Prague, Again

I went to Prague once, on a school trip in 2005. Someone handed me burning absinth and I drank it because everyone was laughing. I remember the noise more than anything—the city felt loud and warm and slightly dangerous, the way cities do when you’re young. There was this girl Hannah who danced with two guys at the same time in what was supposedly Europe’s biggest club. I believed it. Still don’t know if it was true.

The Electronic Beats Festival is there on May 5th. Grimes is playing. Mike Skinner, The Whitest Boy Alive, Woodkid—people I actually want to see. So I’m going back to Prague.

You go somewhere once and it stays in your head as a feeling, not a place. Seven years later you think maybe you can go back and get that feeling again, or at least understand what it was. The streets will be the same and different. Grimes will be somewhere in the city, I’ll be somewhere else, and that’s probably how it should be. At least there’s a reason to go now besides young nostalgia and burning absinth.