So I just got mugged by four slick little euro punks.
They were not able to get away with anything, one because I knew what was going on, and two … I’m a TIGER!
However, they are some stealthy little jerks.
Anywho, I apologize about some of the mistakes in proper names in last week’s column. The cool bar in the West Village is called “Chumley’s” and of course I meant Eugene O’Neill. I dictated the whole column to my editor while in a taxi, so inevitably something was lost in translation. Though, I’m sure most can be blamed on me.
Prague is a beautiful city. There is a KFC on every corner, not to mention persistent peddlers with carts full of crap.
Nevertheless, it is a beautiful city.
With communism just ending in the late 1980s, and freedom a new found puzzle, the people here seem dreamless. It’s an odd phenomenon. I get the feeling that everyone’s philosophy here is, “You are who you are … and there is nothing you can do about it.”
My first encounter with a native of the Czech Republic was Lada, my window-seat neighbor on the plane ride from New York to Prague.
He was returning home after living and working in Atlanta since 1997. He married a young Czech girl, coincidentally, in Georgia and they have two small children: Michael, who is five; and Michelle, “My Sweetheart” who will soon be three.
Lada had not seen his family in 16 months. This because after Helena, his wife, accompanied by her two children, returned to Czech for two weeks to visit family, was not allowed back into the states because of what Lada called, “Bulls–t immigration.”
He was nervous to see his family after so long, and cried as the Airbus descended onto Prague.
I don’t know what pained me more. The fact that our government would not re-extend a visa to a woman with two American children and a husband legally working in Atlanta, or that someone could possibly love Atlanta so much that he was broken to have to return to “his country.”
I mean I could see loving New York or Key West, but Hotlanta … whatever.
I told him he was better off, and he smiled and said … “yes, I can now drink much on streets.”
Anywho, like I said Prague is wonderful. You can smoke and buy a beer anywhere. I also got to meet Galway Kinnell and Philip Levine, as well as visit the grave of Franz Kafka.
I am attaching a picture proving the Tiger Spirit is alive and well in Prague … you can see it on the Daily Reveille website. If not, I don’t really care.
Next week … Budapest.