Dan Brown in Town

Coincidentally, Dan Brown’s latest book, The Secret of Secrets, just released this month, is based in Prague. I bought an English language copy (surprisingly, it was less expensive than the Czech language version) and read it in five days, in time to finish it before a big book tour event held in Prague. I didn’t want there to be any spoilers, haha. It’s an engaging read, and it took me longer to get through it than it would have otherwise because I kept looking up events and places described in the book. I appreciate how the destinations and background histories are real, and there’s even a Prague city map on the inside covers of the English language book showing the locations of the action in the story! I felt connected to this story because I was familiar with many locations, and I could even read some of the Czech quotes.

Prague is famous for being medieval Europe’s capital of magic, mysticism, and alchemy, so it truly is a perfect setting for The Secret of Secrets. Earlier this year I bought the book shown below on the left called Secret Prague. It’s all about lesser-known sights around Prague, and until I began reading it, I hadn’t realized that its focus is on historical alchemical places all over the city.

Dan has visited Prague several times before, and he even gave his five favorite locations in the city to the NYT. He visited on September 18 for a book tour stop in a fancy events hall in Prague with well over a thousand fans of the author, including me and a friend. We purchased the cheap standing tickets, but someone my friend knew called us over right before Dan came on stage so we could sit in a couple of unclaimed seats closer to the front.

There was a moderator on stage, along with Dan,  Dan’s editor, and the Czech editor. They spoke for 2 hours! It was interesting, and there are some real fans here in Czechia. Everything was done in English, and Czech speakers who didn’t know English well enough (there were surprisingly few) could borrow a headset for live Czech interpretation. My friend (who is Slovak) introduced me to some other people, including a Slovak travel agent who says that she’s recording all the places in the book to be able to direct clients! The tourists are expected… Dan himself said that he tried to emphasize that the story takes place in the winter so that tourists will come in the winter, when there aren’t traditionally as many tourists. The crowd applauded that! (I thought Asheville was over-touristed!)

Dan’s 89-year-old father was in the audience, and the moderator even interviewed him about what raising Dan was like! He was well-spoken. I wonder if the father is going to other destinations in Europe on the book tour. Dan said that on his first book tour for his first book years ago, exactly zero people came!

This current book was Dan’s most challenging to write, and he thinks it’s his best. It took over eight years to put together, and Dan and his editor said that during the process they ditched well over 10,000 pages! The book is now about 650 pages. I wouldn’t have guessed that the vast majority of creation would be scrapped like that.

During the event they showed images of the various book covers and titles in different languages. The book is translated into 56 already, I believe, and a Netflix series is in the works, which will appropriately be filmed in Prague. I was surprised how many different book covers there are, with the English language one being perhaps the worst, to my eyes. The Czech cover is legitimately the best, with the spooky nighttime view of the Charles Bridge.

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Beyond that fun evening, it’s been a whirlwind of activities during the past couple of weeks I’ve been in Prague and the surrounding area. There has been a mix of fun occasions and bureaucratic drudgery, along with some healthcare appointments thrown in. Oh yeah, and I’m working too, and I’ve even added a new client to the mix. So yes, I’ve been very busy.

With my new Czech health insurance I get free dental checkups and free medical checkups, so I’ve already visited the dentist (the clinic works in both English and Czech!), and I see the doctor this coming week. It was fascinating to learn how different, yet similar, the dental appointment was compared to what I’m used to in NC. I was surprised how modern the equipment at the clinic is – they used machines and devices I’d never seen before, including a little wand that the dentist moves around the inside of the mouth to create a 3D virtual model of the teeth and gums. I do have to pay for dental cleanings, though those are about $60 after insurance. I will also need to pay for fillings, crowns, and the like, but the prices are provided in advance, and they are lower than in the US, though not as much lower as I had expected. I often get the impression that by having to choose English-language solutions, I’m selecting the “fancier” places, and so have to pay more than average. They’re not charging me more specifically, but they’re just more expensive in general. That said, I do see that Prague restaurants often don’t give the daily lunch specials menu to foreign tourists. Instead, the tourists only get the English menu which doesn’t include the specials, which are usually written elsewhere in Czech, like on a board. So it pays to be savvy there!

I’ll run my first half marathon race on Sunday. I’m not entirely sure why I’m going to do that. It will be in Pilsen, not too far from Prague, and it’s at noon, so I’ll just take a train in the morning to get over there. Unfortunately Czechia is still having a heat wave, which lasts through Sunday, so hopefully that won’t slow us all down too much (1500 runners). I’m also excited to have Colleen joining me here starting this week! We’ll help Sofia move to her new apartment, and then we’ll fly down to our favorite vacation spot, Croatia, to celebrate our anniversary! 🥰

The first weekend back in Europe I traveled up to southern Germany to a small city called Pirna to meet some fellow Ashevillians and a Dresdener for a hike along the Malerweg trail (in “Saxon Switzerland”), after which my friend Wayne joined me in Prague for five nights. It was great hosting him here! And I am very thankful to the group for allowing me to join them in Germany for an excellent 24 hours. And I got to eat wild boar meat for my first time while there! You know what they say, “When in Germany…”

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Below are some other photos of memorable recent events, though I wasn’t able to take a photo of Lucy’s bones at the National Museum.

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Today’s DadGPT joke:

I asked the alchemist if he could make me immortal.

He said, “Sure, but it’ll take forever.”

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Czech word of the day:

Today’s word is “spořitelna” – “savings bank”.

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Today’s tech tip:

I accidentally ran across this in Google Photos: If you save location with your captured photos, you can view a heat map of where you’ve taken pictures across a geographic area. Here’s Prague for the past four years for me, and it’s rather insightful: