Tomas Koudela, was born in 1967, in august, a year before the Russian army invaded Czechoslovakia. He grew up in the town of Havirov. It had been build after World War II in Soviet Functionalism style – on a green lane, with a single street connecting the railway station at its one end, to the apple orchard at the other. All blocks of flats in his own town were more or less many stores buildings inhabited by workers mainly from Poland, miners from the east of Slovakia and Slovakian - Hungarian borderland, track drivers from Moravia and Czech, doctors from the Carpathian part of the ex-Austrian Hungarian empire, Greek partisans, Gypsy magicians, and for some time, my grandpa Karl Rozbroy, a German-Czech-Polish-Russian, a Wehrmacht soldier, a Soviet army soldier and an emigrant, who was condemned to two years in jail for illegally leaving the territory of the Czechoslovakian Socialist Republic in 1977. The language used there was a mixture of all possible dialects brought by the new inhabitants of the neighborhood. When it is used in other parts of the country, almost nobody understands and everybody laughs. Up to his full age Jan Vrak had thought that it was Polish language. Since in his major part it consisted of deformed Polish words, it made possible watching American cartoons on Polish TV, a uniqueness in the East Block in the 70s. Once he traveled to Warsaw for a swim meet. When he talked to the Polish, they didn't understand him and made jokes about the language he spoke. Since that time he hasn't been speaking much. After the political subversion in 1989 he founded Votobia Publishing House, that gradually became one of the most prestigious publishers in the Czech Republic in the 90s. As he thought he was rather an author, a poet and a writer, he went out of business and dedicated himself to writing. He brought out 8 books and now is finishing his “A language waiting for its morning” novel.

He got to Netherlands by accident. He didn't know almost anything about it. As it happens he met Pavel Forman, a painter, and got a “come with me” offer. For a few moments he pondered the idea. Why should he go there? He went. He remembered that the Dutch like Czech writers. A few centuries ago the Moravian Komenius had enjoyed their hospitality and it had been quite beneficial for him. He decided to follow Komenius' tracks. A language awaiting its morning needs something stable, persistent and sunny like Dutch weather, something deep and beautiful like Dutch Eco-type. That looked as quite a good reason to travel. A month ago, at 2 a.m. he set in the co-driver's seat and closed his eyes. He woke up in the morning in the neighborhood of Poptahof. He spent hours by the window of the 130 number flat on the third floor thinking, looking at the supermarket and watching the slow lightening of the near blocks of flats. Some of them looked like space ships. Others were just glowing. He found out that he had already known Poptahof from somewhere. Right from the first moment he felt like being at home. www