Say hello to your uncle!

In Prague, my “Dobri Dan” is like a morning roll call from the blue: “I am mine! Everything is fine". And in Moscow "Hello" it looks like a tow's attempt to talk with a penguin

Once my friend, jumping out onto the balcony, began to witness an accident that happened right in front of her house: one case drove into the ass of the other Czech car. The screech of the brakes, roar, the boom in the software, at the intersection, all the movement rises. And both gloomy Czechs get out of their cars, clap their doors loudly, head to each other - and a girlfriend sees how their lips move, saying: “Dobri Dan!” - And their heads nod affably.

And this is our whole Prague life in miniature, you don’t need to know anything else.
I remember that even before the Czech exam to obtain permanent residence, everyone instructed me in chorus: the right way to pass perfectly is to shove as many polite formulas and “curtains” as possible into your “test letter”! By the way, it worked.

And so in everything. You sit in line to wait for the doctor - “Dobr Dan” of the whole line, and the line echoing. You go to the playground - "Dobri Dan, Orthodox." You leave - the loud "Walker", so that it is already reached to the sandbox. I was going to ask on the street how to get to the library? “Dobr Dan” first tell me, and then ask the questions. It is impossible, impossible, unimaginably missing a greeting also to: watchmen, guards, sellers, neighbors at a table in a cafe.

It is impossible to miss a greeting to watch, guards, sellers, neighbors at a table in a cafe

Of course, in this kingdom of friendliness there are gaps. Once, food from a supermarket came to us, and my invested child immediately rushed from somewhere in the bowels of the apartment and yelled at the courier: “Dobry Dan !!!” And in response, the courier cried and said that here, and Czech children never greet him, and he is sad because of this. That is, someone does not greet. But you think about it: the courier is very sad due to the fact that the children in the apartments do not run out with him.

I personally retrained rapidly and with enthusiasm. Now, coming to Moscow, I loudly greet all the oncoming ones. And I enjoy the effect. No, the majority greet in response. But often after a small puzzled hitch. And some in fright throw their heads and just look with fear. Some do not pay attention at all. And my beloved, this is when they answer a sort of special Moscow manner - it is clear that the lips move, but no sound is heard. The man seemed to say hello, but as it were. I remember I did the same. Because, what if you died? What if "Hello!" It wasn’t told to you at all, and you, as a fool, have already answered? Here is a shame!

And it cannot be said that in Moscow people are poorly brought up. On the contrary, the Moscow “Sheptons” often have an excellent education, an intelligent family and read Kant in the original, and the polite Czechs work with sellers of socks in the subway, and all their leisure consists of evening gatherings with beer.

Probably the matter is in different paradigms of life, I thought. Moscow is a metropolis, according to official figures, 12 million live in it. And in the Czech Republic, the largest city is Prague, and 1.2 million live in it.

And this difference in scale is 10 times transmitted to the entire structure of the city. Prague of a petty granist: social groups inside her are small, and each person can cover them with their minds without any problems.

View from Vysegrad; My portrait; View from the window of the House of Friends Photo: From Personal Archive

Compare: here are Moscow sixteen-story buildings with eight apartments on the same floor-but typical Prague five-story buildings for three or four apartments on each. Of course, in the second case, you are more likely to know all the neighbors, maybe even by names.

Here are the faceless supermarkets on the third transport - but Czech shops and beer, which stand in their place for decades, and their own owners work in them, with whom you are joking about the weather and plans for the evening. Prague in many ways - as if one of those old books about the past in which everyone goes to the same groceryman, tailor and greenhouse, and in the morning on the boulevards, everyone bows to each other. Such a cozy world.

Prague - as if one of those old books about the past in which everyone goes to the same groceryman

But the matter is not only in the size of the city. Say, Yekaterinburg. 1.4 million people live in Yekaterinburg, almost like in Prague, but with greetings and responsiveness there is a catastrophe at all, friends say.

The disunity of people arises not only for technical reasons, it is some kind of internal. No, of course, people everywhere inevitably gather in groups, this is our biological need: to create a “life circle” of loved ones and acquaintances around themselves, which gives us a sense of security.

The whole difference is that in Prague of communication there are not only inside small social groups, but also between them. All people in the city one way or another feel like one nation, a single organism. They have more in common than differences.

Why does it work? Well, for example, in Prague there is much less social inequality, and the amplitude of the gap between the rich and the poor is much less. Roading party in closed clubs does not rattle here, huge jeeps do not drive, monstrous houses are not being built, they do not saw the money for the repair of roads right in front of the amazed citizens.

The cult of wealth and dust is not accepted into the eyes. The "crazy dough" is completely not visible. I remember how amazed, finding a secret wasteland on a hill 10 minutes on foot from the Prague City. Such a magical green piece of useless territory with bushes, from where an enchanting look opens. It's how to find a wasteland right behind Mokhovaya Street. I could not understand why at least something was built here? This is a golden site, so gold that in Moscow they would have stumbled for it, and there would have been some expensive residential complex for a long time. And the Czechs on this beautiful hill walking dogs in the summer, and in winter they bring dirty snow on dump trucks.

Or, not far from my house stood a supermarket. Right at the intersection, in the heart of the transport interchange, in one of the key points of the city. When the supermarket suddenly began to be demolished, acquaintances gloomily predicted a multi -storey shopping center in its place. And this completely filed in my picture of the world. And what did you put? The faculty of robotics and cybernetics put! Moreover, the house was not demolished, it was only cleaned from the inside, and a new building was economically designed on the basis of the Ostov.

Paradoxically, all this also somehow affects friendliness. When the presumption of the guilt of all around them is not justified, then centripetal forces suddenly defeated the centrifugal. In Moscow, different social groups and clusters, it seems, are not even trying to mix among themselves. This is a completely waste of energy and time. I’m going in the subway and I understand that there are so many differences between, for example, by me and the two “guests of the capital” on the opposite chairs that we exist as if in parallel realities. And I probably also be scared if they think with me joyfully to say hello.

It turns out that a simple greeting can mean completely different things. In Prague, my “Dobri Dan” is a morning roll call from the blue, such a routine message: “My I, mine! Everything is in order ”, which is happy to be accepted.

In Moscow, my "hello" is an invasion, uninvited imposed on my intimacy, like a titmisting of a title to tie a conversation with a penguin. And I - like a faceless minibus flying by: we will not see each other, why greet me?

emigration