Back from Prague

Hi friends... we're back from a lovely time in Prague, meeting my wonderful publisher there and giving some talks to my readers...

But I have to say, Prague really made a deep impression on me. And not particularly because it's such a beautiful city... Yes it's easy to see why everyone uses it as a movie set!

What made the biggest impression on me was the realization that the people living there haven't been free for a very long time. My publisher and her friends told us a lot about how it was to grow up in a country that wasn't free. I mean can you imagine how that must be? Not to be able to travel. Not to be able to go where you want and do what you want. Not to be able to speak out freely. It's a hair-raising thought...

For us who live in the West, freedom is something we take for granted. We just have it. But the people in Prague and the rest of Eastern Europe - they didn't have freedom until recently. My publisher told us the most amazing stories about growing up there...

And when you think about it, before the Soviet Union occupied the Czech Republic there were the Germans and the Second World War and all those horrors. You can certainly still feel that energy. It's hard to explain, but it's there in the faces of the older generation... and in the streets, for example in the old Jewish ghetto in the center of Prague.  It really made a deep impression on me.

Thank God we are FREE!