Malostranská

There's a small bronze plaque beneath a statue showing the water level of the 2002 floods. The level is just above the escalator, so every time I come here I imagine sinking beneath the murky swollen waters of the Vltava. Perhaps this fantasy is to compensate for the fact I never experienced the floods first hand.

Something else I almost always do when I'm here is check the exchange rates that flash above the exchange office at the station. I do it so automatically that I'm no longer sure why. I don't need to change any money. Perhaps, the only way to deal with this info-pollution it is to mindlessly absorb it like other toxins.

I did these things on Friday but this Friday wasn't an ordinary day. I was there to meet a friend I hadn't seen for thirteen years. As I sank in the imaginary waters, possible conversation were racing up in the dark currents. There was a slight knot in my stomach. We had been writing messages for the past few weeks and both of us had been cheerfully forthcoming. Still in the flesh it could be different. I stepped on to the platform and wondered where I would stand.

The disembarking crowds meant standing by the entrance / exit was impossible. I decided on the far end of the platform where no-one goes and where I invited quick stares from the passengers. The imaginary waters parted and were replaced by phantasmal security guards asking why I was there. The answer was as innocuous in truth as in fantasy. I was waiting for someone. I started watching the real people.

The station was strangely deserted. I'm so accustomed to being here in the tightly packed crowd which clogs at the escalator's base and being squeezed into the long human sausage on our way out that I felt like I was somewhere else, an alien place of older fantasies, reinforced by the dimpled metal, a simple fantasy, the hangar of some great space bound city sized craft. I think this nonsense is to deeply ingrained.

In this atypical serenity, the escalators ran as though projected on a screen, soundless and flat. The people who come off them have yet to become real. Back there they were silent and two-dimensional like the escalators. With the first scuff of their shoes, they become solid and real. Many disappeared as quickly as they arrived. Some stared in confusion at the sign with the stations deciding which platform to take.

The system here is quite simple. There is a sign with all the stations for that line. At whatever station you're at, there will be two arrows, one pointing left the other right. The arrows indicate the stations the train will travel to from the platform in the same direction. While I stood there, about five different groups of people became quite confused and continued to study the sign in bewilderment as to what they were meant to do.

One group of four actually conferred by the metro map, as though knowing the plan of the city would make the correct platform to choose more obvious. In the end one of the women pointed to one of the platforms and impatiently directed her friends to it. I figured this was something that got the best of most tourists until a Czech family had similar problems.

My phone beeped. I got a message from her. She was on the bus from the airport. Thirteen years. Maybe we had exhausted our topics over the Internet. Perhaps I had changed too much. I was ashamed about the weight I had put on. She'd notice. Would she comment?

Every train I watched expectantly, long before it was possible for her to be on board any of them. I wondered what she would think of my life here? Would she and G. get a long? Though no conceivable reason existed, people sometimes simply didn't click. The awkward crunch of incompatibility has often echoed when my different social circles have intersected.

But I was excited. Thirteen years. This would be the only friend from school to have visit me here. The first to meet my wife. The first to see my flat. The first to get a glimpse of my new life here. It wasn't all dread.

Vanessa saw me before I saw her. “Ryan,” she called as she came through the arches from the platform. Before the arrival I wondered how we would greet. I've become quite reserved in recent years. I offer a hand rather than a cheek. What would be appropriate in this time? She already had her hands out wide. I was glad. I was glad that the decision had been made. More I was glad for the embrace of an old friend.

“You haven't changed a bit,” she said. I thanked her but wondered if it could be true. I told her she was looking well and she did. She sounded more Australian than I remembered – but all my Australian friends do. There was a few moments as we inarticulately rubbed and half-hugged, perhaps checking the other was there.

“So why did you come here?” she asked.

For a split second I thought she meant the train station. I quickly realized she meant the country.

“Do you remember when Michael came back from Germany?” I said.

She looked at me a little confused.

“And he had all those photos of Prague. When I saw them I knew I had to come here.”

There were other reasons. I was curious to see the city of Kafka, Hašek and Kundera. I wanted to see the place where Prague Spring played and where Ginsberg was named “Král Majáles” . I had at some point years ago developed a crush on a girl who lived here but who I no longer see. But all of this is too much information for one escalator ride. Vanessa at least knows Michael and that was the starting point.

We were briefly deciding what to do. Vanessa had been here ten years ago. I could see how eager she was to explore and to retrace former journeys. I still a little confused about the afternoon's agenda. It is always the same when I have a guest. Do they want to see the touristy things? Do they just want to get a drink? Do they want some experience, which no one else has had and which they can stick up on FaceBook

I suggested taking her to the Waldstein Gardens. From there I could show her where I work. The gardens were closed, so we had to take the long way around the block. The topics fired back and forth and changed when a name, place or some event reminded us of one of the thousand questions we had for each other. I couldn't recall if this was how it had always been. Vanessa was someone it was always easy and enjoyable to talk to. She had a term for that, D and M, a deep and meaningful. Sessions like that would go into the night, though I doubt I was as open as I was now. It had to be the frisson of years. We discussed where we had traveled. I was impressed how much she had done. Much more of Europe than I had. The Middle East as well. I asked about her son. She is the first friend from school to become a mother, a parent. I told her this and she laughed. It is funny, funny that something so natural is now considered an amusing accident, or something out of character.

At the time I didn't mention that was how I saw it. In the days after I would see how unfair this was. I only recalled that like everyone at the time she wasn't that keen on kids. People change, but I seemed not to have. Physically or personally. For so long, I imagined I had abandoned my old self somewhere else. There had been so many experiences and revelations which had lead up to this person now – this person who moved here. I am just what people see.

We reach the end of the block, and though we went on, I will stop here.