Ex-pats find Prague lifestyle appealing

By DEBORAH BLOCK
School of Communication
University of Miami

PRAGUE— Between the beautiful architecture and cheap beer that keeps tourists coming to Prague in droves, many ex-pats have found it difficult to find a reason to leave.

Robert Polo, also known as “Dr. Bob,” a DJ on Radio Expres, is a prime example. He came to Prague in 1994 for a week-long holiday and, 10 years later, he is still here.

“I visited 40 other countries throughout the world before coming here and nothing compared to this,” he said.

Polo, 40, is originally from New York, and moved to Jupiter, Fla., as a teen. Since then, he had lived in various parts of Florida as a radio personality, leaving the Florida Keys for Prague.

Polo acclimated to the Czech culture quickly.

“I hung around a few ex-pat bars, but ventured into the Czech world because I didn’t come here to hang out with ex-pats. I realized that the only thing I had in common with them was the language.”

Language was never much of a problem for Polo.

“People were anxious to speak English, so it was fairly easy to get around,” he said. “But I realized that my lack of Czech language isolated me from 99 percent of the people, so through baptism by fire I learned Czech. I started with bar Czech, then girl Czech, then taxi Czech, then restaurant Czech.”

Now Polo knows enough Czech to hold a decent conversation and, while his grammar and syntax may not be perfect, he rarely has problems being understood. In fact, nearly all of Polo’s friends are Czech.

Jarrod Epps, 34, is fluent in Czech after living in Prague since 1986, although a great majority of his friends are ex-pats. This is in part because Epps was preparing to move to the Czech Republic from Virginia by taking a year of Czech lessons and continued taking lessons once he arrived in Prague.

Epps came to Prague for professional reasons and, until a year and a half ago, was running two businesses.

“I was bored in the States and there was not much opportunity for entrepreneurship,” he said. “I was going to work my way up the corporate ladder and I didn’t want to. And I saw what was happening with jobs in America.”

Now Epps has sold both of his businesses to work as a business development director for a recruitment company called Connect 2 Development.

The job market was also a factor in Paul Dovner’s decision to move to Prague.

“Originally I wasn't sure how long I would stay,” he said. “It really depended upon the employment situation and what kind of salary I could achieve, as I didn't want to work here as an English teacher as so many people do on a low wage”

Dovener, 34, moved to Prague from the UK to be a technical support supervisor for a major Japanese camera manufacturer 18 months ago, after four years of visiting on a regular basis. He also runs a website called Expats Café for people to meet and discuss issues that come up for ex-pats in Prague, which is much like popular ex-pat Web sites expats.cz and Prague.tv.

“I started Expats Café because the owner of expats.cz was putting too many restrictions on what could and couldn’t be said on his site. Therefore, when he banned a friend of mine for making a half serious/half funny comment I just went home after work and knocked it up in a couple of hours. It was never meant as a rival to expats.cz, more so just an alternative where people can use it to do whatever they want as long as they don’t put racist/illegal comments on there,” he said.

While some ex-pats use the Web to connect to others, the Prague lifestyle that keeps ex-pats living there does not include spending hours in front of a computer.

“Generally, Prague has a more relaxed lifestyle and attitude than in the UK, the pace of life is much slower and less stressful even in my position at work,” Dovener said.

Epps agrees.

“The lifestyle here is better than in the States,” he said, “because you have personal freedom, and the freedom of choice is reflected back into people’s attitudes and the social atmosphere. People don’t go home after work and watch TV here. You develop the art of conversation.”

Epps attributes this atmosphere to the fall of communism in 1989.

“What you find is that people are so wary of falling back into an oppressive regime that they won’t let it happen,” he said. “People break out and there is more free thinking. They are less trustful of the government. People in the States trust the government too much. It is amazing what they have done in four years in terms of changing people’s rights.”

Polo concurs, but after a two-year holiday around the rest of Central Europe starting in 1996, he began to realize that Prague could be even better.

“Czech people weren’t as tolerant as I thought and they weren’t progressing with their freedoms. They weren’t taking advantage of their freedoms as well as they could have. In Poland and Budapest there seemed to be a more lively business environment, with more investment coming into those places though they didn’t seem to have anything more to offer than the Czechs,” Polo said.

Epps explained the personal freedoms Czechs have, saying, “Police are actually helpful instead of trying to arrest everyone. There is a feeling of living in a community where things are developing that people are more concerned with getting things done than telling people what to do. In the States people are bored so they attach to other people’s lives.”

Dovener believes that the Prague way of life is superior to that in England as well.

“Put simply the quality of life is better than in England. Even people I know on a relatively low salary achieve better living conditions here than they do back at home,” he said.

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