We have arrived! We are in Prague, the city of Franz Kafka's birth, the majestic city of towers, bridges, and winding cobblestone streets. Wish you were here too!

Well, you can be. You can come along with us on the "Magical Mystery Literary History Tour" online and follow our adventures over the next 10 days with 22 intrepid travelers, as we visit ancient castle towns and the cultural and royal capitals of Eastern Europe. Our first destination is Prague, which we will explore over the next three days. Next we will visit Krakow, the cultural capital of Poland for two days, and then we travel on to the capital of Germany, Berlin, where we will stay for three more nights, until the tour ends on June 24.

The Magical Mystery Literary History Tour is the kick-off for the Kafka Project's Eastern European Research Project, which I'm conducting this summer in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Kafka Project, based at San Diego State University, is the official investigation into the missing papers (consisting of 20 notebooks and 35 letters, all unpublished) of Franz Kafka (pictured), one of the most influential figures in world literature. Confiscated by the Gestapo in Berlin in 1933 from Kafka's last love, Dora Diamant, these papers have been missing for 75 years, but it is possible that they can be found, if we look for them.

I first came to Prague in 1985, when it was under Communist rule. I haven't been back since 1991, shortly after the Velvet Revolution, when it still remained untouched by the modern world. On my first two visits, I fell in love with this strange castle city of a hundred spires and dark, twisted alleys, where Kafka lived and was buried. Even without the perpetual San Diego sunshine I so love, I wanted to move here and live here forever. I admit I'm anxious to see how much it has changed since then.