ABSTRACT
There was a follow-up to the Leiden conference organized in
Prague (Frontiers of Quantum and Mesoscopic Thermodynamics),
and Vaclav Spicka sent me an e-mail with an invitation to give
one of the plenary presentations. Zeilinger was also to give one in
the same session, and Hans and Kristel told me that they would
attend and give a presentation too. Looking forward to see also
Andrei Khrennikov, Theo Nieuwenhuizen, and many other friends,
I accepted immediately and started to prepare a presentation in
collaborationwith Hans and Kristel. I alsowanted to go to Prague for
two personal reasons. My grandmother was Czech and I had never
been in Prague, because of the problems with the “iron curtain”
that fortunately did not exist anymore. The second personal reason
was that Robert Basler, my best friend in Illinois who had died the
previous year, had visited Prague, where he had lived in his youth,
as his last travel wish and had told me how great this city was. I also
was looking forward to visit my mother in Vienna on my way back
to Hawaii. Sylvia had collected mileage upgrades so that I could fly
first class. Going any other way from Hawaii is painful, because of
the enormous distances involved; one travels around half the world.
I flew from Hawaii to San Francisco and stayed there for a night, and
the next day to Frankfurt and Vienna, from where I took the bus.
When I finally arrived at the hotel in Prague after a total of two travel
days, I was pretty tired, in spite of the fact that I had my own bed on
the 380 Airbus from San Francisco to Frankfurt.
