(voorlopig wegens gebrek aan een vertaling, …)

Apologies to non-English speakers for this email in English: translating takes so much time! Here comes the 2nd edition of our private Prague Journal If you expect leasure reading, than click on delete before
even attempting to read )

I ended my last account with Louisa having chicken pox. What I did not mention was that when her head was all sore from the blisters she got also lice. That was a nightmare. She must have brought it from school and while she was scratching her head we thought it was from the chicken pox, but it was lice. Ever tried to treat lice in a head full of blisters? The day Louisa recovered from chicken pox Amélie got it too, that was to be expected. It confined us for another two weeks to the appartement, I was already going nuts.

The day after Amélie recovered Luc went to drop Louisa off at school and in the three minutes before he got back to his car somebody broke into it and stole his laptop with important documents in it, and his wallet with his papers. Then we found out that although the embassy can issue him a new ID, they cannot issue him a duplicate of his driving licence. In Belgium at the city hall they said they cannot do it either because he does not live there any more. And here they cannot do it either because he cannot present any proof he used to have one. Finally we got this sort of paper from Belgium stating he used to have one when the police here says ok, bring it togehter with your residence permit and we shall see. Ups, residence permit? What appears is that DHL omitted to get his papers done, so he has been here basically illegally. And now they cannot even apply for his residence papers because he cannot present any medical insurance card because that was stolen too. So now we are waiting for the medical insurance card in order to be able to apply for residence papers in order to be able to apply for a duplicate of his driving licence. It has been a month already and nothing happens.

And guess what, just a day after this robbery I found a business card tucked at the window shield of our replacement car – it says “call me”, signed by the administrator of the building we live in. This guy claims that our (replacement) car drove into the garage gate at the building, damage of 2000 EUR, and there are witnesses who can testify they saw it and who noted the car plate. While all this time the car was standing in an underground garage at a shopping mall some 5 km away from here. Good lord. There I go, collecting all evidences to prove to the police it was not us, and their witnesses lie.

A day after that, the same little visiting card is tucked at our appartement door (without him knowing it is me again, because the doors have no names on them). so I call him again and he says we are leaking water to the bathroom below us, only as nobody lived there so far nobody noticed. Of course they assume that our washing machine leaked out. It did not. They try to persuade me again to acknowledge it did, while it did not.

The day after I split my eyebrow when opening the car door, which leaves some blood on the upholstery and a permanent scar on my face. And also my own car ends up running without oil because of us not paying attention to the red flickering light, so we cause a permanent damage to the engine. It is still running but its time is counting down, the mechanist says. Lately, when I was driving with both kids in it, all of a sudden we get this cloud coming from the engine, so I got them quickly out waiting for the car to explode. It did not. It was just another failure of the cooling circuit

Finally, to end this account with something cheerful, we have this great forest right in front of our appartement, I cross it by bike when picking Louisa up from school and we spend afternoons there playing at numerous playgrounds. Only yesterday I noticed there was a copy of a newspaper clipping pinned to a bench on each of the playgrounds. It says that there is a huge killer dog hunting on deer in the forest and he woudn´t stop in front of an adult person, let alone a child. It seems to be some AFrican type, used to hunt on lions(!). That really makes one easy when going down to the forest. Should you not hear from me any further news than you know where to look for me – in the crime column of local newspapers :-))

Take care, I hope everything is better with your lives than with ours. But don´t be mislead by this account, we do not despair! Spring is in the air, the zoo in Prague is terrific and fresh sand has just been delivered to the numerous playgrounds in our neighbourhood

Bye,

Radka