Even though I don’t like the twerpy way I look in the photo, I do like the people in it. Especially Magda, a cousin of my friend Robert whose family we were visiting behind the Iron Curtain. She taught me some Czech (“Good night” and “next year”), I taught her some English (“Please” and “Thank you.”) My favorite of her English pronunciations was her reply every time I thanked her: “You wel cun.” Close enough. She and her husband and their son, Daniel, hosted us on their small farm for several days, bringing us tumblers of still-warm fresh milk and equally sized glasses of vodka for breakfast. Magda was the disciplinarian in the family and I still remember with astonishment how hard she slapped Daniel once when he back-talked. One night, staying with them in a vacation cabin (no electricity, no running water) here in the Tatry Mountains, I HAD TO wash my hair. I heard water. I snuck out of the cabin with my shampoo (and, truth be told, my creme rinse) and tiptoed to a nearby stream. In the morning, another cousin indicated she’d witnessed my little adventure and said something unfamiliar to me in Czech. We looked it up in the bilingual dictionary: “Snakes.”
"You wel cun."
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