Before the pandemic, I was sitting at the Panda bistro near the Florence bus station. Out of nowhere, an old friend of mine, Luboš, showed up—we used to go dancing with an even bigger group at the Vltava dance café, which later became a student club, now it is a luxury Italian restaurant. Luboš had gotten divorced and married a younger woman, and they have a daughter who’s only about ten years old. The girls were having lunch at a nearby restaurant, and Luboš “spotted” me at Panda.
After reminiscing for a while, Luboš reminded me what a “dude” I was back then and how that had inspired him.
He recalled:
“Yeah, I used to think to myself back then… that Milan in that silver suit…”
I tried to talk him out of it, saying it was a “romanticized” version of the past; I never had a silver suit—I only had a dark gray, slightly shiny jacket that I bought in Vienna; I have a photo of it somewhere…
“All right, a gray jacket, shiny, you had a blond mop of hair, a cool guy, a university student… so I thought to myself, ‘If that Milan is studying there, then I have to get a university degree, too.’”
Luboš became a lawyer—he studied albeit while already working—but that wasn’t a bad thing; at least he knew more about the practical side of things. Some time ago, he’d mentioned something about maybe owning an apartment building or two.
So my shiny jacket motivated him in the right direction.
