Precerpt from In with the East WInd: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life - Czechoslovakia: First Trip - Making the Acquaintance of Praha with Svata
Making the Acquaintance of Praha with Svata Although I was staying at the hotel, I spent a lot of my free time with Svata, the sister of one of the instructors who worked for me back in California. “She speaks near-native Russian,” the instructor assured about her sister. That gave me the encouragement needed to make the phone call once I was in Prague. My Russian is near-native, and my Czech was just emerging. Clearly, then we would be able to communicate. We were indeed able to communicate—in Czech, which I was learning quite rapidly on this trip, thanks to the State Publishing House experience, swapping hotel rooms daily with the help of the maids, and Ja’s pulling me into the wild life of the literati and their highly erudite language. As it turned out, Svata did not speak Russian at all except for a few broken phrases that were similar to Czech. The phone call turned immediately into Czech, and, since the contact had been made, I felt compelled to follow through...