In Prague as it approaches its second millennium, nothing appears to change faster than the past. The present, of course, has been in a state of agitated flux for a decade. Hardly a week goes by that does not produce a change, often to the baffled indignation of Czechs. These changes range from the very look of long-familiar streets to the language itself, increasingly a prey to slangy neologisms. The restitution of confiscated real estate as well as the incursions of foreign investors have made checkerboards of neighborhoods that were neglected for over half a century. In the neighborhood where we have been living, the nineteenth-century middle-class district called Smíchov, street after street displays the motley mosaic of freshly repainted facades alongside the sooty and crumbling housefronts of those still too indigent to renovate; the effect is incongruous, like seeing debutantes in bright ball gowns amid throngs of disheveled crones. As for ...

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