We are making up for a sleepless night. Our neighbor celebrated his 30th birthday until early into the morning, and today he is doing it again. That was pretty naive of us when yesterday (or rather, today after midnight), we took our leave with the words, “Good night.” But all is forgiven – around noon, while filling his birthday balloon, birthday boy Ondra let little Josef inhale some helium, and we all, including our neighbors from Rybářská Street, had a laugh at our little Smurf. It’s another day of visitors: our media star (i.e., my brother-in-law Míra) is here for a massage, as is a well-known local bassist. The passers-by call out congenially, asking when he’s going to be on TV again. Aunt Marie takes Josef for ice cream, and his granddad from across the street takes him to the mirror maze. Mom takes Bréďa for a walk. Our Praguers arrive to pick up Katka. Dad is making pasta, which will come in handy for the UNES-CO volunteers playing barefoot in the rain: Žanda, Katka, and her mother Dana Kuchtová, the former Minister of Education, who in return invites us into her home. They’ve got it difficult on the weekends, what with a takeout window right next door and all the hungry late-night customers, who aren’t exactly quiet about it. A German-speaking man with a backpack comes up to our house. We later discover that his name is Josef, too, so now there’s four of them (son, father, grandfather, and our visitor). He finds the project exciting and wants to hear more about it. It’s raining, so our little home becomes a refuge.

A friendly pair of volunteers visits us, and little Josef says that we are talking “adult stuff.” I don’t know what suddenly got into him, but he decides to go urinate in the gutter. A man passing by in a delivery truck smiles. At the stroke of six, another supporter of the project stops by with a baby on her back, as does Aunt Gábi with a bundt cake.

We read Family 2’s diary entry and are saddened that they got such a horrible reception from the locals. Stop in for some coffee. We have real Italian coffee from Mrs. Jirmusová, who is looking after us as if we were her own family. Thank you so much.

After 10pm, we don’t leave anything up to chance. We bundle up the sleeping brood and, to the sounds of Czech singer Jiří Korn (“No tears for today, change of plan, escape the shadows, to a better land…”) thundering from the 60-strong crowd of well-wishers, we head off to bed. But to our home at Plešivec.