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Long expected and prepared caller school with Vic Ceder that at least I was looking forward to as a kid started in April 2010. It should have been a fantastic week and at the beginning nobody had an idea that this would really be 14 interesting days for our family. Vic flew in on Thursday April 4 at 5:30 pm, at the time when Medvedev was flying out and Obama stayed at the Castle and then at the US embassy. Because of it the police closed the roundabout and Europe Street.
I did not want to risk anything and started for the airport three hours ahead of time and went through Kralupy. The trip took an hour and was completely without problems. Side effect of this trip is the knowledge that next time when we go to the airport in a rush hour, we should go through Kralupy. This will guarantee our arrival time. It takes at least an hour to go through Prague in a rush hour, sometimes more.
Vic’s airplane landed ten minutes early and everything went fine, so Vic really showed up in the arrivals at 5:30 pm. He did not recognize me for the first few seconds, since he remembered me with more hair :-)
On the way back we had a lively talk in which I tried to prepare Vic for the things to come. I well understood that some school participants will try one joke after another, so I tried to explain our national character. Unbelievable thing was that I was helped by a story that happened a day before in connection with the presidents’ visit. The Loreta Square was completely empty, no cars in sight, FBI sharpshooters on the roofs with their Russian counterparts, everybody waiting for the car convoy, and all of the sudden there were some surveyors, who decided to take advantage of car absence, coming to the intersection to make measurements. Police wanted to kick them out, but they could not, since they had a valid permit. This can happen only in this country. When I was telling this to Vic, he understood where he got to, and I surprisingly had a feeling that he started liking it.
Otherwise we did not do much on this Thursday. He was tired and hungry after the 24 hour flight. Basically he would just rest, but then he saw DVD with MacGyver show on my desk and we had entertainment right away.
Friday before lunch we went downtown. We started on Wenceslas Square, went through Old Town Square, and across Charles Bridge all the way to the Castle. We went through the Castle and gardens, but we did not visit the Cathedral – it was closed. So far all our visitors had enough after this walk, not so Vic. When we presented him a choice to go home or see some more of sights, he picked up the sights. It made sense, since according to the original plan he only had one day for the Prague sightseeing. So we continued to Petřín Lookout Tower, where he went up all the stairs to the top and then back down. Then he really had enough, so we took the cable car down and went home. Then in the evening we watched MacGyver and Walker, The Texas Ranger. He did not know him! Would you believe it?
Not all was so rosy on Friday. Lenka went to doctor’s with little Robin and the doctor said that he needed to eat more - be breast fed more, and also fed on top of that. So we decided that Lenka will stay home with him over the weekend, and if the check up goes well on Monday, they will catch up with us then.
