In the preface of his book The Penitent, I.B. Singer relates a story that supposedly happened to him at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. "I know we would eventually meet here," a stranger told him when he was about to pray. "How could you know?" the writer asked. "All Jews come here and because I am here every day, it was obvious we would run into each other."
Actually, there is a lot to it. My experience is that you cannot walk Emek Refaim in Jerusalem (at any time of the day) without meeting at least 2 friends :-) However, I want to argue that the same is true about my birthtown. Everybody comes to Prague. My guest room has already seen dozens of friends that pass through the town and I´ve spend hours drinking tea in my favorite Cafe Louvre with visitors that decided to stay elswhere during their stay or had only a couple of minutes to see me. The last of my friends that came to visit so far was Esther Jilovsky, my friend from the time I studied in Britain.
We had to postpone our meeting 3 times as she went down with flu the moment she crossed the border of this country, but we managed to meet in the end.
It was a very pleasant meeting and I am anxious to find out what is the next country we shall meet in in the future. (She is a passionate traveller - last year we missed each other by a couple of days in Jerusalem, but we managed to meet 2 month later in Warshaw.)
As for other news - my self-study of French has been rather lame. I am very cross with myself.
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