We're going back!

"Want to go to Prague?" 

I raised my head from the keyboard, blinked twice, and rustily shifted gears to emerge from the story I'd been writing.

Bill had found a bargain air fare.

He could think of no reason not to go and, just like that, had us revisiting a city we last saw three years ago, when it was grey and wintry. 

This new trip came about just as suddenly as our last, a daunting postretirement odyssey that spanned three months and six countries, also planned by the seat of our pants. When Bill decides something might be a nice idea, and I don’t hesitate, it comes to pass quickly.

This time, the trip will be entirely different, of course. Instead of a week rushing through Prague, we’ll spend a leisurely springtime month in Airbnb superhost Ivana’s cozy flat, from which we'll venture forth, unhurriedly and sanely exploring the city. (Don’t hold me to this. It might not be that sane.)

Our last trip abroad also predated my immersion in a freelance gig writing restaurant news columns and other miscellaneous bits for our local daily. 

I still can't quite believe the newspaper tolerates my cheeky pieces on how to properly eat and pronounce pho and paczki, where to find good chicken gizzards and whole-belly clams, local celebrity chefs (there aren't many), health code violations, and food trucks’ right to thrive. But I'm told that people like them.

The editor who signed me up four years ago claims to have discovered a star. He recently won a Pulitzer Prize and might know what he's talking about, but I suspect him of buttering me up to compensate for my low journalist’s pay. I remain convinced that a sharper pen can replace me in a heartbeat. That's part of what makes me so reluctant to take a breath or a vacation.

But here I am, bravely facing vacation, and rather looking forward to it.

There’s nothing like voluntarily plunging back into a place that you already know well enough to know better. Its fiendishly difficult language bears no resemblance to any Western tongue. Electrical adapters are deceptively simple but incompatible with everything we know. The national dishes are elephantine pork knuckle or beef tartare, there used to be only one laundromat (Andy's), and there are still real gypsies happy to fleece you of your koruna.

We’ve seen the great medieval astronomical clock, Charles Bridge over the Vltava (Smetana’s “The Moldau”), and Prague Castle, as well as stern Slavs and dogs so well behaved that they often trot after their owners leashless.

The first time we visited, it was all so novel that I could be left wide-eyed with delight by a writhing bagful of street performers, a keyboard player wearing a horse’s head that he bashed rhythmically on the keys for emphasis, and gypsies wanding the same giant bubbles that kids chase in tourist squares worldwide.

This time, we’ll live more day to day.

If we’d wanted, we could have rented a no-frills Airbnb “communist concrete box,” or a “retro cabin near to river Sazava,” or a looming grey “1930s house” whose description referred darkly to its owners’ “history.”

Instead, we opted for an apartment with a balcony where Bill may smoke in peace, a coffeemaker that looks much more clever than we are, and a bedroom decked out with the whimsical red-and-black prints that Czechs seem to love as much as their handmade wooden toys. Most important, it has a nearby market and tram stop, wifi and a TV—not that any of the channels will speak English.

Maybe we’ll finally learn what a divadlo and a námĕsti are. They seem to be all over the place.

Will we learn to make coffee in this monster? Stay tuned.

Our Prague apartment's bedroom, whose wall hanging has a stylized astronomical clock.