Some Thoughts

I have been rereading this blog. It is quite fascinating to revisit my early posts from over three years ago. Sometimes my feelings and views regarding the Czech Republic, my second country, have remained constant and indeed grown, and sometimes those early impressions have proved wrong or in some cases circumstances in the Czech Republic have changed and made my posts out-of-date. But then a blog is basically a journal that you broadcast on the internet and as with all diaries the changes are part of the interest. But I hope and believe that the one thing that has not changed is my love of this country and its people. Maybe I see things better now, understand more, but that has not reduced my affection.

I have always felt strangely at home in the Czech Republic. I think that is partly because, unlike many other expats I have chosen to live in the countryside rather than in the big cities of Brno and Prague. I am by nature and birth a country girl and the Czech countryside (as various posts attest) reminds me of the English countryside of my childhood. And in living here, I return to my childhood and some of that childish wonder, which I lost as I grew older.

What I didn't expect with creating a new home in Czecho was how it would impact on my feelings about England. I love England for all sorts of reasons and of course I am at home there too. But there is now a part of me that is, dare I say it, Czech. Not properly Czech of course, that would never happen, but part certainly. I am at home in both countries (in different ways perhaps), but it is also the case that I am not at home. When I am in England, after a while I find myself longing to get back to the Czech Republic. I long for the mists rising from the Czech forests, for the smell of mushrooms in firwoods, for the night-time silence surrounding my Czech home, for Czech sunlight, for being able to write again and for a thousand other wonders. And of course when I am in Czecho I miss England. I miss understanding the language, the banter, I miss the subtle pastel shades of the English landscape and of course the wind. Perhaps this means I appreciate both my countries more; I hope so. And whilst I can afford to retain a foot in both countries there is no problem and every advantage in my situation. I just dread the day when that is no longer the case, when I must choose.

Snow at Both Ends

Over New Year my son and his girlfriend joined us in the Czech Republic for a week. It was a delight to have them in the house and nice to see them so relaxed. It is my hope that they will feel that they can come any time, whether or not we are there. We stood together on the terrace of Cesky Krumlov castle as the clock chimed the New Year in and the sky exploded with fireworks. We took them to Cesky Krumlov, Ceske Budejovice and Lake Lipno and were tourists again. We ate out a fair bit, including a meal at the Old Gaol where my son renewed his acquaintance with their steak roasted on an open fire.

My son had talked up the possibility of snow to his girlfriend and the weather duly obliged. Unfortunately it was also depositing snow in England. I took them and my husband to Prague Airport and left them to catch the Easyjet flight home to Bristol. On the underground train to the coach station I overheard an English couple talking about a flight cancellation. I lent across and asked them about it - it was the Easyjet Flight to Bristol. They thought it was canceled but they weren't sure. I sat on the coach back to Krumlov worrying, my husband had left his Czech phone at home and so I had no way of contacting him.

Later that night my mother rang from England. Had I heard what had happened? The weather was terrible, airports closed all over the place, roads impassable. My husband rang her from the hotel in Prague, where Easyjet had lodged them, and so I was able to ring him. They had booked themselves at great cost on to a British Airways flight only to hear from someone in the hotel restaurant that that too had been cancelled. Now they were not able to get away for another three days. I stood at the window watching the snow falling on my Czech village.

On the Saturday my mother rang again. Had I heard? What was happening? If they did make it to England ,the roads to Gloucesterhire were awful. She was under the impression, that my husband was keeping me up to date, wrongly as he had better things to do. I contacted my Czech friend and got her to check the internet for flights to Heathrow. Two flights had managed to get away that evening, but were they on it? I did not know. I did not know until Sunday evening, when my husband rang me from our English home. As he wrote in an email to "Phew!"

Home from Home

I am back in England now. It is all very strange to leave our house in Czecho, to come home from home.

It was almost as though the weather knew I was returning to England, for after two months of sun and no rain the weather broke. It was heralded by the cows calling in the fields. Usually at night in our village you are struck by the silence, perhaps you will hear the occasional dog barking or an errant blackbird heralding the dawn prematurely, but normally all things are quite silent. But that night the cows were lowing with an unnerving cry, almost as if in pain. I lay in my bed wondering what was wrong and then the rain began. I could hear it thundering on to the rusty corregated iron sheets in the yard. In the morning it continued, the sack of dehydrated whitewash in the yard was breached by the torrents and bled white over the ground.

By the afternoon the rain had stopped and the birds had started singing again. I locked the gate and walked up the lane and past the rocks to the nearby town and bus stop. From there I travelled into Cesky Krumlov, where I spent the night at my friend's house. In the morning a taxi took me to the station at Ceske Budejovice. As I sat on the train to Prague, I suffered mixed emotions. Drifts of wild lupins were breaking in to bloom along the track, deers started from pastures that edged the forests. This place had become very much a home for me, had in some strange way always felt like home and I was leaving it. But I was leaving it to go home.

In England instead of lupins there would be seas of bluebells, bluebells which were deeply embedded in my understanding of the seasons. When I was a little girl we lived in a house near a millpond in the Cotswolds. Beyond the pond, where I fed the swans my toast crusts, was the wood, here my mother would take me walking among the bluebells. I was three when I left the millflat, but the wood, the pond and the bluebells are deep in my memories together with my mother saying "Look, Zoe, can you see that flower" or "What do you think that root looks like?" "It looks like a witch, mummy. She's got a big nose." Ponds, witches and the dark wood, no wonder the Czech Republic feels like home.