This piece was originally written in September 2009 for a Travel Writing class.

Mark and Rachel Price are visiting Prague from Birmingham, England. They are standing in front of the famous Nationale-Nederlanden building – known colloquially as the Dancing House – gazing up at its parabolic glass exterior.

“I quite like it, yeah,” Rachel says. “It gives the city a bit of an edge, doesn’t it?”

Mark looks at his wife quizzically.

“I don’t know really,” he says. “I’m not sure that it fits. I feel like that bloke who ate lunch on the Eiffel Tower because it was the only place in Paris he couldn’t see it.”

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It’s been 13 years since the Dancing House was first built along the Vltava, but it remains perhaps the most polarizing building in Prague. Designed in 1992 by Croatian-born Vlado Milunic and Canadian Frank Gehry, the structure received its light-footed moniker from its resemblance to two dancers – Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Since its completion in 1996, the building and its avant-garde design has been argued over by locals and tourists alike.

As Gehry hails from my hometown of Toronto, seeing the ultramodern building for the first time felt like finding a small piece of home. Beyond my national pride, however, another connection to the Dancing House soon began to emerge – one more closely related to the controversy that has always followed it.

While a wonder of contemporary architecture, the Dancing House’s modern exterior sticks out amongst Prague’s medieval skyline like a lightning bolt in the night sky. When people walk by the building – regardless of whether they love it, hate it, or merely accept it – they stare. They stare at its whimsical curvature, with a midsection that appears squeezed into the tightest of corsets. They stare at its wild, eye-popping proportions, which give the precisely strewn windows a three-dimensional quality. But most of all, they stare at it for the simple reason that it is different – a completely alien structure amid a sea of Neo-Gothic façades.

Since arriving in Prague, I’ve encountered similar stares wherever I go – on the Metro, in supermarkets, even at the park. Some of these onlookers have been friendly, some of them cold. But a surprising number simply appear in awe, bewildered by the appearance of a foreigner intruding into their everyday lives, rather than merely sticking to the tourist attractions.

I came to Prague, among other reasons, to experience another culture – to immerse myself in a different way of life. It is only now, though, that I realize that my own differences might keep me from doing so completely. As long as I am “the other” – more of an exhibit than a functioning individual – I will never achieve the level of comfort in Czech society I desire.

So I try. I use my extremely limited Czech to initiate conversation; I explore side streets and neighborhoods and act like I belong; I smile and look right back when people stare.

And yet, no matter how hard I try to fit in, as a Chinese-Canadian in a country that is 95% Czech, I know that in four months I’ll still be exactly what the Dancing House is after 13 years – an outsider whose very presence stirs mixed feelings in those around me.