It was the bug’s bad luck to have wandered up the gossamer curtain in our hotel room, just as the early morning sun had revealed its presence like a spotlight from a guard tower.

   “Reid, please kill it, it might be a bedbug,” Carol commanded, as her sleepy, still opening eyes caught sight of the invader immediately.

I was more attuned to the thought of crushing an insect in the city that was home to Kafka’s most famous work, Metamorphosis, than I was contemplating Carol’s summation of the bug’s identity as yet another swipe at my choice of low-rent accommodations. “Sorry, Gregor,” I said, as I knocked it to the floor and crushed it into extinction, “but I can’t allow m’lady to awake from a troubled sleep, now can I?”

The 11:10 to Prague

   To a range of responses generally ranging from the bewildered to the bemused and on to the mildly annoyed, I manfully try to address the host countrymen in their native tongue. I greet them with a bonjour, guten tag or buon giorno. When it’s time for the check, I ask for the l’addition s’il vous plait, die rechnung bitte or ill conto grazie. But all my attempts to address my Czech hosts in their native tongue were met with complete incomprehension. I think it’s the Czech alphabet that’s my problem.