Community Winter Spirit

I apologize for the absence of posts over the last two months. Unfortunately I had a heart attack in mid-November and until now have not felt up to posting. In addition I was in England when it happened and was only given the all-clear by the doctor to fly back to the Czech Republic a fortnight ago. Anyway I am back now, accompanied by my husband who insists (rightly) on carrying all the firelogs into the house, as well as stopping me from trying to walk uphill.

One of the great things about living in a Czech village is the support I get from my neighbours. So when it became clear that I could not get back until January, I was able to email my neighbour and ask her to start the car and recharge the battery.  This is in part due to having such lovely neighbours and in part due to the fact that we need to help each other, especially in a winter like this.

As I have said before, the village is on the top of a hill in the foothills of the Sumava Mountains. In the winter we get some serious snow and temperatures to match. The road to the village has a long uphill drag, at the bottom of which is a blind 90-degree bend under a railway. Being a minor road to a minor village the only snow clearance is by a man on a tractor with a snow plough attachment who clears the top layer of recent snow but leaves the layer of compacted snow/ice beneath.

My friend Hannah used to claim that Czechs laugh at winter snow, indeed that they enjoy driving on it. Not if they live in our village, they don't! The secret to getting up the hill is to build up enough speed to get you to the village and pray that you don't meet someone coming in the other direction. If you stop on the hill, you probably won't be able to get going again and will have to roll back again until you can get traction (sometimes all the way to the bottom of the hill).

Once in the village you have the backup of your fellow villagers to help with your car. In the last week I have been both the recipient and giver of such aid. My car failed to start a few days ago and I was loaned a neighbour's battery charger. And then today the local postwoman knocked on my door. The wheels of her van, despite being equipped with snow chains, were spinning on the compacted snow. I came out with a snow shovel.

As I write it is snowing, as it has been for four days. We are snug in our house and have no plans to risk the hill. I had laid down a store of winter foodstuffs during the summer, which we are now using, and the logs are piled up against the outside wall ready for Phil to carry them upstairs. And of course if I run out of food or logs, I can rely on my neighbours to help out, as they can rely on me.

Stopped by the Czech Police

Czech Police regularly do roadside checks, flagging down vehicles they fancy. A few weeks ago I was flagged down. This turned out to be a very good natured affair with a great deal of laughing. The first thing that happened was they realised that they had to change where they were standing, as I was of course in a British right-hand drive car. That done they asked for my papers, which I produced (you are required to have your licence, insurance and registration documents with you at all times). The licence was not a problem – it was a photo one and I was clearly driving. Then they came to the insurance and registration documents. There was a great deal of joshing and banter going on as two of the three policemen were clearly saying to their colleague - “You pulled over a British car, now you read the documents.” One held a paper upside down and laughed. It was obvious that I could have given them my shopping list and so long as it looked right they would have accepted it. Then they realised that my car registration number was on the documents as was my name, so they checked those. Then with a big grin they waved me on.

Driving to the Czech Republic

I apologize for not blogging recently. This is because I have been travelling. At long last I had decided to make the journey from Britain to my Czech home by car. Regular readers of this blog will know that I usually travel by plane and train. It always seemed an awful long way to come by car, especially on my own, and I never had the time to spend doing the journey in a leisurely fashion. But this time I decided to change that – there were four large boxes of books to bring over, pictures, embroideries and puppets, some clothes I had stockpiled in England and various foodstuffs impossible to get in the Czech Republic. I could hardly fit them all into the car.

I took the ferry to Dunkerque and from thence drove across Belgium to stop overnight in Aachen or Aix La Chapelle. This was a town I had visited as a teenager and then I had studied the architecture of its cathedral at university. I arrived in time to visit the Dom (shown here) – Charlemagne's great masterpiece, the first domed building north of the Alps and decorated by fabulous mosaics. In the morning I rose early and took to the streets before the town stirred. This enabled me to explore the town, medieval mingled with Art Deco and I found myself taking photographs of decorations that took my fancy on the shops, banks, the Rathaus, and even the railway station which looked like it had been decorated by someone who was stoned. I then returned to the hotel for breakfast and my departure.

I crossed Germany. This is a country which I know very little, but from the autobahn my appetite for it was whetted. I was passing through some wonderful landscapes - there was the hilly area along the Rhine with ruined castles perched on their peaks, the forests of Bavaria, twice I crossed the Donau (Danube), until I came to my second overnight's stop at Regensburg. Regensburg is another UNESCO World Heritage Site, a medieval and Renaissance city in near perfect condition. I had planned to spend a good half day there exploring, but realised there would not be enough time to do it justice and secondly that I wanted to do so in the company of my husband. So, as Regensburg is only 2.5 hrs from our Czech home I decided it would wait for either a long daytrip or an overnight stay.

In the morning I set off again – along the autobahn into the Bohmerwald National Park (the German part of the Sumava) and then turned off towards the Czech border. This last leg of my journey was the most beautiful of all. Many of the forest trees were in blossom, everything looked newly washed. The weather was warm, but in some of the dips winter snow still lay where the sun had not got to them. The landscape became familiar – I was nearing home, following the northern shore of Lake Lipno and then the few miles north to Horice. I pulled up at the gate – I was home. Would I do it again? Possibly, but with someone with whom to share the journey.

Thaw Continued & Czech Driving Machismo

The thaw had the effect of melting the top layer of compacted snow on the roads leading to our village which then rucked up into tracks, below the snow was now ice. I therefore watched in awe as a number of Czech drivers attempted to drive up the hill to the village. It was essential to get enough speed up to keep the momentum going to the top but not too much that you lost control. Some made it, others made it half way and slid back and one drove his car into the pile of snow on the side and abandoned it.

But the prize for Czech driving machismo and bloody-mindedness had to go to the driver of the car who decided to drive to Horice Na Sumave via the little road. This road rises sharply as it goes out of the village and on this stretch is shaded by two lines of trees making the thawing influence of the sun intermittent. It is very narrow, only the width of one car. Add to this at the bottom of the hill as you exit the village there is a 90 degree turn, which means that you cannot get any momentum before you start on the hill. The final point to make is that this road only goes to Horice, which can be reached from our village via a better and easier road which goes downhill, and so any attempt to climb this hill was totally unnecssary.

But one Czech driver thought better. I watched him (I presume it was a him) make several attempts on the hill, the first time he got a third of the way before sliding backwards, the second halfway. He then disappeared for a while. Aha I thought he has realised the errors of his ways and is going the sensible route. Not a bit of it. There he was reversing (yes reversing) up the hill, again he made several attempts, but he did make it eventually. The very idea of attempting driving up that lane in those conditions was enough to make me shudder, but doing it while looking over one's shoulder hardly bears thinking about. Those mad Czech drivers!