Identically different

On a Danube River cruise with a group of friends recently, Tammy and I got to tour the Lednice-Valtice Castles in the Czech Republic, a part of the world we had never seen before. This enormous estate was once home to the Liechtenstein family, a rich and powerful European dynasty dating back to the 12^th Century.

As our group climbed the stairs leading to the castle, we came upon a group of schoolchildren, probably aged nine or ten. Our tour guide went over and spoke to the group, telling them that we were visiting from America and did not speak their language.

We started filing past the students as they assembled on the steps for a class picture, and some of us couldn’t resist the temptation to shout “Ahoj!” to them, a customary greeting among Czechs that we had been taught on the trip.

Before we had a chance to congratulate ourselves for showing these children how smart we were with only Czech word we knew, a young boy in the school group laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and shouted back to us: “Don’t you speak English?” At which point both groups – separated by nearly 5,000 miles, an ocean, and several decades of life experience – all enjoyed a great laugh together.

The castle tour was nice, but after a while the castles and churches of Old Europe start to blur together in the memory. What I will remember from that day, however, is the reminder that while we all come from different places, different beliefs, and different experiences, we humans are much more alike than we are different. And the differences are mostly those of our own creation.