This city is frustrating and beautiful in so many ways.   I could cry at its amazingness.  Loved, loved, loved our tour guide, Slyvie, and even forgave everyone for their political talk, for assuming everyone else thought like them.  People talk of world travels and having open minds.  Contradictions everywhere.  On one end of the political spectrum most keep their mouths shut otherwise viewed as pariahs, against everything and everyone, stuck in middle America thinking only of ourselves, gobbling up our lives in greedy gulps.

I just listen, liking the chatter of their voices as we sip the 50% proof brandy with an unpronounceable name in the Prague Hilton, so different I imagine from where I am staying, this hotel lounge where we three gather after our tour–Adam and Lindsay and me.  I am tempted to go to her room –as Lindsay graciously suggests when I need to use a bathroom in the cocktail lounge –“free” for guests of the Hilton but no w.c. in this fancy lounge. Instead, I roam the hallway on the 8th floor and duck into the w.c. reserved for the maids and people who clean the rooms, see our lives scattered about, our dirty towels on the floor.  I make my way back to the table where I find another aperitif that has less of a kickback than the first.  I am buzzed and high with the wonder of it all.