A chill wind sets in ...

After our discoveries, Prague felt better.  I still felt suffocated by the buildings and low level skies, but my mood had shifted. I'd found my "parents'" home.  I'd pinched a cobblestone from the street (so that if this beautiful old city ever sinks into a canyon through the pavement, yes, blame it on me).  Now we could enjoy Prague.  I'd stopped gleefully telling every bookseller and t shirt vendor about my father's activities after we'd realised I may as well have told them I was the daughter of Stalin. I don't know the word for recoiled (I could look it up in the erotic dictionary we found) but that's what they did. To conclude the parental saga of how and why and when, Reno and I spent most of a very cold (zero) day at the Communist museum, 150 metres from our hotel door. There, we understood, from a modern perspective, what the Czechs could have felt like, and those feelings were chilling.  Instead of animated discussions on the demerits of various handbags or how much food to pinch from breakfast, we were debating communism and fascists and why the aforementioned Walter Storm had to leave.  Roving Eyed Reno, still attached to his iphone by an umbilical chord, photographed text in the museum which stated that there was a virulent anti-semitic movement around 1951. Ah. The plot thinned.

The pieces were filling in, and my father and mother became more of strangers to me.  And so I could start to let go of the miseries - and mysteries of who or what or really, HOW did I get to who I am.  I didn't have to be part of them ... I could be apart of them - my own person, as they were theirs. It didn't matter where I came from ... it mattered where I was.  I was immensely cheered, and we celebrated with Reno buying me a glorious art deco Bohemian garnet ring, a long slow walk across Charles Bridge and the discovery of a wonderful Indian restaurant where we feasted and warmed up.

So we walked around, hand in hand again.  Up to the castle and down across fields, along river banks and into markets. The temperature had plummeted, and the rain had set in.  One night, close to midnight, we walked up to Wenceslas Square in search of the sausage sellers who had the chicken and lamb versions, and who'd throw on a dollop of sauerkraut to accompany the mustard and ketchup. Beggars with cold grimy fingers and runny noses hung around the stainless steel table at which we stood and ate, whining about being hungry. We swotted them away like flies, which is awfully unkind as they have a way of humiliating themselves and making us more humiliated for not helping them. But giving them anything never helps.  We walked away with a guilty conscience instead and Reno bought a polystyrene cup of boiling mulled wine to cheer himself up.

We sheltered from the rain in the darkened entrance of an art deco building. Reno stood on one side, and I was under the red umbrella on the other.  A man walked past, checked me up and down, gave a funny look, and walked away shaking his head.  Then a woman with long blonde hair, tight leggings, a belt over her jumper, jangling earrings and an umbrella walked towards me, said something in Czech, saw Reno in his corner, and walked away muttering.  When two young men walked towards her, she linked their arms, walked in step, and asked them something in Czech. They laughed, tossed off her arms, and kept walking. Three other similarly clad women approached and sidled up to men ... and gave me dirty looks.  And Reno quizzical ones. 

We quickly realised they were prostitutes.  I told Reno I'd walk ahead of him to see if they'd approach him.  I walked about 100 metres under my umbrella, getting odd looks all the way.  Before I'd even reached the corner, Reno had caught up with me. "Well," I asked, " did they approach you? What did they say?"  "No," he said, puffing, "nothing."  "They won't approach if you're RUNNING! " I laughed. 

On our final night we walked up to the State Opera to watch Carmen: fabulous seats for about $30.  Walked home in the rain, ate a sausage and shooed away a beggar, and left in the morning, after getting a handsome hotel discount for having endured 2 weeks of hammering, knocking and drilling as the hotel was undergoing renovations.  Precious as it may sound, I was glad to leave Prague.  So many people smoked.  I felt an oppression that was hard to shake, and with temperatures below zero, and raining, and spending hours trying to find places that didn't serve pork, it wasn't quite what Venice was. But looking back and seeing some sunny photographs, it was also a fabulous part of our honeymoon.  I have a cobblestone - and some happy photographs - to prove it.

And the knowledge that we're travelling well together, even though the times are not always light, we have the ability to see it at the end of the tunnel.  Hmmm.