back from Prague

Just got back from Prague. Though I was only gone nine days, it felt like months. Already on the plane to Europe I felt homesick. I wanted to pull out the photo album I compiled for friends and start looking through it, but stopped myself, feeling pathetic.

Once in Prague, I was able to relax and enjoy my time alone, though I felt rather strange... naked without Jonah.

As always, the trip was a whirlwind, mostly comprised of socializing with friends and family, catching a couple of cultural events, and rushing through Prague to buy presents and snap photos, which always embarasses me because acting like a tourist in my birth town is a bit awkward.

Most of the time was spent with my grandmother whose eightieth birthday is coming up in the spring. We always have such a great time together. She treated me to a concert - a sixty-some piece orchestra playing Britten, Berlioz and Dvorak, of which Dvorak was of course my "unbiased" favorite.

I also saw my dad and his wife and met my two cousins' fresh babies, the only two offspring carrying the family name so far. The story of how these two came about is actually quite amuzing - a bit like a fairy tale. My uncle - the king in the story, also a severe hypochondriac who believes every day is his last, was getting tired of waiting for grandchildren, so he declared one day that he promises to bestow one million crowns on the son that brings him his first grandchild. Sure enough, my two cousins got to work and just a few short months later, both announced their girlfriends were pregnant. The rest is history.

The old, the young, the dead... all of those were on my list of family members to visit. Thus, my grandmother and I made our usual pilgrimages to place a flower on my grandfather's and stone on my paternal grandmother's grave. On the way, we placed a small stone on the grave of Franz Kafka as well.

My dad was super busy juggling his two careers - one as an actor and theater director, the other - a recent development- as a Senator. He invited me to a staged reading of Vaclav Havel's lesser known play Spiklenci (or Conspirators). My dad cast and directed the reading. He also read the stage directions and a couple of bit parts. Some of the actors were, by Czech standards, quite well-known personalities. After the performance, my dad made me pose for pictures with him and the ex-president. I had my camera with me, but was too shy to take it out and request a snapshot for my collection of curiosities. You will just have to take my word for it - I was there.

In addition to family, I made my rounds and got together with most of my favorite friends my generation and my parents' generation. The highlight was a reunion I organized of my grade school classmates. Ten of us were there (from a class of about 28). We finished grade school together in 1987, and most of the people I saw at the get-together I hadn't seen in twenty years!

Though I'm not a great fan of the television, I watched the news nearly every day, trying to get a sense of what my birthland is currently going trough. One day I read the newspaper as well. The entire first section was taken up mostly by huge articles and exposes on the corruption of the government. Shadily bought shares, government money spent on delux apartments and fancy cars... in short, the topic de jour seems to be the misuse of power of those in the government. I also learned that I had temporarily switched places with the current Czech president, who, while I was visiting the Czech Republic, was attending the United Nations conference in New York, apparently giving scandalous speeches that deny the fact that global warming is occurring at an alarming and dangerous rate and that it is indeed largely caused by humans. He and Bush are the only heads of state still in denial, I sware.

Now I'm back. It's great to be with my boys again.

If you are curious, I put together the best pics from my trip and posted them here.