Sunday morning at 5.45am my alarm went off. Obama was in town and I wanted to go see him so that’s what I had to do. I went through the city as the sun was getting up – not something I do a lot. Here is the sun rising over St. Vitus Cathedral in the middle of Prague castle.
I got closer and ended up in this street where I could not see the beginning of the line. But for some reason there was a sign that said Walk Through and Food and I wanted to do both so I did – and avoided the line 🙂
In the area I met up with Christoph and Sue and we stood around waited from about 7.30 till Obama went on stage sometime around 10.30. It can be tiring waiting for so long.
I ran into Karen from the Empty Nest Expat blog which I seem to do quite often. It was fun catching up with her and someone at BBC had read her Open Letter to Obama and wanted to interview if it could be organized. I haven’t heard if they managed to interview her, but keep an eye on her blog. She also wrote a very nice piece on the Czech Democracy.
Obama finally showed up and the crowd was roaring. We stood on the grass quite far back and could not see Obama very well but there was a screen in front of us so we saw most of the action on that. Not as fun as seeing the real thing but still very cool.
Obama talked about US leading the world into getting rid of nuclear weapons as well as the historic significance of Prague, the Czech people and the peculiar situation of him, a black American president standing in a city that was under a communist regime just a few decades ago.
Glee with the help of a friend got into the VIP area so she ended up within good sight of Obama and the rest of the shananingans. She kindly let me borrow the shot above so you can see the guy who it was all about.
Pavel and Helge has collected a number of resources and news reports about the event, from before, during and after.
I’m sitting in Germany as I’m writing this as tomorrow morning I’m off for two weeks to Malta with Ann 😀