After spending some time with my family in Rajec and some unexpected catch ups with the kids I used to hang out with back in Blansko (yes, majority of them being responsible - more or less - parents now), me and Tereza headed out to Prague.

She proposed taking this old fashioned train, pitched it to me as being on one hand longer and more expensive, but 'at least there's no stupid wifi and stewardesses trying to sell you coffee all the time'. My heart sunk, but I've decided to put on a brave face (NO WIFI??!!! What, am I like suppose to speak to people?!)
and go the hipster route of actually paying attention to my friend rather than a smartphone.

For our journey, Tereza dug out her first ever novel she's written one summer 17 years ago when spending holiday at her aunties'. We've read it out loud and got so fascinated by her early adolescent view of the romantic relationships, that the conductor had to step out and "KINDLY CLOSE THE DOOR" of our coupe.

The 'novel' revolves around this turmoil of a relationship between a young teacher and her mysterious and slightly hysterical and possessive suitor. Their romance is limited either to going out for dinner, or making out on a sofa with the telly on (when he felt like 'I want to be with you, not some stupid waiters!!!' sic).

The most intriguing part to me came with this one sneaky sentence saying:

"Then they remained laying on the bed, not talking or doing anything in particular, for two hours."

FOR TWO HOURS! Please note this was pre-internet, pre-smartphone time. So the idea of a couple laying on the bed doing nothing, REALLY meant literally doing nothing. I found that to be a particularly interesting glitch in the romance, which came on to remain unexplained, and maybe an omen of things to come, as towards the end of the novel (it was unfinished) the female lead suffered a miscarriage (!).

So the unplanned and magnifique part came in a form of this unexpected photoshoot. Me and Tereza finished our first (and it seems not the last) novel two years ago. After some editorial work, collecting the illustration by our amazing multitalented and totally meshugge friend BioMasha, and bothering, scaring and mentally destroying publishers with our..let's say..UNUSUAL piece of literature, Tereza, who's always been a networking maniac, somehow got her hands over a financial grant from the Czech Ministry of Culture to publish the novel BY THE END OF 2015.

That meant, amongst other things, to nail down having a photo of authors for the book cover taken ASAP, as I won't be travelling back to Czech any time soon. Tereza got a photographer, who works for the publishing house Vetrne Mlyny, booked for 2pm. We arrived to Prague around 12.

I was hot and bothered, ugly, sleepy and generally not at my best and I protested violently about having a freakin' picture for a freakin' bookcover taken in this condition. Tereza managed to reason with me, but my sine qua non was to have something radical done with my hair. We walked up and down the streets around the railway station looking for someone...quite frankly ANYONE..who would sort me out without the need of booking, and finally we caught this young hairdresser before her lunch break, she took a shaver and ten minutes later I looked like a neo-nazi kinky version of myself.

I like to plan things. Have everything ready. The timing being just right. (Thank you, mum, I've got this from you.) And then events just clicking together. But slowly (veeeery slowly) I'm starting to accept, that fantastic stuff can come out of the chaos.

I was so apprehensive about doing this photoshoot, everything very rushed, but when a professional holds the camera, magic can indeed happen.

(also a newly acquired respect for models, as posing is TOUGH! Initially we've been instructed to just talk casually, then to talk casually with keeping the lens in mind and having just one side of the face illuminated by the sun and not blinking and crying and being natural without 'pulling those weird faces'. So completely natural.)