Shopping With A Czech

One of my Czech friends is currently staying with us in England. It is fascinating to see my homeland through her eyes. Amongst other things it highlights the differences between our two countries.

On Wednesday we went to our local Morrison's supermarket, she wanted to buy some English foodstuffs to take home. She was awestruck by the variety on display there. "You have five different types of pear!" she exclaimed. The sheer variety and quality of fruit and vegetable were cause for comment. My experience of buying vegetables in Krumlov Tesco's is that you need to look hard at what you are buying - at least one potato in the pack will be going off.

Then we came to the fresh fish counter, this was a revelation for her. Of course the Czechs do not have access to fresh sea fish, being so far from any sea, and so most of the fish on the counter were new to her. We bought a bag of live mussels, which she had never tried before.

Then there was the aisle dedicated to tea and coffee - of course being British there were loads and the sheer size of many of the packs of tea (i.e. 240 teabags) caused comment. She added two packs to the trolley to pack in her suitcase - having realised that English tea is unlike (stronger and better) that sold in the Czech Republic, even those teas pretending to be 'English' tea. And so it went on... aisle after aisle packed with a much wider variety of goods than in the Czech supermarkets.

She came to the conclusion (as indeed had I) that English food is often cheaper than in the Czech Republic, especially food essentials, with the exception of alcohol and cigarettes. I then explained that in Britain food is not taxed, nor are books, children's clothes and medicines, but that the duty on alcohol and cigarettes is very high indeed and constantly rising. This was considered by my Czech friend to be very just and sensible. I am sure all those avid Czech beer drinkers would not agree with her, but I think I do. In fact I feel strongly that the British system of not taxing foodstuffs and discounting basic foods is very fair and I feel for all those Czechs struggling on much lower wages and facing above British prices.

Translating Czech

For the historical trip to South Bohemia, that I am organising, I need to produce a handbook for the attendees. What a nightmare! You might have thought it simple - just download stuff off the web, after all Cesky Krumlov's official website is packed full of pages in English about the town and its surroundings. You might have thought that, but you would be wrong. When you come to read what is on the web, it just doesn't always make sense in English or sort of makes sense but I wouldn't swear by it.

"Late gothic reconstruction and monasteries area enlargements in the last quarter of 15th century and development of settlement of Nové Město (New Town - including area of todays brewery compeled up improved protection of this part of growing Český Krumlov. Forwarded city walls, built along Vltava river as far as Lažebnický bridge, fortificated entire New Town with gardens and convents. The city walls were probably built in 90's of 15th century and was borne up reconstruction of monasterial area, nowadays extended with regular house of beguines. Consecrating of chapter house of minorite monastery in 1491 was an important milestone in history of fortification."

Now, don't get me wrong, I think the amount of information on the Cesky Krumlov website is wonderful. And some Czech has toiled long and hard to translate it into English, for which I am grateful. But there's the rub - a Czech has translated this, there are too few native English speakers who can translate from Czech. Even when you do have that rare person who is bi-lingual it is not easy. A bi-lingual friend of mine is sometimes asked to translate pieces for the website and when she does is to be found in front of her laptop chainsmoking and pulling her hair out in clumps.

It is not simply a matter of translating the words correctly, having done that there still can be a problem. The difference between the languages is, I now realise, cultural. It became clear to me when I was working with some local people about a planning issue. In a meeting I tried and failed to explain that letters to an English official should be clearly argued point by point and ideally short. But no. For my Czech listener the longer and fuller the letter the better and repetition is good. And he probably is right, if the letter's recipient is a Czech official.

Nowhere is this cultural difference more apparent than in the Czech love of the poetic. Where the English would be writing solid information, the Czechs are wont to disappear into metaphor. Hence the programme of the Five Petalled Rose started a piece on the history of Cesky Krumlov with a paragraph on primeval mud! What can the poor translator do in such a situation but translate what is there?

A Different Palette

On my flight back from England after Christmas I was sat next to a retired couple who were visiting the Czech Republic for the first time. As the plane began its descent into Prague Airport, the wife commented to her husband as she looked down at the countryside below “It's so brown!” This gave me pause for thought, I looked past her out of the window and noticed that yes it was brown, unlike the England we had left which was despite the winter still green. I had forgotten that this was so. The Czech winter with its cold and snow means that the grass in the pastures withers and turns a straw colour. With the exception of the dark green of the firs, the Czech landscape is many shades of brown. Of course everything is very different when the country is covered with snow - a dazzling white in the sunshine which contrasts so strongly with the other colours that they appear black or dark grey. On such days you would do well to wear sunglasses.


Both these sets of winter colours are followed by the sudden explosion of Czech springtime, often over a few days, when the world turns a wonderful green. On one of my early visits I spent a happy couple of hours in Petrin Park overlooking Prague, picking wild flowers for my sick friend.

Czech Spring is such a contrast the English one, where everything is more muted – a gradual changing with Spring edging in to the landscape over a period of months. I am currently in England where Spring is gently springing. Snowdrops, which appear in January, have been succeeded by primroses, and then by yellow catkins. Yesterday I drove to Ross on Wye and on the verges the first of the wild daffodils were opening – in a week or so one of Gloucestershire's great natural displays will happen as the woods and fields around Dymock are filled with Wordsworthian hosts. That of course is followed in April by that most British of scenes - the bluebell woods where the flowers shimmer in huge oceans. The Czech Republic has nothing to compare with the English Spring flowers, unless it is the purple buttercups of which I have written in the past.

But then the Czech Republic has other treasures. The painting medium most suited to an English landscape, no matter the season, is watercolour, with green, grey and white being the dominant colours in the palette, with the occasional blue. Oil and pastel are more suited to the Czech, the colours more intense and more contrasting – the sun and sky closer to those of the Mediterranean. Except perhaps at the turn of Winter, when washes of brown are called for.

Hutkin

I have blogged about the Czech chata or hutkins in the past. Many are set in the countryside, in woodland clearings and beside lakes and streams. But others are to be found like English allotments in the most unpromising of places, besides railway lines or on city wastelands. One of the joys of a trip on both an English and a Czech train is these flashes of human creativity and love of nature amid the ruin and bleakness of our cities, they give one hope for mankind these little Edens set in a sea of grey.

In Cesky Krumlov the other day I was walking by the river. On one side was the back of the Eggenberg Brewery, which away from the tourists' eyes was looking run-down, with blind and broken windows and trees growing from its gutters, on the other side cliffs of granite rose from the river up to the orbital road along which could be heard the growl of traffic making its way south. But here too was an Eden - a hutkin perched on a cliff, and a woman tending a garden carved into the granite. A few yards away was the road's tarmac and beyond that a factory tower, but she was with nature on her cliff.

I was reminded of a favourite track by the queen of English folk music June Tabor – A Place Called England. You can see it performed by June herself on Youtube . It strikes me that the English and the Czechs share a love of and a relationship with the soil and gardening, which is quite profound.