On Monday morning, I received an email from the United States Embassy in Prague. "There was a gas explosion on Divadelni Street that has damaged a building in the center of the Czech capital, Prague," the email stated. Forty people were injured, including students who were in their dormitories or taking classes at Charles University and FAMU. An hour before I read the email, I was debating about taking photographs around the same area in which the explosion occured. It is interesting how fate works sometimes.
The weather was quite gloomy this week. Though grey clouds clustered throughout the days, there were a lot of exciting events to attend. Tuesday was the traditional celebration of witch burning and when universities vote for their king. Modern witch burnings are joyful gatherings where the main event is watching a witch doll, a substitute for an actual real human accused of being a witch, burn to ashes on a wooden pyre. I am not well informed on the university nomination of a king,
but I do know Allen Ginsberg was the universities' king in 1965. Wednesday was Labour and May Day. May Day is Czech version of Valentines Day; couples make a pilgrimage to the statue of Karel Hynek Mácha on Petřín Hill, to deposit bunches of flowers and make out.
However, the most important event was the naked run at Vermont University back in United States. One of my peers encouraged us to celebrate the event in our own way, which was quite liberating.
