The guard detachment for the presidential

palace – an NCO and four privates –

arrives in a taxi cab at ten a.m.

in front of our boutique hotel (with its own

micro brewery). They march – in somewhat

Ruritanian uniforms, rifles

shouldered – beside the high, concrete-faced wall

of what is now a public park and once

was the palace’s formal gardens before

the maps were redrawn. Some time later

we watch the high stepping sentry-go

through the ornate iron gates – Mittel Europa

transcending the carnage.