("Krnov is paradise.")

If you hitchhike past toadstool hills of trees naked in the cold, and you come to a new town and go to a discotech in that town, and the discotech plays only funk music like James Brown or else grungy-anthem Czech national music you know the words to, and practically everyone dances, and they dance well, and you're visiting a 24-year-old skateboarder/trumpet-player/fellow-teacher who inflates his cheeks and swings his arms around bossily, and his blond friend Alesh from the army smiles like he inhaled some brain-cell-killing drug while he pushes his shirt-ripping body through an imaginary ocean on the dance floor, and the girls are friendly, like twenty-five-year-old Martina whose soft blonde hair and positive face float with baby-aged vitality as she tells you about her singing days in the choir, and pettite Vlast'a lets down her black pigtails so she can stalk and rock and bang her way around the room, and tiny Vera with an enormous spray of dark spooky hair blowing down her back dances the slow songs with you, and this goes on all night, then you may have found paradise. If only one of the two girls you tried kissing on the night - with their white faces glowing - had agreed, or better yet both of them ...
     The only other thing I'm going to say right now is that my Czech language abilities are getting quite good. I've finished reading two kids' books: "Honzikova Cesta" (Honza's Travels) and "Povídání o Pejskovi a Kocicce" (Story-Telling about Dog and Cat). The language sounds a bit like a typewriter when spoken; there's one difficult new letter, like a Spanish rolling "r" but deeper in the throat so it sounds like a rolling "j." (Try practicing that!) It's similar to Polish, and I could communicate last weekend when a Polish couple drove me from the town of Krnov. They even invited me to visit them some time.

peace and paradise, Modern O.

Thanks to Elias; Tadeusz & Tavonja Domagaka; and Ludek for the rides!
Much thanks to Libor, Marcela, & Hugo for the place to stay!