Who is Reading This?

Over the years that I have been writing this blog I have come to know some of my readers, through the comments they leave, emails they send me or from the profiles of those that follow the blog. They come from all over the world. Some, such as fellow blogger Karen of Empty Nest Blog, I now consider friends.

When I started this blog I had no idea really who would read it. As I say in my profile (right) I hope it introduces the Czechs to the British and vice versa. But I presumed my primary audience would, if only for language reasons, be British. I recently was interested to see in my Blogger stats that Britain only comes third in the list of countries sending me readers, the US is second and top of the list is the Czech Republic, which given the language barrier is remarkable. I am so pleased.

I attended the launch event for the Lost in Translation exhibition on Sunday (yes, I know the exhibition is almost over) and found myself chatting to some delightful young Czech expats and comparing notes. It was fascinating to hear from them about the things they like and dislike about living in the UK. Consistently they spoke about being straight-talking in a country where people hide what they mean. I gave them the reference for Kate Fox's excellent book Watching the English. They confessed to having secret stores of piskoty (a type of biscuit) and kofola (the Czech cola and infinitely superior), I confessed to carrying over to Czecho supplies of teabags and marmite. I was intrigued to hear their feelings and experiences and comparing them with my own. It helped me understand why so many Czechs are reading this.

Lost in Translation

A few months ago a reader of this blog (Eva) emailed me to say I should think about submitting Adventures in the Czech Republic for inclusion in an exhibition which will be opening at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, London tomorrow. I thought about and decided I would and lo and behold Adventures in the Czech Republic was accepted!

To quote the publicity:
 

LOST IN TRANSLATION is an exhibition exploring what it is like to live in another country through the works of British and Czech artists with experience of living in the opposite countries. Each works tell a different story about coping with the change of the environment, but what unites them is that it’s impossible for an artist not to be influenced by it in their work. It doesn’t seem to matter where you are from until you move elsewhere, because that’s when you really start to see who you are; to the point of surprising yourself with unexpected yearning for the national identity. The language barrier especially is something that even those resumed to visual communication can find staggering. Settling into another culture is an emotional and adventurous process. The wonderment of things being different - cars on the other side of the road, learning to talk at great length about the weather and the tube announcements in an alien language. You take it all in with all your heightened senses, initially feeling displaced and uprooted, but gradually beginning to grasp your environment and redefining your identify. You are never going to be the same. Curated by UK-based Czech curator, Michaela Freeman.

And there is a special event on the 14th November at 4.15, with the screening of a documentary Czechin London and a moderated open discussion. If you come, you'll meet Potok in person.

For more info visit http://www.czechcentres.cz/london/novinky.asp?ID=14319

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.

Latest on the Central Heating

I hope those of you who read my blog regularly will know that I hate those whinging ex-pat blogs that are too frequent. They make you want to ask, "If you dislike the country and its people so much why did you move here?" I also dislike those ex-pat blogs, which seem to think it necessary to justify their move by attacking their motherland. So it is with caution and regret that I have decided to blog about the painful experience I have had with dealing with Czech contractors, but I think it is only fair on anyone else who is starting out on the path of restoring a house here.

Following on my post on the central heating a month or so ago, my electrician eventually turned up. He managed to botch together a solution to the hot water problem (he needed to bring a new switch so for a while the existing switch had to be held together with a piece of paper). In so doing he broke the seal that electricity supplier had put on the electric meter setting. Of course he says all the problems are electricity supplier's fault, but because he broke the seal we can't prove it! As for the central heating, well he couldn't help me there, I had to get the central heating company in. As the electrician had been the project manager for all the first stage of work – including the central heating – this should have surprised me, but after three years here it didn't.

The date arranged for the visit of the central heating engineer came and went, another no-show. Then on the Wednesday, miracle of miracles, both the heating engineer and electrician turned up together. It turns out that the central heating is to the wrong spec and could never heat the house in these conditions. Add to that the clock in the electric box is faulty, with the result that such heating as there is isn't charging properly. It has taken three years of complaining about the heating and sky-high bills to get this far, but at least (I hope) the problems have been identified and we might just have agreed the steps towards getting them fixed, perhaps not completely but enough.

So what have I learnt (the hard way) about employing Czech builders?
1 Well for starters they will tell you what they think you want to hear (see my post on When Yes Means No) rather than the truth.
2 If you don't ask for something, the Czech craftsmen won't do it for you and they won't suggest it either. No matter that they are the experts, you are still meant to know. No matter too that it is a task so obvious one would think it unnecessary to ask, it won't to get done – eg if you ask them to fit a sink, ensure they also fit a waste pipe!
3 Czech tradesmen never seem to finish anything properly, and certainly don't do the necessary checks when they finish (see my August post about the dryrot in the kitchen).
4 Get everything in writing.
5 Even when you employ someone as a project manager – don't assume they will take responsibility if things go wrong.
6 Ensure that the builders include the cost of cleaning up after the job otherwise you will be left with piles of rubble.
7 Get a Brit to do it (only joking, well maybe not).

Have I just been unlucky and am making unfair generalisations? Conversations with other ex-pats and indeed with Czechs confirm that I am not alone in my experience. Is it just another example of the Czech attitude to work that I spoke about it in a previous post? Probably and if so there's no hope for us. Not that I am for one moment suggesting that one does not have bad experiences in England, just that they seem almost the norm here. Ah well, I just have to remind myself how much I love the house and the countryside around it.

Ex-pat blog

My parents aren't internet savvie and would never read this blog if it required them to go online. This is a shame because it looks as though their age and heath will prevent them from ever visiting my Czech home and seeing through their own eyes this lovely country. And so at Christmas I printed out the blog, bound it and gave it to them as a present. Every month they get an update with the latest posts. They have really enjoyed these vicarious journeys to the Czech Republic. And the readership does not stop there, the blog has been lent to various friends.

The feedback so far has been universally positive, not that my parents' friends would criticise I'm sure. One comment that has been made several times – is how much the love I have for this place and the Czechs comes through the blog. I'm glad, that was to some extent my intention. Not that love is blind, I certainly can see the flaws in my second homeland but I hope that even in this I do not judge too harshly.

I really have problems with those travel books and blogs, which treat the locals as something to laugh at or which find fault. I see it sometimes in fellow British ex-pats or visitors, complaining that you can't get marmite in the shops or criticising Czech customer service, making generalisations about things of which they have only limited experience or understanding. We are guests here in another people's country and should behave as such. It betrays a superiority based on ignorance and insularity, which I fear the British are very good at. But I do not doubt that I too am guilty of this on occasion, as I fumble my way towards an understanding of the Czechs (and perhaps of my own nation). I therefore ask those Czechs who read this blog to forgive me when I get it wrong. I rely on your ability to laugh at yourselves, a characteristic which our two nations share.

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.