Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, we were posted to Prague. I had a sort of proto-blog back then, which I had backed up on a hard drive that subsequently fried itself. For years, I thought those journal entries were lost for good, but I just found them using the Wayback Machine!

I’ve been going through them this week, reminiscing about the days when my rugrats were still cute, and we all had a sense of wonder about living in Europe. These posts are now archived here.

Things I learned while reading through my old journal.

I have never, ever liked winter. In fact, I showed pretty clear signs of winter blues our first winter in Prague. And Eastern Europe was a tough adjustment for me. But we had many weird and wonderful experiences there. My memories of other, much more difficult posts were also clearly fresher back then.

Old people in Central Europe have been grumpy for a very long time. They also really like throwing off their kit in warm(ish) weather.

I was always pretty skeptical about Hapsburg bling. In fact, I displayed some rather socialist tendencies when confronted with it for the first time, which have not entirely faded since.

Austrian food is much better than Czech food–at least circa 2001. But grocery shopping in either country hasn’t changed very much.

9/11 was a transformative experience for the Foreign Service as well as in the larger expatriate community. Nothing has ever really been the same since. Even reading my own post on the subject was a bit difficult. Still, it was nice to remember the days when people still liked us.

What a long, strange trip it has been!