Klára Vaňková's Reviews > The Thing about Prague: How I gave it all up for a new life in Europe's most eccentric city

At the very beginning I have to say that I like books about people moving into different countries. I’ve read Almost French, Merde and some more. However, this book was different for me – being Czech and living in Prague, I have a pretty good insight of the background Weiss was living in. :)

In general, I must say I enjoyed the book very much. It is well written, engaging, entertaining and for me also very interesting for the reasons stated above.
But… I kept getting annoyed by the author‘s constant complaints about everything and also the way she generalizes her own personal experience into universally valid facts about the Czech republic. The way she blames the communist era for just about anything she doesn’t like is just ludicrous, especially in situations like paying taxes - sorry that the government wants people to do that regularly and not once in 10 years. The visa situation was also kind of debatable – at first she didn’t want to be bothered with it and deputed a clearly incompeten co-worker to take care of it. Then she’s surprised that something went wrong…

I just couldn’t understand why she wants to keep living in a city and country that she hates so much and why she decided to move here in the first place. She - herself - chose the life of an expat over a “cosy” life in her homeland, but it seemed to me as if she didn’t want to accept the expat life at all.

I don’t want to look like an offended Czech. Believe me, I know we are not the nicest and most sympathetic people out there. But I would still recommend reading this book rather AFTER you visit Prague, not before that. :) It might discourage you from your visit and that would not be fair to both Prague and the Czechs. :)