Adventures in the Czech Republic

Thursday, 3 December 2009

Themes Covered in This Blog - Theme 1 Czech Nature

As the blog gets larger I thought I might help readers interested in certain topics by creating some pages which list the blog's content by theme. I promise to update the pages as new posts are added.
The themes are: Czech Nature, Czech Customs & Culture, Places to visit in South Bohemia, Buying and Restoring a Czech House, Czech History and Politics, Day to Day Life in the Czech Republic. This post covers Czech Nature, click on the links above for the others.

Czech Nature

This post was brought uptodate on 5th August.

Tuesday, 1 December 2009

An Enterprising Woodpecker.

Please forgive the rather bad photo, it was taken through a misty window. I have been watching this chap for some weeks now. He or she comes regularly to investigate the cracks between the tiles on the barn next door and in the barn wall. Why peck at the frozen bark of the local trees, when you can have insects in ready-made cracks?

The barn is a real attraction for the local birds. I can stand at my window and watch nuthatches, redstarts, treecreepers, bluetits and more feasting on the insect buffet offered by the old barn. Allowing the bird life to come to me certainly beats wandering around in the cold weather clutching a pair of binoculars.

Friday, 27 November 2009

Restoring An Old Farmhouse, Making A Home

Across the village from our house stands an old farmhouse. The village is built at the upper end of a valley and sits in a semi-circle, as a result I look out of my lounge window and see the old farmhouse directly opposite my home. For a long time it was semi-derelict and a bit of a blot on the landscape. But now things are changing.

A local man has taken it on as a project. He needs a family home and is prepared to put in the hard work to turn this ruin into one. I wish him all the best in his endeavour. It was bad enough transforming our place, but he really has taken on a monster. Over the last few months the old roof has been removed and replaced. It looks to me as though he is doing much of it himself - work on the roof seemed to happen at weekends, the scaffolding was made not of the normal metal poles but of silver birch trunks nailed in place.

But making the house waterproof is the first step, every time I walk past I look at the windows and through them to the derelict interior. The new owner is a brave man, but for many Czechs the rise in house prices has made being brave the only option if you want a home.

Tuesday, 24 November 2009

Art Nouveau Architecture in Budejovice

Over the last few weeks I have been developing a website which promotes a comprehensive service for finding, buying and running properties in South Bohemia. The service is run by a fellow ex-pat, who has been helping Brits buy properties in the area for several years now. By the way I did it for free, so this is not a commercial.

I'm not a web designer, but I must say I am rather pleased with the result on http://sites.google.com/site/czechhouseandcottage/

It was created using Google's Sites, with a bit of HTML adjustment.

And it allowed me the pleasure of wandering round Ceske Budejovice taking photos of beautiful Art Nouveau apartment buildings ( see above). Of course the site also covers how to find cottages, and houses in Cesky Krumlov, Ceske Budejovice and South Bohemia, but we found we already had photos of the other property types.

As a Brit one tends to focus on the delightful old cottages, farmhouses and townhouses that abound here, and certainly that is what attracted us to buy here. But from an investment point of view Ceske Budejovice makes a lot of sense: Budejovice Airport is opening to international flights in 2012 and the city is the commercial centre of the region. And then there are these lovely Art Nouveau apartments and villas, and even Art Deco ones too.

Saturday, 21 November 2009

God I love this country!

Every time I leave this place it puts on its best show and charms me all over again. Today I walked down to catch the bus into Cesky Krumlov before getting the Student Agency Coach to Prague, from thence to the airport and so to rainy England.

We have been having some superb late Autumn weather recently, which has been breaking temperature records, 20 degrees and over, clear blue skies and sunshine. A couple of nights ago I walked up from the bus stop under a star-laden sky. In most parts of England when you are lucky enough to have a clear night sky, you can not see all the stars because of light pollution, you see perhaps the main stars, the main constellations. Looking up here I can see not only Orion, but all the smaller dimmer stars that glisten within it.

There was no moon, but the starlight was sufficient to light the road for me. When I came among the trees and so was forced to turn on my torch, there at my feet were more stars, this time of frost covered grass. This morning the frost was still sparkling in the early morning sun. A mixture of mist and woodsmoke hung around the valley, lit up by the low sunshine. Even the realisation that I had misread the bus timetable could not deflate my joy at today's display.

Thursday, 19 November 2009

Getting Ready for the Czech Winter

I've been spending my last few days ensuring we are ready for the Czech winter. It gave the north of the country quite a shock in October by arriving two months early and bringing transport to a standstill as cars and lorries, still on summer tyres, slithered to a stop on snowbound roads. But here in the south we have avoided it, so far, but not for much longer.

I gave up on a load of old roof timbers which I had been keeping under tarpaulin for a time when I might need them. They were showing signs of woodworm and some had a bloom of fungus. So I got two nice guys to appear with their chainsaw and cut them up along with the sycamore trees we cut down in the summer. That was three weeks ago and I have been splitting and stacking logs ever since, helped by the purchase of a heavy splitting axe from an ironmongers in Trebon. There is a huge pile of logs outside the front door, as I know from experience that I will not want to be fetching firewood from the snowheaps when they arrive in the yard.

The patio outside the front door was rebuilt this summer. The previous structure was a typical product of the previous owners - an awful lot of rather badly laid concrete (which probably fell off the back of a lorry). During last winter the concrete steps up to it were lethal, as they sloped in the wrong direction taking water into the foundations of the house where it turned to ice and then broke up the concrete. Result? I slipped on the ice and hurt my ankle. My lovely Czech builders found large granite sets beneath the surface of the patio, with which they rebuilt the steps and partly surfaced the patio. Everything now slopes in the right direction (I have been checking with jugs of water). And today the builders came to measure up the loft for insulation.

So are we ready for whatever the Czech winter will throw at us? We shall see; it has a habit of producing a few surprises.

Monday, 9 November 2009

Prachatice

As part of my research for the Archaeological Society trip to South Bohemia (see previous post) it was interesting to return to Prachatice the other day. It has been at least two years since I went there last and quite a bit of restoration has been taking place, including to the decoration on the renaissance buildings around the town square. Many have created using sgraffito, a process by which the design is scratched (hence the name) into the plaster.

I don't usually do posts in which the main content is photos, but it seems appropriate here. I hope you enjoy them.