THE THING ABOUT PRAGUE...

In 2007, Rachael Weiss decided to go and live permanently in her ancestral city, Prague. She lasted three years.

Rachael’s first memoir, Me, Myself & Prague, told the story of her first stint living in Prague. It was an experience she thought would never be repeated but three years later she found herself missing Prague and decided to return for good. The Thing About Prague... is about Rachael’s struggle with the petty bureaucracy and customs of a country that values beer and potatoes above everything else. She is frustrated by her attempts to master a very difficult language (only spoken by 10 million people) and her efforts to engage both socially and romantically with the locals is hilarious. Social embarrassment and mortification rub shoulders with the kind of bureaucratic absurdity that inspired Kafka in former times. Her experiences as a free-wheeling Aussie girl trying to make her way in a very hidebound country still emerging from the communist era make for a very funny book and Rachael’s warmth and unstoppable sociability make for a wonderful read. Rachael Weiss worked as a secretary before finding her voice and writing Me Myself and Prague in 2008. In Prague she worked as the in-house writer for a hotel but, since the only thing she had to write was the website and the occasional letter to defaulting customers, in reality she was the odd-jobs girl. She supplemented her income by writing horoscopes for a series of obscure suburban and specialist papers and thus feels justified in describing herself as a syndicated columnist.