwoven here: 20^th century buildings elbow historical temples reconstructed after the Communist regime while tales of Golem, the mystical character created by Rabbi Loew to guard the ghetto’s populace, coexist with WWII survival stories.

An Old Synagogue

As one can expect, Josefov is full of old temples, each of which has a tale to tell. Built in the 13^th century, the Old-New Synagogue is not only the oldest working shul in Europe, but also one of Prague’s original Gothic structures. The Klausen Synagogue is executed in the Baroque style and displays drawings of children from the Terezín concentration camp. The Spanish Synagogue owes its name to its striking Alhambra-like Moorish interior. The High Synagogue’s holds a Jewish Museum shop. The walls of the Pinkas temple display the names of the 77,000 Jewish Czechoslovak victims of the German occupation. But perhaps the most fascinating is the Maisel, named after Mordechai Maisel, a rich Jewish banker and once mayor of Josefov. It hosts an extensive collection of Jewish silver, prints, and books, scrupulously gathered and brought to Prague by the very people determined to erase the “chosen nation” off the face of the earth. There was a method to their madness: The Nazis were planning to establish a Museum of Vanished People in what they called Josefstadt. The entire ghetto was to represent an extermination memorial, but instead it became one of the greatest symbols of Holocaust survival.  


The present Viennese Jewish community is small, but on the brink of the 20^th century, Vienna was one of the most prominent centers of Jewish culture in Europe. In the 13^th century, Emperor Frederick II allowed the wandering nation to have synagogues and hospitals and later designated a special Judenrichter – a judge to arbitrate disputes between Christians and Jews. With the fall of the Hapsburgs, the Jewish population grew – until the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938. Within the next two years, more than 130,000 Jews fled Vienna leaving behind everything they owned while also paying the émigré tax – the price of survival. The remaining 65,000 were deported to concentration camps; barely 2,000 lived. Since 1945, the Jewish culture and society have been gradually recovering – nowadays there are eight Ashkenazi and three Sephardic synagogues.

It is the city of Budapest that has the largest Jewish population in Eastern Europe today, but its Jewish chronicle is a complicated saga of history. In the 14^th century, the wealthy Zsidók participated in the royal ceremonies of King Mattahias, but eventually fell out of favor. They did better under the Ottoman rule and even sided with the Turks during the Austrian conquest, after which barely 500 of them survived. The Hapsburgs had mercurial tolerance for the Jews, alternating between accepting and expelling – until they finally relented on the brink of the 19^th century. From that point on until 1930, the Jews enjoyed peace and prosperity, partaking in the development of the capital and the country’s industrial boom. By WWII, the community grew to more than 200,000 people and boasted 125 temples.

Night view from Intercontinental Budapest. During WWII, its present spot was occupied by a Portuguese embassy that helped Hungarian Jews escape the country.

As Hungary initially sided with the Germans, it wasn’t occupied. About 30,000 Jews were sent to labor camps while others were made to wear yellow badges and eventually forced into a ghetto in 1944. They were supposed to be deported to Germany but were freed by the Red Army. The slot of land where Budapest Intercontinental Hotel overlooks the Danube River today has its own page in the Jewish-Hungarian history. During WWII, it hosted a Portuguese Embassy although in a different, older edifice. The Portuguese “smuggled” the Jews out to the United States, providing them with exit visas and sometimes hiding them in the building.

What a great idea for a book, don’t you think?