Bureaucracy and prostitution both show up in the earliest written records of ancient Sumerian history. Turns out that prostitutes and bureaucrats are among the oldest professions in the world…and I will let you, dear Reader, make the obvious connection.
In the meantime, my wife and I were recently strolling through a lovely Prague neighborhood on our way to manage a piece of bureaucracy.
It was a perfectly autumnal morning of scattered gray clouds, with brilliant blue skies peeking through here and there. Felt like the temperature was in the 40s. And as we were strolling, I made a comment about an old apartment building I like. My wife is here less than a month, and she nailed it on her first try. Of course, she has a Ph. That is very much the beauty of Prague—living here every day amid what is a life-size museum to architecture and nature. You see the polished, picture-postcard version of what the travel industry says a particular place is.
Nothing wrong with that. Everyone wants the beauty of the beaches and resorts in Phuket, Thailand. I want to see the reality—the good, the bad, the scabby warts. Restaurants, too—only a very few stand apart. A lot of people will say they love a place because of their vacation time there. And when given the opportunity to live and work in Europe, that idealized image of Old Town is what I had in mind. Leafy, hilly parks everywhere. The and year-old, low-rise residential buildings in all sorts of pastel, rainbow colors.
The sense of community you notice everywhere you go. The tree-lined streets and their sense of quietude. The views of the city, or Prague Castle in the distance, that sneak up on you when you a turn a corner. Jeff D. Opdyke is an American financial writer and investment expert based in Portugal. He spent 17 years covering personal finance and investing for the Wall Street Journal, worked as a trader and a hedge fund analyst, and has written 10 books on such topics as investing globally and personal finance.
