Austrian Air decorates the interiors of its aircraft by detonating cans of primary-colored paint. They also employ six-foot-tall Teutonic marvels as flight attendants.

The airplane floor is astro-turf green, the seats are teal. The seat belts are scarlet, as are the pillows. The napkins flipped across the top of the seat headrests alternate between three colors: red, white and gold, while the blankets are lime green with scarlet trim. Dinner is delivered by gigantic blonde women dressed head-to-toe in red: red lipstick, red vests, red skirts with red belts, red hose, red shoes, and shocking-white blouses under the red vests. The napkins that come with dinner are mustard.

If you were to create a color swatch of the inside of the plane it would look like this:

The overall effect is that of being on an acid trip in Valhalla.

I lived in Prague at a time when being an American in Prague was a cool thing to be. I didn't know that when I stumbled out of the train station in September 1993 - I had just come from Bratislava and didn't know a soul in Prague. But within a month I had an apartment, Czech and expat friends, and was deep into the "scene" of being an American in Czechland. The experience was magnificent - I was 27 then and in Prague I hit my stride. Only trouble was that I didn't have a job, nor did I want a job, so everything was done on the cheap. Good thing Prague was inexpensive - I was usually flat broke.

A few years back Debra made a triumphant return to New York City. She'd lived there as a struggling singer, counting pennies and debating if that week's big purchase would be shampoo or hairspray. (It was one or the other - she couldn't afford both.) Things changed for her when she gave up singing and joined the corporate world, and so one weekend we went to New York City and we saw the shows she wanted to see and ate at the restaurants she wanted to eat at and shopped where she wanted to shop. It was her time to show New York that she had made it. We had a blast.

As we debated whether or not we should spend the money for a long weekend in Prague I reminded Debra of that weekend in New York and told her I would like to make a triumphant return of my own. Except my city was just a little further away - in Eastern Europe. She understood and we agreed to go over the President's Day weekend in February 2006.

And as I sat on the plane remembering life in Prague and wondering how the city had changed and if I could still find my old friends, remembering the bonehead journalist from Newsweek who cornered me in the Repré Klub asking where all the "hip American kids" were, remembering cheap bottles of Frankovka wine sipped on the Charles Bridge and the snow falling on the Old Town Square at Christmas, and Stefan and Peter and Milada and Jitka and Tommy and Claudine and countless others, I felt the wheels touch down on the tarmac and we were there. We taxied to the terminal and as we stepped off the plane I breathed deep and smiled, took Debra's hand and said, "All right, let's go."