"There are three cities I would like to go to and I will never make it. Though I can do everything to try to get there, in reality I do not make it, I mean it's impossible for me to find myself there in the flesh in the streets in the squares in the roads in the walls bridges towers cathedrals facades courtyards quays rivers and oceans, they are still well guarded. These are the cities I have the most meditated on, lay siege to frequented and run through in dreams in stories in guides I have studied them in dictionaries I have lived in them if not in this life then in another life.

Promised Pragues. You dream of going. You cannot go. What would happen if you went?”

            - Hélène Cixous, "Attacks on the Castle"

            I have been in Prague for one month, ten days, and about seven hours—ample time to concede to recommendations of travel guide books and allow myself to join the swelling masses, pressed tightly between overstuffed fanny-packs and shuttering cameras, to

make pilgrimage to the city’s golden meccas of tourism. Like every other visitor of Prague, I have pushed past the crowds on Charles Bridge, devoured kielbasa in Old Town Square, and admired the dusk-lit silhouette of the Castle as the first street lights flicker on. I have seen the city as a tourist. Yet, as a student, I occupy a more permanent position in Prague than the passing traveler and should (hypothetically/hopefully) forge a more intimate relationship with the city.

            That of course assumes that the City, the capital "C" City ascribed with an unique and active personality, is an intelligible being that permits acquaintance. Nearly an month and a half into my semester in Prague, Cixous’s words echo my growing anxiety. What is the "real" Prague? Can a visitor ever penetrate the interior? Or is she always kept abreast, dazed in a labyrinth of elaborate facades, rebuffed at every entrance with a new sight, a new attraction...