sometimes you feel that you just need to change scenery for a few days. I had that feeling some weeks ago and asked Amelia if I could take a few days of and visit Prague. Amelia, always quick to see possibilities, gladly accepted under the condition that I meet with the Czech Pirates while there and briefed them on the current Data Protection Regulation that we work with in the Parliament (and in cooperation with civil society).

Said and done I contacted the Czech Pirates and found out that my planned trip overlapped with their four year birthday celebration. So there would already be a big pirate gathering on the Friday during my stay in Prague which could easily be merged with a discussion on Data Protection.

After two days of leisure I headed over to the tea house where the Czech pirates hosted their gathering. Arriving a quarter past four, fifteen minutes after scheduled time, I found myself early. But that gave me time  to share some words with the independent Czech senator Libor Michálek, who got elected into the Czech Senate supported by the Pirates, the Greens and the Christian Democrats in 2012. As an independent senator he still keeps a good contact with the pirates who got him elected.

Some time after five I got around to have a short presentation of the current conflicts within the Data protection regulation, and also got around to  show the campaign sites that civil society as well as the Swedish and Romanian pirates have up and running. After that the conversation turned towards how the Czech pirates could help raise awareness of the topic and what we could do to give them the information they needed to participate in a campaign for stronger data protection. Overall it was a very fruitful discussion and I have strong confidence that when we have our Czech intern Petr Kopač starting working with us in Brussels next week we will be able to set up a Czech campaign site in no time whatsoever.

After business comes pleasure, in the form of a big chocolate birthday cake with the Pirate Party logo in the frosting. I also got to present our office birthday present to the Czech pirates, two #Exile6e posters: