FOLLOW THE BRIC-A-BRAC ROAD

Imagine stepping into a time capsule of hidden treasures, infused with different tastes and times. A place where the weight of told and untold histories looms in the air. Its contents blur the lines between generations and ages, borders and creeds. This cabinet of curiosities is Bric-a-Brac, an antique shop tucked away in the labyrinth of Prague’s cobblestone streets.

I’m greeted with an overfilled shot glass of ţuică, the traditional Romanian liquor made from plums. It’s often served to welcome strangers into someone’s home. The host (and pourer) in question is Miloš, the gregarious owner of Bric-a-Brac who knows how to make a memorable first impression.

After fleeing his war-torn homeland of Serbia, former Yugoslavia, Miloš reluctantly moved to Prague in 1991, tainted by his gloomy visit a decade earlier. He was surprised by how much it had changed in the wake of revolution—a place now full of life and possibility. He spent his first year selling antique plates on the Charles Bridge until he found a permanent home to house what would become his growing collection.

Today, his shop is a transient hub for wanderers and collectors alike. From the rare antiquity to the common household item, you can find just about anything—wooden tobacco pipes, pendant lamps from the 1958 Brussels World Fair, an antler trophy half mounted on the wall. It’s an invitation to get lost in a seemingly never-ending maze. The kaleidoscope of colors and textures, shapes and sizes, is at once mesmerizing and overwhelming. Your eyes can’t focus on a single item, the way a sunbeam might dance around a room here and there, gilding some object before moving on to something else.

I can feel them whispering to me. *Pick me up. Discover my story. Take me home. *

I scan the shop, watching the objects settling like dust on every available shelf. Some are amusing. Others are thought-provoking. A few too fragile to touch. I realize the object that draws my attention the most is that which is the least hidden, a presence too big to hold in the palm of my hand, a force that unites all of these individual objects under one roof.

Miloš.

We are sitting together at Miloš’ desk, his command center, which feels more like a throne than a checkout counter. He sits honorably yet humbly in his black leather armchair draped in fake tiger skin. The wall behind him is like an inspiration board, a collage of items and ideas: a black-and-white photograph of President Václav Havel, a Serbian bow-stringed instrument called gusle, a twenty-dollar Hong Kong banknote. His desk is covered with even more miscellanea: coins, old maps of Prague, a half-eaten bar of chocolate, a deck of well-worn cards barely held together by an elastic band. Classical music plays from the retro Sony radio behind us. The dolls resting on top of it seem to sway with every soothing note.

It’s chilly, and Miloš gets up to make me a cup of hibiscus tea. But not just any hibiscus tea. As the kettle sings, he places a dried bud of the flowering plant in my hand.

“It’s from Egypt,” he says, with a proud smile.

He serves the tea with thick slices of banana cake, baked by his wife Sonja. The two spontaneously met on the Croatian island of Korčula, where Miloš spent many summers. After one week together, they were inseparable. He speaks about her as if she is his other half. That sense of two souls joining, entangled in an ancient and eternal way.

“Sonja used to write for one of the best magazines in Belgrade,” he says. “One series was about the women behind famous men who helped them become who they were. One was Sophia Tolstoy. Just as there would be no Tolstoy without Sophia, there would be no shop if there was no Sonja.”

His eyes smile.

As I look around the shop, I try to imagine the first chapter of its life as Sonja’s dress shop, which opened in 1993. While women were being fitted by Sonja’s creations, Miloš entertained the bored, waiting husbands with his antique toys. Little did he know that what started as a hobby would become a profession; and more deeply, an identity, one that was given the space—literally and figuratively—to unfold.

And just like that, Bric-a-Brac was born. I would not liken Miloš to Tolstoy, but they clearly shared at least one wise decision in their lives.

I take a sip of the crimson red infusion, sweet and tart to the taste. Miloš adjusts his wire-framed glasses and continues talking passionately, thoughtfully, and in a way that shifts seamlessly from an observation to a recollection.

Our conversation is suddenly interrupted by the sound of a quacking duck. It’s his ring tone. Sonja’s calling.

I take the opportunity to browse the shop, wiggling out of my green metal folding chair, maneuvering around the pile of badminton rackets stacked beneath my feet. I walk past the wall of clocks, all telling different times—a subtle reminder that here, time doesn’t exist. I squeeze my way through the shop’s only narrow path, which has no beginning or end, knocking over a stack of dusty Pilsner Urquell coasters.

Even the most minimalist of humans will be tempted, teased, and tested in Bric-a-Brac. The shop feels like a glass vitrine which you can’t escape. As if you too are put out on display. There are just as many things hanging above you as there are around you. Bronze chandeliers. Gargling gargoyles. Marionettes with leering grins. White figure skates, tied in a bundle by their frayed laces. Even the lightest of objects feel heavy, as if they are holding the weight of someone’s entire universe.

I turn a corner to be greeted by a bronze Buddha statue, seated on a lotus throne in Zen exaltation. Serenading him from the shelf above is a delicate porcelain figurine of a young boy playing the accordion. I hold him in my hand, listening to his music, wondering about his past life.

Who did you belong to? Where were you placed? How did you get here?

When you pick up an object, it reveals itself to you, but it also reveals something about you. It could be a memory that transports you to another time and place. A new insight. A suppressed truth that you didn’t want to acknowledge. A sense of nostalgia for something that you forgot, and a reminder of why you should remember. It may summon your inner child, that innocent curiosity and wild imagination that is so pure when untainted by judgment, explanation, or thoughts about right and wrong. Somehow I feel I can hold a deep and slow conversation with these objects in ways that I can’t with distracted, fast-moving humans today.

I watch customers young and old as they come in and out of the shop, the entrance bells ringing to welcome their new guests. Their eyes widen with delight and fascination, as if they have uncovered an archaeological site, buried under piles of superficial dirt. Are we yearning for something familiar from the past that we are so desperately missing in the present? I don’t know if I have the answer to that question, but it might be hidden somewhere here in Bric-a-Brac.

Some objects have the power to persuade, like the gold-tipped Clio Waldorf Astoria cigarette box whose elegance could convert the most adamant anti-smokers. Coffee and tea aficionados will appreciate the collection of Italian coffee presses and porcelain tea sets. Voracious readers can delight in a library of precariously stacked books—The Case of the Anti-Soviet, perhaps, or a well-thumbed 1935 cookbook from the iconic Grand Hotel Evropa.

I pull out a long walking stick from a stand holding various styles and shapes, all meticulously carved from different types of wood like hickory or oak. Just touching its smooth surface, a little rough around the base edges, one can feel it has witnessed many strolls, a fellow walking companion who you can always lean on for support. I use it to march toward Gandhi, sitting in statue form, with downcast eyes and a contemplative presence that invites a moment of silence. I follow his gaze down to the bust of the Czech composer, Bedřich Smetana, deaf and wistful, as if meandering into a river of longing thoughts for his homeland.

Here, it seems that people and ideas and histories meet that would have never had the chance. They are having a long conversation with each other. Each object tells its own story, but together, they tell a shared story. In dialogue, they illuminate one another, their past lives meeting in the present. And you, the visitor, are here to bear witness to it. A kind of alchemical unfolding. A revelation of new and expanding dimensions.

Miloš is now chatting with a customer interested in an industrial-sized Italian cheese grater, regaling him with a story about the best piece of parmesan he ever had. He clearly satiates the customer’s appetite, writing down the item and price in a worn leather book where he tracks his sales. He pulls out an old backpack with a broken strap, carefully puts the cheese grater in it, closes the zip, and hands it to its new owner.

“Everything here gets recycled.”

Underneath Miloš’ veneer of effortless charisma is someone who loves engaging with people, animated by curiosity, and leavened with a good sense of humor. He can connect with anyone about anything. A natural raconteur.

It’s the end of the day, and time for Miloš to close shop. This means switching off every light-emitting object. Sixty, to be exact. They are hidden in every nook and cranny, in places one would never notice or reach. As the light disappears, I can feel the magic slowly fading away. I wish it wouldn’t. At least for a few moments longer. Just to stay in this suspended state of blissful timelessness, where I don’t need to think about the past or the future. I am just here. Right now. With Miloš and all of his toys. A place to play, imagine, and wonder.

I watch him do his light routine with a sort of buoyancy, that rare quality of someone who is at home in the way he moves. It’s a meditative task that speaks to Bric-a-Brac’s unhurried nature, its ability to make one slow down without even realizing it. You can see it in the way visitors saunter the place, moving about languidly, letting the objects act as their guide, yet seeking no destination.

The shop is a keepsake in and of itself. A feng shui of Miloš’ interior world, expressed outwardly. Organized chaos, compressed into this tiny curious space it calls home.

I think about Miloš and all of his treasures. It is his passion for them that keeps them alive. He is obsessed with the world of things—finding them, studying them, displaying them, rearranging them. He is their keeper, their protector, their interlocutor. He gives them a reason to live, saving them from their inevitable fate as decaying relics of the past, offering hope for a new future.

Bric-a-Brac is not unlike the alabaster sphinx that Miloš brought back from Egypt: enigmatic and impossible to define. Yet even in its mystery, one still feels at home among its odds and ends. A place where anything and everything belongs.