a short excerpt of a conversation between myself and a czech student of mine, a doctor in her mid-fifties. reminiscing about the not so good ol’ days in the capital. “so, you went to university in prague during the seventies, right?” “yes, i lived there in the late seventies until 1983.” “so you really must have seen the city change over the past few decades. what are the biggest differences between prague then and now?” (thinks) “ohhhhh, it was terrible then!” “terrible? really?”“oh yes. you couldn’t do anything.”“anything?” “really, you couldn’t buy books. they were all in russian [and czech]. there was nothing in the shops. you couldn’t buy toothpaste…