Me, Myself & Prague

Rachael Weiss

Average Rating 9/10 (1 Review)

I tripped across the Charles Bridge just before first light, all alone apart from a sleepy pickpocket just clocking on for the morning shift, my heels clacking on the cobblestones, the early morning sky a beautiful deep blue.

Armed only with a romantic soul and a pressing need to escape her overbearing family, Rachael Weiss heads for Prague in search of her Bohemian roots, with vague plans to write the next great Australian novel and perhaps, just perhaps, fall madly in love with an exotic Czech man with high cheekbones. They make it seem so easy, those other women who write of uprooting themselves from everything they know, crossing the world and forming effortless friendships with strangers, despite not understanding a word they say, while reinventing themselves in beautiful European cities. So it's not surprising that Rachael is completely unprepared for the realities that confront her in her strange new world.

Initially starry-eyed, she quickly has to grapple with perplexing plumbing, extraordinarily rude checkout chicks, and the near-incomprehensible Czech language. In this warm and witty tale of life in a foreign land, Rachael, somewhat to her own surprise, finds herself gradually creating a second home in Prague, complete with an eccentric and unlikely tribe of extended family and friends; and realises along the way that while she's been striving so hard to become someone else, she has inadvertently grown to rather like the person she has always been. Me, Myself & Prague is a sweet and surprising memoir of discovering hope, self, family and friendship, Czech-style.

Review by Jerry Koliha (080309) Rating (9/10)

Review by Jerry Koliha
Rating 9/10
The book is at once uplifting, irresistibly funny, and - in the end - profound. The author's utter honesty and self-deprecating humour usher us into her Prague flat as well as into her innermost feelings and thoughts. Through the author's interactions a picture of the city and its people slowly emerges - warts and all. I couldn't help it but follow her adventures in an alien world (she doesn't speak a word of Czech) with a bated breath, only to be rendered helpless with laughter when turning a mischievously concealed corner. For me, it was a discovery of the year 2008.
Jerry Koliha (8th March 2009)