Phew - how to tell a Brit in Czecho

I still have not got used to the level of heating in Czech homes and shops. You would have thought the Czechs would be less aware of the cold than us Brits with our mild winter climate, but not a bit of it. You walk into a shop from the cold outside wrapped up in a coat and are hit by a wall of heat. I soon find myself going red and sweating. Even in flats and homes, where you can shed your outer garments, the heating can still be unbearable. This is not a problem where you can turn down the heat, but a friend of mine has a Prague flat in a block with centralised heating controls and as a result even when there is deep snow outside she has windows open. Conversely I have noticed my Czech friends often keep their coats on when visiting our house.

This is not confined to homes. Try a journey in a train compartment shared with a bunch of Czechs - the window will stay firmly closed, the heating on full blast. Or look about you when you walk around a Czech town. A few days ago I went for a short walk. The weather was cold but not overly so, so I wore a fleece but no hat or gloves and was if anything too warm. All the Czechs I passed were mufflered, coated and hatted. As my granny would say, "These Czechs are nesh!"

So how do you tell Brits in Czecho? Inside they are the ones opening the windows, turning down the heating and if they can't do that politely going red and sweaty in the corner. Outside they are the ones not wearing thick coats and hats.

Stifter's Trail

On Sunday I decided to walk the Aldebert Stifter trail around the hills that circle Horni Plana. I had been meaning to do it for years, and never got round to it. The walk is only about 4.5 kilometres long and although there is a bit of a climb to get out of the town it is relatively easy going after that. It is a lovely walk and has some spectacular views.

Stifter is known as the poet of the Sumava and was born in the town. The path first takes you through the Stifter Park to a monument to the poet, from where the copper and bronze figure can look across Lake Lipno to the Sumava, crowned by Plechy the highest mountain in Czech Sumava. The trail then takes you around a natural amphitheatre with spectacular views including, if weather conditions allow, views of the Alps that form a blue shadow rising behind the darker green of the Sumava (as is in this photo). You pass Stifter's spruce and then further on Stifter's beech or rather you don't as in both cases all that remains are the stumps! And then descend in to the town again.

A Taste of Honey

A few days ago my friend and I spent a pleasant evening consuming a bottle of medovina. Medovina is honey wine - med being the Czech word for honey (a medved is a bear by the way). The golden liquid slips down beautifully, warming the heart and the stomach. It feels like you are drinking the warm sun of summer - which in a way you are.

In the summer a car journey through the Sumava will take you past houses fronted by roadside stalls, where you can buy jars of honey, medovina and other bee products. Sumava honey is particularly lovely - you can taste the forest in it or the flowers of the Alpine hay meadows. There are other Czech uses for honey - there is medovnik (the honey cake) which is a favourite of mine and my friend even told me that a local wisewoman cured her bad shoulder using a honey massage.

But at the end of a long hard day nothing can beat medovina and good company. Unlike some other alcoholic beverages medovnik does not depress, instead it mellows. You can almost feel the bees buzzing gently in your stomach.

Czech Winter Sunshine

I adore the Czechs' bright winter sunshine – this time of year the light can be quite golden, playing off the grass deadened and yellowed by snow. The red and yellow stems of dogwood almost seem on fire against the dark green of the firs. The white bones of the silver birch trunks are picked out by the sunlight, everything speaks of the life beneath the skin. It doesn't matter to me that there is little snow this January, although that brings its own joys and combined with the winter sun is quite wonderful.

The Czechs are complaining that the weather is wrong – not enough snow to ski, not warm enough for spring, a few clouds in the sky so not a perfect blue. They should try England's endless grey, the oppressive threat of rain, the cough and splutter of winter fog, they would never complain about this Czech winter again.

Reading

When I was a child I read, I read as a hungry man consumes bread. My parents have photos of me asleep, the book open in my hand, the reading light still on. I read without judgement, without caring for what others thought – good, bad, indifferent I read every book in our town's small library. Somewhere in my teens I stopped. I said I did not have time to lose myself any more, but in truth I no longer had the child's ability to let go and sink into that other world. It was only in Czecho that I really began to read again.

I started reading the latest book in the airport, then on the plane, on the train when watching my fellow travellers became boring and now it is done. Tomorrow I will start another book. But this one I recommend to you – it is The Visible World by Mark Slouka. The book is very suited to Czechophiles. It's about a boy growing up in America to Czech parents, and his slow and painful journey in to their past, which takes him to Prague, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich and the dark stains that surround it. But the story is really about love and loss of love, about how the child looks for the parent, of the truth and compromises we make to survive. It is beautifully written, full of poetry.

Lake Lipno under ice

When I woke up the fog had cleared from the village, though it lay like a cotton duvet in the folds of the hills. It was cold and frosty, but the sun was already up and things were warming.

After lunch I drove over to Lake Lipno – the deep blue lake of the summer had turned polished steel. Slight white ridges running parallel to the shore looked like small waves but as I grew closer it was obvious that ice covered the lake's surface as far as the eye could see. Snow still lay compacted on the ground and the heights of the Sumava mountains were white. Gone were the windsurfers and catamarans of the summer (see my previous post Wot no sea). I had no business there and wanted to get on, but was glad I had come when I did, they are forecasting a thaw.

Home again - train journey

I left a wet Glouestershire bracing itself for more floods and caught the plane to Prague. The plane set down in a foggy Czech Republic and I proceeded across town to catch the train to Ceske Budejovice. As I have said before, I like the journey down to South Bohemia - it is part of my submersion back into the Czech. The compartment was already half full when I came in and settled down on the leatherette seating.

I rang my friend and told her which train I had caught and asked her to sort a taxi to meet me the other end. My travelling companions watched and listened, recognising that I was speaking in English and went back to their conversation secure in the thought that I was not eavesdropping. I wasn't really, just catching the occasional word or phrase, sometimes enough to understand. And of course I was able to watch them, again they paid no attention to me as if my visual interpretation was somehow also alien and so I was unable to read their faces and actions.

On one side sat a couple facing each other by the window. She was in her late fifties unless the lines on her animated face were prematurely the gift of too many cigarettes. The one thing that contradicted the years was her long and thick brown hair which fell about her shoulders and of which she was clearly proud, as her subconscious stroking and sorting betrayed. All the time she chattered to her male companion, leaning forward in her seat in a conspiratorial way, whilst he sat back in his, giving the occasional monosyllabic response. They were friends I thought, but not too close and he less close than she. I was right - she got out at different stop.

Opposite me was a young man, who reminded me of one of those daddy long-legs you get in the bath. He was all long arms and legs which he crunched up in a suit large enough to fit his height but too wide to fit his frame. His face was almost the face of a boy - it was as if the hormones had spent all their energy telling his limbs to grow, and they had run out of puff when it came to his childish chin. Each wished me goodbye "Nasdar" as they got out of the train, the daddy longlegs saying it in English.

At the station the taxi was waiting and I was sped off along the foggy road to Cesky Krumlov. The fog was pressing in but my taxidriver insisted on overtaking any car that was driving cautiously. As we passed Lidl just outside Krumlov I found myself smiling and despite the driving a sense of wellbeing was creeping over me, growing as we sped on, I was coming home.