The Dodge Retort

That's Chris on the right with his two Hedja relatives.

Son Chris remarkable adventure in the Czech Republic just gets better and better, this time with the discovery of relatives in a hamlet of 600 two and half hours from Prague. He tells it better than I ever could so here’s the  report he filed upon his return to Charles University where he is spending the semester.

Start Here

I’ll send a more detailed account of events to you all sometime this weekend, but I wanted to let you know that I met living relatives of ours in Bozejov, a town of about 600 in southern Bohemia, today. Without really knowing how to get there, I took a bus to a neighboring town, Humpolec, and then found a connection to Bozejov. I showed up with absolutely no idea where to go, went into a supermarket and asked in Czech where the town hall was. They pointed to a building and foolishly thinking the entire building was the townhall, I walked up to the top floor, opened a door, and accidentally walked into someone’s apartment. They directed me to the actual town office (a floor beneath).

I asked the town officers if they had any documents, which they didn’t, but when I told them that Vaclav Hejda was my great, great, great grandfather, they called every Hejda in town and arranged for me to meet with them. They also gave me lots of documents on the history of Bozejov (mostly in Czech unfortunately) and a very lovely postcard. I first met with a family of 3. They were in their mid-50s and had a son who was about to turn 20, nearly the same age as Katie. I’m almost positive these people were our relatives and that Wayne visited them some years ago. I believe this because the man (and his son) were both carpenters or woodworkers of some sort, as Wayne had reported to me in an earlier email. The son was the 4th generation of woodworker. The man and the son (the actual Hejdas) spoke nothing but Czech. The wife spoke very little English, but was fluent in German, so we mostly talked in that (my German was shockingly sufficient).

They lived in a modest, but nice, apartment nearby the town square, as Wayne also reported in his previous email. They seemed to be of decent means, but in conversation the wife told me the region, Vysočina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyso%C4%8Dina_Region), was traditionally relatively poor with little industry or factories.

They are all strong Catholics and seemed a tad disappointed that my mother had left the flock. I made it up to them by telling them her sister and her family were still Catholic and also that I go to the oldest Catholic university in the US and live in one of the most Catholic states.

They served me coffee and some chocolate and showed up photo albums, an incomplete family tree, and tried to piece together how we were related. They then took me the cemetery to see a couple Hejda graves.

After this I went to the apartment of an 86 year old lady, who wasn’t a blood Hejda but was married to one. I don’t think we’re related to this Hejda, but she was very fun to talk to. She insisted on serving me vodka and red wine and kept pushing it on me everytime I finished a glass, so I was a bit tipsy by the end. She had unbelieve stories about living under the First Czech Republic under President Masaryk (who is adored here) and Edward Benes. She talked about how her studies were interrupted by the nazis and how the Communist era felt like 40 wasted years of life. She was married twice (the second one was the Hejda) and had kids living in Poland, London, and Prague. She was half Siberian and talked about how much she loved Russian literature. When I showed her the Dostoevsky novel I’d brought with me for the bus (Demons), she was ecstatic and we spent a while talking about Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment. She also recommended a few other Russian novelists to me.

After this the first family picked me up and drove me to a neighboring town Pelhřimov, the major town in the area with a population of about 16k. They were extremely friendly and packed a dinner for me for the bus ride home with a sandwhich, some fruit and some chocolates.

They want me to come visit again and I’m certainly going to try. I’m going to be so busy traveling over the next few weeks (Stockholm, Vienna and Munich all in a row), that I won’t be able to get out there until late March or early April at the earliest. They also would like to meet my parents when they come to visit in May, which we might be able to arrange.

I’ll send out a more detailed account in a couple days when I send out one of my update emails (Becky and Megan, I can add you to the list of people who get this and also send you the last 2, if you’d like), but this was a truly amazing experience. I’ve travelled all over this continent and seen plenty of amazing things, but its interesting how an unremarkable village in the middle of nowhere can prove just as fascinating. I’ll send some pictures along with the email in a couple days.

Love,

Chris

For two weeks in January, my wife, son and I were on pins and needles waiting for a Czech Republic visa to arrive for son’s Chris winter/spring semester. The two-week ordeal caused sleepless nights wondering how we could get through to the Czech embassy in New York. They never answer the phone, leaving one simmering on hold  and listening to computer-generated classical music.

Chris eventually got his visa and showed up a week late for his spring/winter semester at Charles University in Prague. All is well now. But everything that could go wrong in visa-ville did.

He originally applied in October in plenty of time for his planned Jan. 18 departure. The Czech web site says allow for 60 days processing so all should have gone without a hitch. Well, the embassy called him in early November and said they were returning his new U.S. passport because he had not signed it. Yes, you have to send them your passport into which they insert the visa. They hold it hostage while process the visa. God forbid you need it!

The passport did not arrive back to him for two weeks so now he was cutting it close with his application officially arriving on Nov. 23.  Around New Year’s, we started to worry. Nothing was arriving in the mail nor was his assigned tracking number showing up on the Czech web site signifying approval.

We inquired to no avail. No humanoid ever answered no matter how many messages we left or how long we stayed on hold.

With a week to go before departure, we started to panic. The company that arranges these overseas adventures which are standard for college students these days, was not terribly helpful. In fact, an official with the company  set off the panic when she they told Chris he could not attend the program if he was late which at that point looked like a certainty.

Georgetown University which he attends was already in session so there was no going back there for the semester. And what about the $20,000 in tuition we paid for the semester!? Would that be returned? We also faced the prospect of him attending community college, doing nothing for a semester and not graduating with his Georgetown class (2010).

The little matter of the late visa was turning into a calamity. Fortunately, with so many late visas, he was granted a week’s extension to get to Prague.

Chris contacted Sen. John Kerry’s office which basically blew him off (and Chris worked for Kerry in the 2004 election!). I tried to enlist the help of a Czech emigre Tomas…he really did try, but he couldn’t get through to the embassy. I consulted a friend whose son attended the same program four years earlier. He urged Chris to go just with his passport – good for a 90-day stay – and worry about the visa over there.

But the company official said that loophole had been closed and it didn’t matter: the Czech embassy had his passport. He couldn’t go anywhere outside the U.S.

FINALLY, my wife e-mailed Rep. John Tierney’s office on Jan. 20. His delightful visa and immigration person Rosemary responded within an hour and promised to call the Czech embassy. But how would she get through? How could she stand hours of tinkly classical music on hold? SOMEHOW SHE DID! She was a miracle worker. She called to say the embassy would contact Chris by 4 that afternoon. And indeed, someone named Clara called to inform him his application was missing a key piece of documentation (yes, that was Chris fault, but it could have been supplied much earlier had we known).

Clara urged him to FAX the doc and promised approval the next day (all the while we thought the delay was the fault of the Czech police who conduct background checks on visa applicants).

Clara called the next day to say it had been approved and that it would be mailed that day or the next. Chris had sent the Czech visa folks a prepaid USPS overnight return envelope when time started to look tight.  Chris told Clara okay and hung up. That’s what 20-year-olds do (now 21). When we learned he didn’t ask, beg and plead with Clara to send it that day, we fumed. My wife made him call back and leave Clara a message requesting it be sent the same day. After all, this was Wednesday and his rescheduled flight left on Thursday.

Of course, they didn’t send it that day so we canceled Thursday’s flight. Chris was constantly checking the USPS package tracking  web site to learn if it was in route. It constantly wasn’t. The site was often down so we didn’t know when or if it had been sent. With our luck, it would be in a truck absconded by aliens. We were snake bit. STRESSED to the MAX.

Finally, at midnight the day after approval, Chris burst into my bedroom and informed me the USPS tracking service was reporting “accepted” for next day delivery. We were ecstatic! But it still wasn’t here. At 7:30 the next morning, our friendly postmaster called and said it had arrived at a mail facility in North Reading, Mass. and that it would be in our hometown by 9 or 11. He called back at 9 and I went to pick it up.

Chris was on a plane at 4:30 that afternoon winging his way to Prague via Frankfurt.

There are heroes in this story.

– Rosemary worked miracles and got the embassy to act. Without her intervention, Chris would still be at home.

–United Airlines (for Lufthansa) changed the ticket three times on short notice for a mere $100. The agents we spoke with were great.

– Clara helped a lot once we reached her.

– And Chris really held up well during this ordeal and learned a few life lessons along the way.