The Journey & Arrival

My apologies for the slight break in postings, this is because I have been travelling. Yesterday was our 25th wedding anniversary and my husband and I decided we had to do something to celebrate. We have long planned a trip across northern Europe, but my husband is self employed and so we never could quite find the time - it was always a case that he either had work or needed to be by the phone in case work came up. But at last, with our silver wedding as the spur, we have done it.

We left England on my birthday and made our way slowly across Germany, taking in various historic towns along the way - Trier, Worms and Regensburg. We at last arrived at our home in the Czech Republic with a car filled with books, various English foodstuffs (cheddar, biscuits, marmalade and marmite) and several paintings we were bringing over for a friend. We are now relaxing and playing at being tourists here. In about a week's time we will spend six days making the return journey, stopping in Belgium as well as Germany. This time the car will be filled with a crate of Czech dark beer (for our son) and other Czech goodies. After a fortnight I will be flying back.

One thing that struck me on our return was that the election posters still line roadsides. The elections were nearly four months ago and yet there are the politicians still gurning at the public at every turn. It's bad enough having to look at them during the run up to the elections, but now.... At least the British politicians have had the decency to remove their election posters, apart from the occasional errant banner hung in some Tory farmer's field alongside a tattered poster in support of foxhunting. It strikes me that this is a rather alarming indication of the state of the Czech economy, which like the British is bouncing a long at the bottom with only slight growth. Obviously marketing expenditure has been slashed, otherwise the advertising slots which the politicians occupy would have been taken.