“Thank you Rome, You make us live and feel again, A new person”. So Antonello Venditti sang many years ago, and what was a love song to his city then became a trans-generational anthem in the following decades. Now, I don’t want Romans and Romanists, and I am surrounded by it being first and foremost a Roman from Rome, but today I would like to try to slightly modify Venditti’s text to sing my thanks to another city, another capital: Prague.
You see, I think I have now understood that travel for me, in addition to being a “natural movement of the soul”, is often also a real thaumaturgical moment, a moment in which, when I feel I have hit rock bottom, I understand that I can only go up. And the best way to get the courage and the breath to go back up, for me, is to travel. And so it was this time too.
Leaving Rome with its usual lights and its recent darks, I decided to really give myself a gift by taking a plane and running away from everything that Rome represents for me right now, i.e. a complex chiaroscuro which I have yet to fully understand.
And I decided to do it by giving myself the luxury of having one of those company by my side that is good for the soul, the ones that bring out a smile, a moment of escape, right at the exact moment when your head would tend to go somewhere else.
And so I’m back in Prague. Here I am again because it is not the first time, but Prague, a bit like my Rome, has such a powerful and explosive charm that it never gives you the sense of “already seen”. Starè Mesto, the Astronomical Clock, the Charles Bridge, the Castle. And then Malà Strana and the Vysehrad Fortress. I don’t even remember the times I’ve seen them yet, I assure you, these days in Prague, I felt part of those thousands of tourists who were there with me, but for the first time. Amazed and fascinated, I was seduced once again by the charm of this timeless city which, not satisfied with the beauty and fame built over the centuries, offers me a new experience each time capable of raising the bar once again. my well-being.
This time in particular, the novelty was the sauna in beer, an almost total immersion (physical and not just drinking) in beer which seems to have positive effects on our body as well as on our mood.
It was a short vacation, but, as they say in these cases, also quite intense and, I must admit, that having spent it in pleasant company gave a greater flavor to everything. Arrived in Prague bruised I feel I have returned with a greater awareness of myself, I feel I can turn the page, I feel I have a blank sheet of paper in my hands to write.
Contradicting my historical habit of traveling alone this time I accompanied myself with chats and smiles that made these few days in Prague memorable. One of those situations where, while you’re there on the plane on the way back, you’re already thinking about how to do it again, maybe in a different destination but with the same mood, and maybe the same company. As they say in football jargon (and here the aforementioned Venditti returns overbearingly), “you don’t change a winning team”.
Thank you for this short intoxicated with magic dear Prague. It wasn’t the first time, it won’t be the last. We will see you again very soon.
