The Start Of A Week-end In Prague

We had a special offer, week-end return to Prague. My son Andrew had, since graduating as a teacher and acquiring two year experience in Cambridge, undergone a species of metamorphosis from reserved and continuously wondering Zimbabwe bush person to a confident citizen of the world at large, ready and eager to experience close up the quality of life in parts of the globe he knew only from print, film and photographs.

I shared his interest, but to a far lesser extent his confidence. My generation, raised in a bush farm in the heart of Africa, to whom the word foreign meant the state just over the border, much like our own, experienced the world through books, magazines, music and imagination. The flight to settle in Britain had been awesome, inspiring, the stuff that dream are made on, equally as inapplicable to normality and therefore occupying the same space in my mind under "interesting but irrelevant".

Now he had bought two tickets to Prague for the week-end and we were approaching Luton airport, with monstrous jetliners parked about as casually as black taxicabs but nowhere near as personal and friendly. I trailed along behind my son, conscious of our role reversal, not wishing it any other way.

International travel is, they told me, very simple. Just follow the signs, obey the instructions, when in doubt ask someone. Not difficult. Anyone can do it.

We read the signs, made for the queue corresponding to our airline tickets and our destination. Things were off to a promising start. Progress was slow but nobody seemed to mind. Two brisk and serious middle-aged men in uniform asked to see our documents, conferred with each other, addressed Andrew, pointing something out in his passport. Low-voiced conversation followed, neutral in tone, regretful but firm. Andrew's papers were out of order. As a resident of El Salvador - where he currently lived and taught at an international school - he required some documentation in addition to his British passport. There was no way around this situation. Rules were rules. We agreed with that. Security was what everyone wanted, top of the list, in the interests of us all. Right. But it meant Andrew couldn't come on the flight. He didn't look like a terrorist, or talk like one. The men in uniform did not ask to search our luggage. They did not exactly smile, but seemed calm and friendly-disposed. I think we all knew Andy was harmless, but rules are rules and security is uppermost, especially in the air.

I prepared to turn and go back, but Andy demurred. The cost of the tickets was not refundable, so why did I not go on alone. Alone? I grew up in the African Bush, for goodness sake. Part of a different era. I can fend for myself in the Bush, walk in it for miles without getting lost; I know the ways of its creatures and feel at home with them. In this technological environment, where everything works by computer, I hardly know which way is up.

But Andrew, like the rest of them, said how simple it is. Follow the signs, etcetera. What well-meaning, kind-hearted folk don't realise, and can't seem to grasp when you tell them, is that the signs are in computer-speak, a foreign tongue with which I am not conversant. And yet I did want to see Prague. As an historic venue, from what I have read, few other cities in Europe cane match it. Also it would cut Andy's losses. A week-end in Prague, board and lodging pre-paid - why not? Just follow the signs. Ask. Mentally re-phrase replies into non-electronic language, and there you are. Simple. Passengers in their thousands travel every day. Nothing to it. What was the worst that could go wrong - no, don't go down that road. Carpe diem. Right. I shook hands with Andrew my son in case I never saw him again, and turned for the queue marked "Passengers Only".


Photo Credit
Cities of the World Prague Czech Republic
The Prague Cemetery
Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich