The View Heading East

A surreal experience: driving Sunday evening from the West to the East.

Since we hiked the Austrian Alps this past weekend, we drove back to Prague through Germany on Sunday. We passed through the flatlands around Munich to the rolling hills of hops fields in Eastern Germany, past the German rest stops with the automatic cleaning toilets and toward the step back in time at the Czech border. As we drove, the sun set in brilliant tangerine-orange across the Western sky behind us.

We headed toward the darkness, toward the inky hills and rural countryside. Toward the East.
I think for all of us, passing the sprawling, rusting former communist checkpoint at the German-Czech border was chilling. It was just dark enough out to send shivers under the skin. To think of the years from the sixties to the late eighties when countless lives were lost trying to escape to the West at that very border crossing …

Unsettling. We all have thoughts—where are we living? Where is our home? We’re going back?

But, as we stopped to refuel a few kilometers inside the Czech Republic, we remembered. While paying, I inadvertently spoke in German to the cashier. The amazing look of surprise in his eyes! And then, one of our sons said so innocently, “Finally—we can speak Czech. We’re almost home.”
It was at that moment that we realized that yes, we were almost home. To Prague. The former East. A beautiful country with a priceless soul.

Let Freedom Ring …

Departure and Arrival

Not more than three months ago, our family decided to seize the day, take the large risk, and embark on a great new opportunity called moving to Prague, for an expat assignment there with my husband’s job. Weeks of careful planning and work, by our family and with professional assistance, has gone into the process. Moving across the ocean has involved selling our former home and cars, moving our essentials by sea shipment, and storing things that needed to remain in the States (like the piano), and also has included school preparations for our boys, and countless details for every facet of an international move. And after weeks of envisioning how things might actually go, we are here. Yes, we are in Prague.

In all, physically departing our lives of ten years in the United States was not easy. But, the whole process went without a significant glitch. And once we arrived in Europe, our boys have been thrilled to discover many parts of the world are the same—especially pleasing has been the discovery of swimming pools, and ice cream (zmrzlina in Czech), of knowing a simple “please” and “thank you” in several languages really works. Best stated was our oldest son’s proclamation that the world really is smaller than he thought.

Our stay in Berlin brought the discoveries of the infamous Berlin Wall, as well as the Brandenberg Gate or Tor, and many other significant landmarks, including the maze of granite pillars set up in memorial of the Holocaust. Each made their significant impressions on us all, for sure. And then, the swift ride via autobahn through the German countryside and over substantial hills and small mountains down, past checkered fields and picturesque villages of tiled roofed villas, and into the Czech Republic. From a foreigner’s eye, the crossing from Germany into Czech could not have been more pronounced, a very Western-type world embanked by the blink of a border and the just-out-of-communism feeling of a Republic only twenty years old. But the Czech Republic is beautiful, in every way, maybe more because of its new freedom and the old-European ambiance found everywhere.

--taken from my iphone while riding :) through the Czech countryside

Yes, we are here, in our new city, culturally rich Prague, adorned by its Castle shimmering alongside the Vltava River. We are here, and we are grateful. Soon, maybe sooner than we think, we may know this new country as home.

Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers on our behalf. I look forward to sharing our adventures (and misadventures) with you all…

With gratitude, JK