Prague Confessions: With Kasia at Riegráče – Part 1

Kasia smiles and waves at me walking down from the top of Riegrovy sady, a guitar on her back. We hug in front of Mlíkárna and head inside to order a round of drinks. “Let’s take them to the park,” I suggest. Kasia picks a spot and unfolds a blanket there for us. “I don’t come here often because it is far from where I live,” she informs me. “But I’m here for this expat jam session organized every Friday during the summer. It’s a beautiful park, very popular among expats; you can hear English everywhere.”

“Living abroad happened by coincidence. It was an adventure.”

Prague’s been Kasia’s home for eight years. “I didn’t know much about Czech Republic before I came here. I had been in Prague once, I liked it but I never thought I’d live here.” However, Kasia met a Czech guy during her university studies in Poland. “And since I had no plan for my future whatsoever, I decided to give it a try and follow my boyfriend after I finished my master’s.” 

The next step after moving in together was to find a job. “I worked at a vegan bakery, I made money as a living statue… I also worked at a bar at Náplavka, preparing baked potatoes with sauce. And grilling sausages, which was unfortunate for me, since I’m a vegetarian. But I had no choice. They didn’t let me pour the beer because in the Czech Republic the beer is sacred, and some person fresh from a university, with no experience, is not qualified to do it.” Kasia sports her sarcasm; “They tried to teach me, but in the end they decided I was not good enough.” I laugh as she pretends to sound bitter about it.  

“I assumed that English was my biggest asset”

After five months of part-time experiences, Kasia found an opening for a full-time position with a manufacturer of hand-made Czech products. “I expected my job interview to be in English because it was for a role of sales assistant in a shop that was close to the Charles Bridge. But it was all in Czech. I mixed all languages possible just to express myself. It was really bad; plus, they might have thought that I was seriously ill. I came to the interview directly from my shift at the bakery and a thin layer of dough dried on my hand. It started to peel off and looked like I had leprosy. Anyway, a few days later they called I got it.”

“It was a lot of stress and tears but it gave me a lot”

Kasia had to learn Czech quickly on the job. “If I had the choice I’d do it step by step, slowly, because that’s how I like to do things,” she reflects. “Czech is very difficult. Even if the words are similar to Polish, they mean very often something else. And you have to put a lot of energy in the right accent, especially with a lot of consonants in a row. Like zmrzlina or prší,” Kasia relaxes when the words are safely out of her mouth.

“I don’t know the proper forms and sometimes I don’t realize that some word isn’t polite enough or that it is even vulgar.” Kasia explains she learnt the language from the street and continues with an anecdote. “We sold wooden ducks wrapped in cellophane in the shop. Once I was looking for them while the shop was full of Czech customers. I shouted at my colleague – Kde jsou ty kachny co se je-bali do celofánu? – It was just wrong word order and accent.” She laughs. “So instead of saying the ducks were wrapped in cellophane, I said they were fucking in cellophane. My colleague took me to the back of the shop and explained to me that it was wrong.”

“I have never dreamt about any particular job”

After three years, the work became monotonous for Kasia. “They also started to push us in active sale which I don’t like. I thought it would be good to move on. Get a new experience. But I had no idea where to go.“ 

Then one evening she met a girl at a party. “She told me that she is quitting her job in a technical customer support and I could give her my CV. It was quite late in the night. I was in a good mood, very social and I think she got the idea that I’m such an easy going, communicative person…” Kasia had never worked on the phone, in an office or in a technical job. “I’m not a technical person. I thought, no way.” 

But the determination to try something new won in the end. “The money was also significantly better and I felt tired standing ten hours a day on my feet in the shop.” Kasia lists other pros. “So I was learning again everything on the spot. In the first half a year, I wanted to quit every day. There were too many new things and nobody who would train me. I was waiting for my colleagues to help me but they didn’t have time. I really felt useless, like a total burden; like I shouldn’t be there. But I survived.”

Currently, Kasia has been working for three years in technical customer support with Olympus. “I lived with a girl that was quitting her job there and I replaced her. So I would say that I was very lucky with my jobs. Every time something appeared and I went for it and in the end it was a valuable experience that helped me afterwards.”

“It’s difficult to have a vision of what you should do to be happy, and I see many women are lost.” 

In 2015 Kasia split up with the guy she moved to Prague for. “After the break-up, I decided to stay here because I had nothing to go back to; I didn’t build any adult life in Poland. My choices were going back to my parents, who live in a village where there is no work, or going to some big Polish city to be completely alone and start everything from scratch.”

“It’s not that easy to make friends when you’re over thirty. Especially when you are an expat.” Kasia elaborates, “At this age people usually already have families, they have their own friends and they don’t have time to make new ones. When you’re over thirty it’s the time when you start to think about settling down, if you haven’t already. The most burning question for me lately is – what is the alternative for not having family and kids?”

“I have more or less fulfilling job which gives me financial security, I have a boyfriend… But I face this universal feeling that we should do something with our lives. But nobody knows what exactly. Some people move abroad, some people change jobs, some people change their relationship. I started a band. I started to learn guitar… But will it be enough? Once you decide you won’t have those kids. You will just not have them forever…”

Kasia turns over possible solutions and outcomes and then concludes “I think that when we get old there will be many women outside of this institution of family or marriage and there will be some alternatives. Scary is that they aren’t that common right now.”

“Music is a good tool to make connections and keep yourself young inside”

But let’s come back to how playing guitar serves as an alternative for having kids, according to Kasia. “I figured that it could be a way to connect with people when I’m older. That I’d be a cool grandma going to jams. I would wear colourful clothes and be surrounded by younger people. I think in my generation it won’t be weird. And music is very egalitarian. If you’re good, nobody judges if you are attractive. Unless, of course, you want to sleep with a boy that is twenty years old,” she grins. “You never know…”

“I think my biggest asset is that I can be likable and social and create a good atmosphere, and guitar fits perfectly in this picture. I never had higher ambitions. It’s probably bad according to nowadays standards…” She shrugs her shoulders. “But I’m following the words of my parents – do whatever you want that makes you happy… Which turned out to be more difficult than I thought… But I think it’s better to be free and to choose for yourself even if it’s hard, and when you make a mistake, you can only blame yourself.”

“It’s important to experience new things and get out of your comfort zone”

The topic of freedom of expression is close to Kasia’s heart. “I wanna encourage people to do what they like. Even if they think they aren’t good enough, if they are just trying something out and aren’t sure. Many people don’t do anything because they are scared they would seem ridiculous to someone. I believe that to express yourself in a creative way is important for any person.”

“And I experienced how important it is when people support you, even if you’re not a promising artist. But you still like what you do, you want to make some progress and it brings you happiness. So whenever some friend wants to show and share something they are doing, I wanna be there and participate.” She demonstrates that by sitting there with me, giving me an interview. “It is important to take care of your friends in general. It’s not easy to make new ones… And also the more history you have with someone, the more interesting it is and you can see how your lives change together.”

The sun keeps hiding behind the clouds, but once it lits the park again I ask Kasia if I could take a photo of her. “Of course,” she smiles, and poses patiently. “I like this one!” I exclaim. “Then I trust you,” she surprises me. “Don’t you wanna see it?” She glances at my camera and nods. Then I point at her glass; “Do you wanna get another one?” Kasia gets up, “This one is on me.” She returns from Mlíkárna in a minute and continues with her story…

Read what Kasia thinks about the Czech people and culture, and what she recommends to see or do in Prague – Prague Confessions: With Kasia at Riegráče – Part 2.