About the Author
Jennifer Walker is a British-Hungarian writer who grew up between Hungary and the UK. A PhD in Physics first took her to Madrid, Spain, where she stayed for 7 years. After casting off her hat as a nuclear physicist, Jennifer grabbed a new hat as a writer. She completed a journalism internship in Tbilisi, Georgia, before moving back to Budapest to reconnect with her Hungarian roots. She now mostly writes about travel, food, culture, and language in Central and Eastern Europe. She has written for National Geographic Travel, Condé Nast Traveler, Oxford Dictionaries, BBC Travel, The Guardian, and The Independent, among others. Although Hungary is in her blood, Vienna is her City of Dreams: its wide boulevards and old-world cafés continue to inspire her, as she walks in the footsteps of Klimt, Freud, and Mozart. She feels at home in Budapest’s ruin bars and underground art hubs, Vienna’s cafés and museums, and prefers to spend the summers under the colonnades in the historic spa towns of Central Europe rather than on the beach.
Like so many Prague transplants, Auburn Scallon came to the Czech Republic planning to stay for just one year. This worked out about as well as the notorious Czech suggestion to go out for just one beer. The Seattle native has lived in New York, New Zealand, Greece, Scotland, Malta, and Estonia, but as Franz Kafka eloquently observed, “Prague won’t let you go, the little mother has claws.”
Auburn loves surprising locals with stories of how a friendly wager pushed her to find reasons to visit each of the Czech Republic’s fourteen regions. She has since spent more than a decade confirming the clichés (yes, the beer and the architecture are both mind-blowing) and falling in love with the lesser-known quirks of the country. Come for the Pilsner, stay for the Moravian wine, microbrews, and local spirits. Enjoy the pastel facades by day, delight in the affordable excellence of the performing arts by night.
With an academic background in Adult Education for Social Change, Auburn is passionate about encouraging travel as a cross-cultural learning opportunity. Her freelance writings on the arts, food, culture, and living abroad have appeared in TimeOut, The Independent, Evening Standard, and official content for Czech Tourism. She hopes to encourage visitors to look beyond photo ops to find the Prague experiences that they’ll fall in love with. Consider yourself warned, however, that you just might start considering how to stay longer than you ever expected.
