Prague Confessions: With Sander at Prague Central Camp

I switch on the recording. „I would like to say hi to my mom,“ Sander begins. I raise my eyebrows at him before we both burst out laughing. “…’Why am I here?’ I ask myself the same question,” Sander again doesn’t give me an answer, but then he gives it a second thought. “Normally, we go to Žižkovšiška on Sundays, but over the summer they do the jams here in Prague Central Camp. It’s a cozy outdoor place, not too crowded with a nice atmosphere. Why are you here?” He messes around.

After his first Eurotrip, wanderlust had taken over him, and he got into the travellers community. “Nine or ten years ago… when I was still young and happy,” he jokes, “I found out about the existence of CzechSurfing, a CouchSurfing camp in Prague. I took a Eurolines bus from Amsterdam, I booked some cheap hostel in the centre, and arrived in the city for the first time.”

Sander was pacing outside the meet-up place called Hrom do Police on the first night of the Camp. ”I’m always afraid to go somewhere when I don’t know anybody, so I was outside, faking a phone call. Then this French guy walked up to me and said, ‘Is this the CouchSurfing party?’ I said, ‘Yes, it is, I will show you around!’ I took him inside, and I had no clue where the fuck I was, so I was pretending like I knew the whole place”. We take a laughing break.

Since then, he keeps coming back to Prague five or six times a year. 

“Once you get to know someone it snowballs. It’s really easy to make friends here. In Amsterdam, it’s more like – tourists, tourists, tourists, tourists…. When you meet somebody, they will stay for two days and that’s it. There’s a good community in Prague. It’s my second home.”

I wonder if he ever considered moving here. “I thought about it, but to be honest ⁠— no. My cats don’t speak Czech, that’s the main reason,” he pauses for me to absorb the joke. ”I have a cool place in the Netherlands, with a nice little garden. And my mother would kill me if I moved to Prague – she told me. And I’m sure I would become an alcoholic,” he adds jokingly; “Prague moves on while I’m not there, but when I am, there are so many parties. Besides, one year ago I got into politics and I made a commitment to stay at least for three more years.”

Sander acts on behalf of PvdA (Labor party) and GroenLinks in his city council. “Nobody actually told me what this stuff was about, so the first week on the job, I found myself discussing subjects I had no clue about. People were staring at me like, ‘Dude, what the fuck are you saying?’” He smiles. “But now I know my cases and I make decent points. There are about three meetings a week and they are in the evening, so I also work as a manager in teams that organize big sport or film events in the Netherlands. I mostly pick sport events where they wear as little as possible.” I laugh, not sure how much of that statement is true.

Sander used to stay in cheap hostels in the center of Prague before he really knew anyone. 

“In the past few years I’ve been invited by some of my friends to stay at their places. I just came back from a trip to Jordan – Amman, where I was travelling with Nicolas, the French guy that approached me years ago at the CzechSurfing party; and so I’m staying at his place right now.”

“I always tell myself when I’m here that I should wake up early and have an excellent daytime, but the sad truth is that I stay out with friends till five in the morning, and then I sleep during the day. And I promise myself never to drink beer again. And two hours after I wake up, I find myself sitting with friends, drinking beer.” 

“Cloud 9!” 

Sander exclaims without hesitation when I ask him what place in Prague he would recommend to anyone. “I really like fancy places. And Cloud 9 is the rooftop bar of Hilton hotel. I had my birthday party there several years ago.  You don’t go there for the crowd; otherwise it would be called Crowd 9, right…? But you sit there with people you like and enjoy great cocktails. Especially amazing is their signature cocktail with strawberry and pepper.”

Sander’s friends in Prague speak English and that’s the language he uses to get by. “The only Czech I know is metro stops, and tram stops, and whatever is in the supermarket.” “…Lipanská, Táboritská, Národní Třída… ” Sander forces out of himself after I challenge him to name a few. “That was good!“ I comment. “Thank you. Děkuji. Diky, čau,” he answers. “I can barely order a beer without making any mistakes. But I do try. Since I’m a vegetarian, I watch what’s in the products I buy. And I can find the cheese department,” he cracks me up.

“I don’t think we’re that much different – the Netherlands and Czechia.” Sander reflects on his trip to Amman; “In Jordan, I was shocked by the things that were completely different than what I’m used to. People throw their trash on the ground; they mistreat their animals, and that’s always a point of concern for me and makes me angry. When I’m in Prague, I don’t see really big differences. I accept the city as it is. What’s the sense in comparing everything?”

Sander wants to contribute to protecting our environment. 

“I would like to reduce the use of packaging. But when I go to a supermarket, everything is in some kind of material.” I ask if he can see some solution. “No, I see some pol-lution… We are doomed,” he gives a pained laugh. “If you look at continents like Africa or Asia, they just recently started to consume on a big scale and they don’t feel at the moment that they do something wrong when they throw stuff away. It took us in Europe so much time to even think about recycling stuff. I think it will take them 30 years, and maybe then it’s already too late.”

However, Sander doesn’t sit and wait for our extinction.”In two years I wanna go into the national parliament, in the Netherlands, I wanna run for it, I wanna do the elections, and maybe I can make a small change over there.” In the meantime, he wants to visit Prague as often as possible. “Although, I feel guilty about flying. It’s really bad for the nature. But then again, I don’t have a car, I don’t eat meat, and I don’t make children, so I think my footprint on this earth is pretty decent.” 

“A guy just walks in with a huge sausage,” Sander comments when a friend comes with klobasa to join us at the table. “Wow,” I admit when I see the size of it. It’s clear the interview’s over and it’s “jam o’clock”; time to socialize and enjoy the music at the camp.

For more stories go to Interviews.