Scents of Prague

Transcript

One of my sons recently moved to Prague in the Czech Republic. He uses all of his senses as he describes his experiences. For example, recently he wrote these words:

It must be part of my learning style, or maybe it's that way with everyone: understanding gets deeper when one learns with the whole body and not just in the head.

There's a certain smell to Prague, a faint indescribable scent to the city, that smells of autumn now but also seems to evoke unique correspondences of feelings and vague imagery. This kind of visceral reaction is hard to put into words, but on several occasions I've wandered along evening streets thinking how Franz Kafka or Frederic Chopin used to walk these same streets, and I imagined I felt the same ancient perfumery of the night air that they must have felt, a mixture of the exudation of local plants and flowers after rain, the sweat of human beings, the smell of soil and dirt, cobblestones and buildings, maybe a little salty air from the Mediterranean or dry dust from Russia, whichever way the wind comes from... Of course now there is the exhaust from automobiles, smell of asphalt, distant coal power plants and such, modern smells, but I think it's very possible that I've caught a waft of the Prague air that's distinct from anywhere else. (230 words)