Letter from Prague | All stories

I returned to Prague this past weekend after a three-week tour of the eastern seaboard of the United States. It began with a class reunion weekend in Washington, D.C., where I spent my "formative years." As I haven't yet gone bald or grown fat, I was more than a little curious to see who had. Call it: Revenge of the Nerd.

I don't know how Czech folk music makes you feel but it certainly gives me goose bumps...not because I don't like it but on the contrary, I LOVE it. A few nights ago, a friend, who's a tour manager here in Prague took me to a folklore night on the outskirts of the city that's held just for tourists and I was taken back in time to when I was a little girl and spent New Year's Eve at my grandmother's.

A major debate has broken out in the last few days about what language is appropriate in the Czech public service media. In a weekly Czech Radio satirical program, which parodies the well-known format of the political interview, one of the show's protagonists the actress, Ester Kocickova, compared communists to pigs.

It's fifty-five years ago this week that one of the most grotesque show-trials in Stalinist Czechoslovakia began, a trial that exposed the cruelty of the regime, but also revealed the true face of heroism.

No other Czech hockey player has gotten as much attention as Jaromir Jagr and that was once again true - for good reason - at this year's Ice Hockey World Championship in Vienna. Jagr - at 33 - is still a major force in Czech hockey, a shark on the ice you can not take your eyes off for a second. Criticised as a poor team captain a few years ago, Jagr has come of age as a player and this year contributed greatly to the Czech team's successful run. He did so not only through fast skating and precision passing, but simply by staying on. A mangled

I recently heard a Czech driver complain "if everything in this country worked like our tow away services we'd be 25 years ahead of Switzerland". I knew what he was talking about. On my way to work every morning I see the police in action - progressing steadily down the street, taking pictures of licence plates and then pointing out one vehicle after another to the tow away truck driver. Those who don't get towed away get the Canadian boot. Despite this, the next morning the no-parking area is full of parked cars again.

I still remember vividly my first day at school. I was four-and-a-half and - because this was England - I was dressed in shorts, a tie, that later became very chewed, and a green cap with a picture of a windmill on it. In fact the windmill itself - that stood at the other end of the village green - had been demolished the year before by an unimaginative farmer - and it also wasn't long before my windmill cap disappeared too.

Having lived in one of the grey prefab housing estates on the outskirts of Prague for most of my life, I continue to be amazed at how much history surrounds me now that I have moved closer to the centre. The buildings in Vinohrady, the district where I live and work, are in fact only around a hundred years old but the last century has been crammed with events which have left their marks everywhere.

"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is timeless American coming-of-age novel and a richly-plotted narrative of three generations in a poor but proud family, offering a detailed, unsentimental portrait of urban life at the beginning of the 20th century. Brooklyn, of course, is one of the five boroughs that together make up New York City.

When we heard that the pope was dead, my housemate Olena and I wanted to go to church and light a candle. In we ventured from the suburbs to find ourselves some suitable holy location. Olena knew of a cloister in central Prague, but when we got there, only the adjoining 'cloister restaurant' was open. We forewent the appeal of a refreshing ice tea and trekked onwards.