Prague Journal

Sunday, March 20, 2005.

Officially, today is the first day of spring. And, actually, it looks like spring: the sun is out and crocuses are starting to poke their leaves out of the ground. It’s still fairly cold, but warmer temperatures are predicted over the next few days.
We went with Matt to the airport at 11:00, which we thought was plenty of time to get to the gate for his 12:35 flight to New York. But there were two Czech airlines flights to New York scheduled to leave five minutes apart, one to Newark and the other to JFK, and only three check-in windows, so the line was over an hour long. By the time Matt checked in it was after noon. He raced to the gate, through passport control, to another long line at security. Fortunately, the flight was delayed 15 minutes, so he and his bags did board the plane. He arrived in Newark at 3:01 pm, but it took another two hours to get to Wesleyan, first by train to Grand Central Station, then by bus to New Haven, and then by taxi to Middletown.
In the meantime, some 300 people set out on a peace march to protest against the U.S. policies in Iraq from Prague’s Wenceslas Square to the U.S. embassy, where they handed a petition to the embassy personnel, addressed to U.S. President George Bush and the U.S. administration. The petition, signed by about 200 people and read in Czech, English and Arabic, appealed to the U.S. authorities to stop murdering, humiliating and arresting unarmed civilians. They chanted slogans like “Who is George Bush? He is a terrorist,” “Long Live Iraq,” “Viva Palestina,” “No More War,” and “Not a Soul for Bush.” Outside the embassy compound were tens of police in bullet-proof vests and the traffic in Prague’s center was closed for the march.
Our day was not so intense. Rick and I went shopping, did laundry and a bit of house-cleaning, and spent some time getting caught up on projects that had been neglected over the last two weeks.

posted by JWinn @ 9:27 PM