I am back in the Czech Republic having let some friends stay in our Czech home for what should have been a couple of weeks. Unfortunately after only three days they decided to leave because it was cold. Now the thing is that at this time of year the Czech Republic is nearly always several degrees warmer than in the UK, right now it is 30 degrees and I could do with it being somewhat colder. We Czechophiles often have problems with Brits who seem to think that the Czech Republic is somewhere up north near Russia, when instead we are actually south of the UK - only marginally - we are approximately on the same latitude as Paris.I have learnt from bitter experience however not to overegg how the Czech Republic is normally warmer and drier than the UK. If I say this to people visiting us, then the great law of sod kicks in and there is inevitably rain when they arrive, even though the day before will have had glorious weather. Instead I say it is like the UK's weather, it can rain at times but the sunny days tend to be hotter. But clearly even that doesn't work - maybe those preconceptions are just too hard to shake off.
By the way the converse also works. I daren't say to my friends that Czech winters are usually colder and have snow, because as soon as they arrive or rather the night before there will be a sudden thaw.
