Czech is a difficult language of very limited usefulness. Even so I feel a bit guilty about my lack of effort. I just take the role of accessory to my husband and have not made much attempt to learn it. This brings me to last night, standing in the cold crisp dark evening locked outside…
Yesterday life returned to normal, with schools, work and activities and the town seems much more cheerful than when everyone was cooped up. The gloominess of jet lag, grey weather, 2 funerals, deteriorating house and aging in-laws, has lifted. Here is a photo of J’s 93-year-old father trying to patch the roof of the…
On Saturday in the falling snow, J and I took a bus to a nearby village and walked 30 minutes to the little house his friend and wife have built on a hillside. The approach to the house is on a steep dirt road for which they keep a jeep. She grew up in the…
On Dec 30, A and N got the train to Prague to celebrate New Year’s Eve with some friends. On the 31st, J and I wandered down to the town square before midnight. The photo below shows the square just before the masses arrived. All ages were there but drunken teenagers predominated. Fireworks were everywhere…
My sister-in-law, daughters and I took the bus to the next town where there is a museum made up of a set of traditional old houses that were moved from the hillsides and assembled in a little wooden town. In summer there are folkloric festivals with singing and dancing and lots of people. It was…
My husband has been to two funerals since he came – an uncle on each side of his family. On Monday we were picked up for the 90 minute drive to Zlin for the second one, an uncle I have met a number of times. Most of the way there, we had some time to…
In a recent conversation about travel packing, M asked me if I took my bathing suit to South America. “Yes,” I replied, “since we went snorkeling, but I could have gotten away without it by unzipping the legs of my jungle pants, and I wore a shirt anyway to avoid sunburn on my back.” “Oh,…
The romantic and spectacularly scenic train trip across Canada (well at least from Vancouver to Toronto) has not been as impressive as I expected. Mom has always raved about her train trips, and we were trying to re-create something on this trip. I did it as a child and of course it was a huge…
Seeing Clarely 