A Walk in the Woods with Helena

On Saturday I met my friend Helena in Cesky Krumlov and walked with her over Dubik hill along the old pilgrim's way through the forest to Kajov. It was a slow affair, as we stopped to admire nature and the scenery, and of course to look for mushrooms. I had thought that there would be lots of people with mushroom baskets, but no the woods were empty apart from a child with her mother and they had no basket.

Helena explained that September had been a fabulous month for mushrooms. The summer here has been very dry, indeed there had been a drought, so it wasn't until the rains came in September that the woods exploded with mushrooms. You apparently couldn't move for fungi. Last week there had been frosts – earlier than usual – and they had put paid to many mushrooms. We found the blackened remains throughout the forest.

“I know my Zoe will find mushrooms,” said Helena with an optimism I did not share.

The first edible mushrooms I came across were amethyst deceivers. Not great mushrooms but better than nothing, they went into the basket. I remember my friend Hannah showing me them, when first I learned to identify edible mushrooms. Without her guidance I would never had got up the courage to forage. My son and his girlfriend are going on a day's workshop about hunting mushrooms. I am delighted they have taken an interest, but a side of me wonders how much one can learn in a day. The only way to learn is to go repeatedly into the woods at different times of year with someone who knows what they are doing.

Up a path that branched off the main track through a plantation of fir trees we came across yellow-legged autumn chanterelles, hedgehog mushrooms and the normal chanterelles. All favourites of mine. Now as we walked along the track nearing Kajov we picked more chanterelles, and even some boletus which had been sheltered from the frosts by mosses. The basket wasn't full when we got to Kajov, but there certainly were enough mushrooms for at least two meals, plus some put down in the freezer.

Neighbouring Mushrooms

When I arrived back at the house a few days ago, I found my neighbour's lawn covered with shaggy ink cap mushrooms and others. I am told this also happened last year. “Shame she can't eat them,” said my other neighbour. Seeing my look of surprise, she said “You can't eat them, can you?”

“The white ones, yes,” I replied. “But you want to eat them young, before they start to turn to ink.”

It turns out that the owner of the mushroom-filled lawn was in Prague performing in a show. Nevertheless, that afternoon there were fewer mushrooms in the lawn.

Update on Selling the House

It has been a difficult year so far. Not long after I had returned from my short trip to check on the house, my mother died. It was quite sudden. On the saturday she went with my sister to a garden centre cafe and enjoyed a cup of coffee and a cake and by the following Saturday she had slipped away with her three daughters by her side. Although she had Alzheimers and was physically weak, we thought we had maybe a couple more years with her. We dreaded the time when she would forget who we were, but that time never came. It was as good a death as one could probably wish for. But nevertheless her death was a shock and I am still feeling it.

As the immediate reason why I had decided to sell our Czech home had been the need to care for Mum, and because I didn't feel able to make decisions at that time, I took the house off the market. Then a few weeks ago I got an email from my friend, saying there was someone who was seriously interested in buying the house and was I still interested in selling. The buyers were willing to pay near the estate agent's estimate. So what to do?

What these few years of having to be in the UK for mum have taught me is that unless I can commit spending some serious time in the house, the old building will start to deteriorate. So can I make such a commitment? The answer is probably no. I have started building a life in the UK – growing a garden, building friendships and committing time to writing and promoting my poetry. I don't want to give that up. Nor do I feel I can leave my husband for the long spells of time I used to. So for these reasons I think I may still sell the house.

From a purely financial point of view: with the pound down against the Czech Korun (because of Brexit) selling now means I should get more £s for my house. The converse is also the case, the cost of running the house is rising, just as our family income is going down.

So I have decided to say yes, I am interested in selling, but not so much that I am putting the house back on the market. I will put the matter “in the hands of the angels” as my friend Hannah used to say. 

Sooo Many Tourists

I have been wondering about blogging about the levels of tourism in Cesky Krumlov for some time now. You may think me a hypocrite for complaining about tourist numbers, having published a visitors guide to the town. But then I have always argued for sustainable tourism with visitors staying long enough to benefit the town, rather than the quick in/out visits we are getting now. 

The major change we have seen over the past few years has been the massive rise in Chinese tourists, so much so that the Czech press had nicknamed the town “Činský Krumlov”.  To put the issue into numbers - the town has 14,000 inhabitants but gets over a million visitors. 40% of those visitors are Chinese.  But until a few years ago Chinese visitors were rare. 

Most of these visitors come on day trips by bus from Prague, but when I say day trip their actual stay in the town is a lot shorter than that. The result is that the town is overburdened with tour groups who do not spend enough time here to actually make a positive impact on the local economy. The centre of the town has basically been surrendered to the tourists. Over the last fifteen years I have watched as shops serving locals have all been replaced by tourist shops, even my bank has vacated its site on the main square and moved out (it is going to be replaced by a hotel). Last year Katerina Seda, a conceptual artist-in-residence at the Egon Schiele Gallery, satirized the situation by hiring locals to live in the town centre. 

The Town Council has just announced that it will be charging bus companies 1500 czk  (60 Euro) for each bus visit to the  town with effect from June of this year. But 1500 czk is not a lot when divided between a coach load of tourists and I doubt will have any impact on visitor numbers.  But then it is hard to see what would. 

The Chinese love the romantic nature of the town, so much so that Chinese tech giant Huawei is constructing a full-size replica of Krumlov's castle at its Chinese headquarters in Dongguan, just outside Shenzhen. Yes you read that right - a full-sized replica! They have as much right to enjoy the town as any other nationality, and who can blame them, but how do we balance that with the adverse impact on the town?

Murder in the bedroom.

One of the problems with leaving my Czech house empty for months at a time is there are sometimes some nasty surprises when I get back. Once it was a blooming of dryrot fungus in the kitchen. This time it was the signs of a murder in the large bedroom.

While I was away my neighbour with my agreement showed a friend around the house, as the friend was looking for somewhere to buy in our part of South Bohemia. What my neighbour did not know was that you needed to make very sure the cellar door is closed because the local farm cats like to jump through the cellar window and get in to a nice warm house. There was a definite cat smell about the house when I arrived and paw prints on my furniture, but that wasn't the worst of it.

In the large bedroom the floor was covered with tufts of fur, and flecks and smears of blood. When I swept up the fur it was apparent that the creature that came to a grisly end there was not exactly a mouse, the hair was longer, had an orange tinge and there was a large pile of it. I still do not know what the victim was, but I do have a good idea about the identity of the murderer. I suspect that the creature that did the deed was a beech marten. I have seen them around occasionally. They are capable of taking quite large mammals: such as rabbits and squirrels. They will also take kittens, something my cat-loving friend was always worried about. It may well have been an immature cat which was followed and cornered in my bedroom. I will never know for sure. Whatever it was, I had the unwelcome job of clearing up.

Happy New Year

Another graphic from my collection of Czech exlibris and PFs (Christmas/New Year cards). This is of course Happy New Year card and was created by Ruda Svab. 

So to all of you a happy 2019, may it be a better year than 2018. 

A Major Decision - Leaving the Czech Republic.

I have finally decided that my Czech adventure must come to an end and that I will be selling my Czech home. It is a heart-breaking decision to have to make. I love this house, this country and its people and they have all enriched my life tremendously, but all good things must come to an end they say.

Over the last two years it has become difficult to sustain my home here.  There was/is of course Brexit which has thrown all expat lives into question. But in the end it is not Brexit that is the reason for my decision. It is something far more important than that: family. My father died in 2017 and my elderly mother is finding it increasingly difficult to manage by herself. She has heart failure and Alzheimers and over the last few months I have seen a decline in her. She needs my in England all the time.

But what tipped the scales against keeping the house going are two financial changes. The largest cost re the house is electricity, which is very expensive here. I have electric central heating for when I am away (when I am in the house I used the much cheaper wood stoves), obviously being in the UK all the time would necessitate having the central heating on more plus an email arrived the other day from EON warning of a price increase. Quite simply I cannot afford it, especially as my husband is about to retire and can no longer support my Czech adventure as he has in the past. Of course selling the house will liberate some money which will allow me to come back here regularly and see my Czech friends.

Will this be the end of this blog? Well of course there are going to be posts to come about my travails selling up and moving. And then there is the backlog of subjects that I never got around to blogging about, which I still want to cover. So no, not for some time.