In a world optimised for visibility, the rarest thing left is something made for its own sake.

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I was in Prague last week and it was a trip I was longing to go for the past few months.

I last visited the country in 2017 and it was one of my most memorable trip. It was my first solo trip and as a student who was determined to save every penny possible, I couchsurfed with 3 different hosts in the country.

My travel mostly revolves around two things - Food & History. I love going on walking tours to learn about the history of the place but also explore what the local cuisine has to offer.

And not often do you see one pastry dominating the tourist tastebuds like the Trdelnik in Prague.

Trdelnik or the chimney cake is pastry made from dough wrapped around a stick and grilled, resulting in a crispy exterior and soft interior, coated in sugar.

Every street in the old town would have a Trdelnik store and most places also serve this with Ice-cream or other toppings inside this.

On my first visit in 2017, almost every local and guide I met detested the Trdelnik. They argued it wasn’t Czech at all - a poor representation of their culture. The pastry, originally Hungarian, only became popular in Prague in the 1990s.

They would instead suggest to try Kolace (pronounced as Ko-latch), a round pastry with sweet fillings like poppy seed, plum jam, or cheese. Though not as fancy or photogenic as the Trdelnik, the locals love Kolace for what it is.

I had three places starred on Google Maps in the old town that served Kolace the last time and I was so looking forward to taste it again.

But to my surprise, all of these places were marked as permanently closed. I checked online and the current reality is what the Czechs feared the most.

There is simply no incentive to start a Kolace store in the Old town anymore.

A Trdelnik shop in the old town where tourists wander makes approximately €1.5 million per month. A normal Trdelnik with no fillings is sold anywhere between €4-6 while the one filled with chocolate or ice-cream is sold at €7-10.

On the contrary, a Kolace from a local bakery with any sort of filling does not exceed €3. The sole Kolace shop we found was almost at the edge of the tourist district. Blink and you will miss it.

And I see this loss of originality in a lot of content online too.

When I started creating on Youtube, it was purely as a form of expression. My video was my curation and creation. I did it not to gain followers but just to express my views in a format that I found challenging.

But once you start looking at how to improve those metrics, you end up playing a different game.

You create for attention rather than expression. Algorithms reward retention, not depth.

The more we optimise for visibility, the more we risk diluting what made us valuable in the first place.

But there is definitely a Silver lining. The Kolace shop in the border of the old town might look like an outlier today. But it certainly keeps the soul of Prague intact.

Locals love the shop and tourists who want to look beyond the touristy treats certainly find their way to the place.

I truly believe that when the world is filled with easily replicable & perfect AI content, people will crave for what’s imperfect, original, and human.

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I hope you enjoyed this week's version. See you next week.

Best wishes,

Nimalan.