Quiet and Dark in Brno
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In Brno, whether its the middle of the day or at night, the city is quiet. You can hear trams and cars pass by, but once they've passed, the quietness surrounds you - the splashes and flashes of fish in a quiet mountain lake on a moon lit night. It is very nice. I think, in the U.S., we are used to the constant droning of tires on a nearby highway, always. We've become immune to it. At night, its very dark, because the streetlights are very dim, as are most lights indoors. When I first got here, it all looked dark and dangerous - a dark street in a foreign land to get mugged on. Even after your reassured, some few times by your colleagues, and you've walked a while in the peace and the quiet, you get used to the idea that it is safe to walk almost anywhere and anytime in either day or in night.
If you walk into the gypsie section east of the Brno Centrum by way of Bratislavska street at night by mistake, you could get robbed, or at worst, beaten up. But, these are truly not certainties. For most times, you could just walk on through. Czechs don't own guns and they can carry knives when they go camping or fishing, but they can't carry them around to pubs or on the streets. The penalties for violence are very severe, but this isn't what prevents the crimes. If it did, you could walk through the gypsie section fine - but, you can't because the penalties for violence do not deter the gypsies. The gypsies have their own separate society and law. Violence in Czech society is prevented by using preventive methods - ergo, the use of the word "preventive"!
The educational system takes it job of creating good citizens very seriously. Its true, you don't see a lot of well off Czechs, but the country tends to spend their money on what counts - on the people. I think being under communist rule made them see this. People were ill treated here, I am told, and to add to the general misery you also had neighbors snitching on other neighbors to the state police. Long lines for everything - bread, toilet paper, shoes. I think that when they were finally free, the Czechs knew that you couldn't really have a nation without happy people in it. Without happy people, what is a nation? So, Czechs have a national educational system, a national healthcare system, and national programs to help people who need the help. "National", as differentiated from "Social" - as in socialistic. One is a definition of a nation investing in itself, and the other is a nation that seeks to control people. People, in general, can be free, happy and govern themselves well, if they have a truly free education both in terms of the content and the cost. Czechs also didn't want long lines and they DID want what the people of the societies of the west were enjoying. So, capitalism enjoys its proper place in the Czech Republic.
Czechs are not loud people, especially at night. In fact, loud noise is banned on the streets either day or night and you can be fined. I think the communist rule effected Czech society in this as well. Making noise attracts attention to yourself and that's something you didn't want to do with the state police watching. I believe, however, that being quiet was probably part of the Czech culture before the communists. Just because the land is so quiet as well. There are just 10 million people in the country.
One interesting note, there is a lot of graffiti around. Unfortunately, the young Czechs are taking the worst parts of pop culture to heart: violence, hip hop, noise, graffiti, and drugs. After becoming free from communism, the Czech's young are succumbing to what the young everywhere are.