The pulse of the city, like any other living thing, can be heard. Its rhythm marks the city's daily movement. Sounds rise and die, fight for supremacy, and vibrate in harmony as the day progresses. Prague (as one might suspect after spending a night or two in a local pub) is a noisy city. And not in the way that a usual metropolis, say New York City for example, bustles with the sound of commerce, activity flowing in and out of the streets, and taxis honking desperately in traffic. That is to say, that Prague's noise has no purpose. It is not an audible manifestation of the healthy function of the city as capitalist machine, but rather is absurd, nonsensical, and devoid of distinct meaning- a sort of Kaftkaesque din.

As I write this now, three rather heavy set men are digging up the earth buried under the cobblestone street below the window. The persistent clanking of their tools and the sudden buzz of machinery has become a familiar alarm clock. Every morning since my arrival in Prague, I have woken to the work of these men, tried to muffle their noise with a pillow, and cursed them as I lay half-awake for two hours before my first class. 

During the first weeks of construction, I remained optimistic about its swift completion. The project could not realistically take that long, and as bad as the morning's metallic ring of pipes was, the noise made in the afternoon by the church roofer's across the street was infinitely worse. Days passed as the workers made slow progress chasing the pipe down the street, disassembling the cobblestones like a tired jigsaw puzzle as they went. In a measure of self-preservation, I began sleeping in my boyfriend's room, which clear on the other side of the building, was as blissfully quiet as a provincial monastery in the hours of early morning. 

This peace was all too short. The workers, who seemed to pick up pace right after my relocation, had wrapped their way around the building and, as if with a vengeance, established their camp beneath the window of my boyfriend's room. It is here they have drilled into the tough earth, shouted instructions, and banged their tools for the past weeks. According the hotel's concierge, who I have harassed as persistently as the construction has pestered me, Prague's pipes are simply quite old and a small leak requires a great deal of maintenance. While some part of this may be true, it seems to me that the tediously slow pace of construction (speaking generally) reveals a residual communist attitude. Because the opportunity to work was always available, and in fact mandatory, and mobility between occupational positions was fairly limited, Czechs (still speaking generally) failed to develop the kind of self-motivated work ethic so often associated with capitalist societies. The racket of the construction (that still invades my room and thus propels this thought forward) is an empty, meaningless sound of feigned production. So persistent, the sound seems to demand to be heard and recognized as the noise of real work, and yet ironically it is its relentlessness that exposes its farce. 

Sound, more than any other sensory experience, has punctuated my time in Prague. I fall asleep to a Cuban restaurant's vigorous salsa music (out of place, yet wonderful), wake to the piercing cry of drills, and somewhere in between, stir to the slurred songs and boisterous laughs of pub patrons stumbling home. And the first wednesday of every month, the emergency siren sends me dodging beneath a desk or hiding deep under my covers. Echoing and vibrating between the concrete urban surfaces, the siren resounds for four very long minutes. Filling and overwhelming your ears, the sound penetrates deep within you body, vibrating throughout your whole being. While unmistakably a warning of sorts, I spent two alarms cowering in fear before I could find anyone to explain the siren's purpose. Apparently foreign students are not the only Prague residents clueless to its meaning; 47% of Czechs do not know what to do in the case the siren communicates a real emergency instead of its usual test sound (Colonel Ing. Petr Volny from the Department of Crisis Management, http://www.praha.eu/jnp/en/life_in_prague/public_safety/sirens_change_form_time_remains_the_same.html). Praguers are completely unbothered by the alarm and the monthly reminder of possible emergency. They keep walking, strides unbroken, eyes fixed to the ground while tourists and students exchange anxious glances and try in vain to translate the following Czech announcement that presumably communicates whether the siren is but a very realistic drill or an actual state of emergency. To visitors the siren is merely noise, unintelligible and impenetrable noise. And to Czechs, it is the same, merely audible clutter thats ignored, unimportant, and disruptive.