Banana Peels on the Tracks: Coming of Age in Post-Communist Slovakia - Paperback

by Jason Lockwood (Author)

He had a car, an apartment and a decent job, but he was bored. Then he saw an ad in an online forum: Teach English in Czechoslovakia. The year was 1991 and he thought: why not? So he applied and received his acceptance letter months later. In the autumn of 1992, just three years after the Berlin Wall came down, Jason Lockwood arrived in the Slovak Republic to teach English for a year. He went with few expectations and too much luggage. What he found was a torn country grasping at new beginnings, struggling to recover from decades of oppression and dictatorship. In this memoir, Jason Lockwood brings back for Western audiences a snapshot of an historic period in a far-off country, and offers prescriptions not only for that world, but for our own, too.

Author Biography

From as young as the age of eight, Jason Lockwood always wanted to see the world. Raised by journalists in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the 1970s and 80s, he had early and frequent contact with people from all over the world. His father was an editor for the Milwaukee Journal and invited foreign journalists home on numerous occasions. His mother worked for the International Institute, an organization that helped immigrants adjust to life in America, and thus Jason was exposed to different cultures, habits, and languages, despite growing up in a conventional Midwestern city. When Jason first got the opportunity to live abroad, he jumped on the chance and landed in Soignies, Belgium in the mid-1980s. Later, he received his degree in French and Secondary Education from the Université Laval in Québec City, Québec. After years of working in translation and computer technical support, he decided to embark on another overseas adventure, teaching English in the Slovak Republic, which is the basis for this book. Today, he resides in Sydney, Australia, a city he considers the greatest place to live on the planet.