Having your cake and eating it (so long as it doesn’t cost more than 50Kc)

'No, I am no Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be...'

There has been another long silence. Since my last post, we seem to have skipped autumn and slid directly into the beginning of winter. I haven’t been out in the elements much though and have instead had to observe this process from my bedroom window. Ms Girl in Czechland has not been having an easy time of it recently. Don’t worry, the problem doesn’t lie with Czechman or Czechland. I should explain that I am caught between two worlds in more ways than one – not just between the anglophone and Czech spheres but between the land of the healthy and the land of the afflicted.

I have M.E. Perhaps the letters don’t mean much to you: unsurprisingly really as the mysterious condition also goes by other strings of letters like P.V.F.S or C.F.S and more confusingly still, some doctors still see it as merely a psychosomatic disorder. It affects my energy levels, I suffer from muscle pain (some days my legs feel as though someone has just taken a baseball bat to them) and my ability to concentrate. During a bad spell I’m like a battery that cannot hold its charge, in and out of bed all day with the ‘rest’ doing little more than taking the edge off the exhaustion. Making it to the computer and thinking in proper sentences has therefore been something of a challenge.

I wasn’t going to mention any of this: it feels quite personal and not whimisical and un-Czech related. I worry that talking about illness is nearly as boring as having to experience it. I muse (I like to muse, it amuses me) that splurging out your angst in an emotionally incontinent fashion online is ugly. However, if you’ll forgive me a little navelgazing, blogging does encourage a certain kind of intimacy which makes it tempting to confess more than you might to a bunch of essentially strangers. Perhaps because I’m sitting here alone at my computer typing, this what I write has a message in a bottle quality. I’ll write something I think somebody somewhere might find of interest whether it’s an example of Czech extreme thrift or my favourite tram journey or strange meat products on offer in Tesco and I hope that some like minded person will stumble across it and enjoy reading it. There’s something magical about that, in it’s own way.

Healthwise I’m picking up a little. Today Czechman and I went on an brief excursion to the Cubist museum in the Old Town where we looked at angular armchairs, strange still-lifes and queer statues. The building itself – The House of the Black Madonna – is of course an example of Cubist architecture so one of the most impressive things about the place for me was the staircase inside. There is a cafe (you know by know how fixated I am on coffee and cake venues) with green and white stripey padded seats but it was full of tourists (I know, I know, I’m a snob) so Czechman and I went elsewhere. This led to the usual clash between spoilt Western values and Czech thrift.

“If a piece of cake costs more than 50Kc (£1.70ish) I’m just going to walk straight out of there again.”

We were standing outside Cafe Cafe on Rytířská. I knew, having been here before with my expat friends, that a chunk of creamy gateau would set us back almost double Czechman’s specified top price.

We go somewhere else which was dark and drab and almost as expensive. The cake was good though and as I ended up paying, I shouldn’t moan. Or perhaps I should – that might be a sign that I’m finally managing to integrate…

There will be better posts soon, I promise.  I’ve enjoyed reading all your comments, especially on the winterphobia post, and I’m sorry that I haven’t always managed to reply.  The blog will go on though, M.E or no M.E, as long as some of you out there want to find my cybermessages in a bottle.

From zenophobia to freezophobia: will I survive the Czech winter?

After tackling the serious topic of the Czechs and racism, I thought I’d move onto more neutral territory: the weather.

Today it is gloriously sunny in Prague. There has been a distinct lack of cold or rain despite the fact that we’re nearing the end of September; my recent visitors from England first words when I went to pick them up from the metro were, ‘You didn’t warn us it would be this warm!’

Of course, I should be grateful for this late burst of sunshine but instead I can’t stop thinking about the cold days to come. It’s been six months since I made the move to Czechland and so far, things are going well. I haven’t felt particularly homesick and I think I’m managing to settle in reasonably well. However, I’ve never experienced Prague in winter, not even as a visitor. In fact, I’ve never been anywhere in my life where the temperature gets lower than minus two or three and I’m worried that the Czech winter could be the thing that sends me back on the next Easyjet flight home for good.

Winters in England are grey and miserable. There’s rain and mist and cold and ice and sometimes even snow. When the snow does appear, as I was explaining to the amusement of my students recently, everything stops: schools close, trains are cancelled and most people stay at home. Last year, the three or four centimetres of snow stopped London’s buses from running, a feat even Adolf Hitler couldn’t manage during the Blitz.

It never gets to minus 10C though. I’m so anxious about the approaching winter that I’ve already begun buying huge thick wool cardigans even though it’s so warm now that I’m sweating when I try them on. I don’t care. I must be prepared. When I imagine what winter will be like in Prague, I keep thinking about a film about Napoleon where he’s sitting in the Winter Palace in a deserted Moscow covered in a thick carpet of snow with his army in ruins defeated by a freezing winter. Now I am aware that Prague and Moscow have different climates but this is the nightmare scenario I have in my head that makes me shop for sweaters in the blazing sunshine.

I’ve also realised I need a new pair of winter boots. Czechman disagrees, even though the pair I currently own are two years old and have a hole in the front. When I complain that a replacement pair will set me back 3000Kc (I take my mother’s advice and only wear footwear made from leather) Czechman makes the following suggestion.

‘Can’t you just paint over it?’

Am I alone in thinking that this is taking thriftiness just a little bit too far?

Back to the winter. I’ll knit socks. I’ll buy thermal vests and longjohns and for the first time in my life, have a decent excuse to wear them. I’ll sit very close to the radiator when indoors, drink numerous cups of tea and pray this winter, unlike the last, is a mild one.

“I’m not normal, I’m a nigger”: are the Czechs more racist?

***

I didn’t want to write about this. Really. I would have much preferred to break my rather long silence with a whimisical piece about trams or clocks or a funny picture of a man eating an unfeasibly large sausage. The problem is, people keep coming out with things that as a self-confessed Guardian-reading lefty liberal, I find, well, shocking. Let me give you a couple of examples and then we’ll see what you think.

Last week I as teaching ‘if clauses’ to one of my groups of business students. They range in age from early thirties to mid-fifties. I gave them halves of sentences which they were supposed to come up with their own creative endings too. Fellow TEFL teachers will be well-acquainted with the kind of thing I mean: ‘If I won the lottery…’, ‘If cars ran on milk…’ ‘If everyone had eyes in the backs of their heads…’. One of the sentences my students had to complete was the seemingly innocuous, ‘If everyone had to learn Chinese instead of English..’

“I’m afraid of the Chinese,’ announced Jitka.

“Why?’ I find myself obliged to inquire.

“They are like ‘mravenci’.”

Oh God. I know this Czech word. “You think the Chinese are like ants?”

“Yes. There are just so many of them. It makes me afraid.”

***

I had a one-to-one student at a multinational company. She was in her late fifties. Let’s call her Ludmilla. Like many students, Ludmilla liked to use her English class as a kind of pseudo-therapy session so I know all about her difficult elderly mother-in-law who is too infirm to live by herself but refuses to go into a home, her concerns about restructuring in the department which means she will probably be made redundant and her sadness that the revolution happened too late for her to really do something with her life. Every time the class ends I feel faintly depressed and resolve not to police my boundaries better in future, which I of course then fail to do.

Anyway, one day we wander off onto the topic of previous teachers Ludmilla has had.

“I had someone from South Africa once but she was not a nigger.”

I burst out laughing; I don’t think I’ve heard a real person – i.e not a rapper or someone in a Spike Lee film – say this word out loud for years.

“No, you can’t say that in English”.

She pauses, reformulating the sentence in her mind. “She was not a nigger. She was normal.”

“No, you can’t say that either,” I told her. “In fact, what you just said is even worse.”

It is perhaps worth mentioning at this point that Ludmilla greatly admires Brigitte Bardot for the work she did later in life to promote animal rights.

***

I taught a new group somewhere in the bowels of a huge glass corporate headquarters somewhere on the edge of Prague. We are doing icebreakers. One of the icebreakers involves the students finding out something the others in the group really object to. All of them are in their late twenties to early thirties.

“What does it mean, ‘object to’?”

“It’s when you really, really don’t like something. When you are against it.”

“Can I say, ‘I object to the rain?’”

“No, it must be stronger. For example, ‘I object to racism.”

Lenka looks at me, genuinely puzzled. “Why?”

***

I didn’t want to write about this topic as I really don’t want my Czech readers to think that I’m coming over here claiming that everyone in Britain lives in multiracial harmony and that no-one would ever utter a non-politicially correct word. I don’t. In case you doubt me, I refer you to my entry where I talk about my own father’s racist comments.

What I do find surprising is that there is more casual racism here in than in Britain: for example, when I mentioned I was going on holiday to Berlin to a group of students, one of them quipped that it was the second biggest Turkish city in the world, knowing he would get a laugh. In Britain, that kind of comment would be rewarded with an embarrased silence. It’s probably just a symptom of the fact that the country was closed off from the outside world for so long but I’m still irked by the fact that youngish people who have probably travelled and had that contact with outside can still make these kinds of comments. Anyway. Enough attempts at serious analysis. Next time expect photos of mushrooms and statues and mannequins.

I look forward to your comments. I have a feeling they’ll be plenty.

hi-how-are-you-i’m-fine-thanks-how-are-you

***

***

How are you?

I know I’m asking but don’t go assuming that means I’m actually the least bit interested in the response. Apparently that’s because I’m English and for us, asking that innocuous question is just a way of clearing our throats. Often we don’t even bother to provide an answer before blurting out the same question parrot fashion. The French make things more convenient from this point of view; when you are asked ‘ça va?’ a simple ‘ça va’ will suffice in reply.

The Czechs do things differently. If someone bothers to go to the trouble of asking how you are, it is okay to assume they are interested in the response. You are allowed to say, “I’m feeling pretty shit actually” or go off on one about your bad boss, hair day or divorce. “Not great” is an acceptable answer here. In England, only “I’m fine” will do.

The linguists have a term for what we English do. It’s called phatic communication: language acts which have very little meaning or purpose other than to avoid silence. Perhaps the reason the Czechs I’ve spoken to about the ‘how are you?’ issue are confused about English ‘how-are-you-ing’ is that they misunderstand the true meaning of the standard response ‘I’m fine’. In fact, saying you’re fine doesn’t signify all that much, just that nothing terrible happened to you or your nearest and dearest that particular day, that you are alive, in reasonable health and not anticipating any imminent catastrophe. That’s all. You’re ok.

If you are feeling shitty and you’re speaking to someone English, my advice would be to keep a lid on it. Whatever you’re heard about the infiltration of U.S therapy culture, we still consider emotional incontinence bad manners. I only asked how you were, so don’t go spilling your guts everywhere: I don’t want to be subjected to a fifteen minute monologue.

I’m being deliberately provocative of course and I anticipate that you will agree or disagree with me as usual in the space provided.

I’m fine by the way. Really. Apart from having my mobile stolen on the 22 tram. No camera phone means no nice new pictures of bridges and mannequins and men eating sausages to put on my blog. But of course, I shouldn’t be telling you that as I’m sure you’re just asking out of politeness.

Don’t bother with Starbucks, just look up

 

I’ve been living in Prague for around four months now.  I like it here.  My life is falling into a routine which is good because it helps me to feel more comfortable and settled but bad because I am in danger of losing the magic of being in a new place. 

In ‘Talking it Over’ by Julian Barnes (one of my favourite books) Stuart knows that he is in love because his walk to work is mysteriously transformed.  He starts noticing things, little details – decorations on buildings, a plaque commemorating a Zepplin raid – that he had somehow previously managed to overlook for years.  Things are looking up for him: that makes him look up, literally.

I try to do the same as much as possible here in Prague.  The results are rewarding.  Every building seems to have its own little appealing quirk whether its a pretty mosaic mural in an Art-Nouveau style, a muscle-bound Greek god hoisting up a windowledge on his huge shoulders or a frieze of the great proletariat engaging in some industrious activity. 

I was standing outside Starbucks on Wencelsas Square waiting for someone. Just in case you think I’m being all spoilt and western again, I’d just like to make it clear that we were just using it as a rendez-vous point -  even I think 90Kc is steep for a vanilla moccafrotthacappolatte.

A little bored, I craned my head back and had a good look up at the building on the corner. 

 

Look at these queer jade faces: they look as though they could have been stolen from an Aztec temple or mystical totem pole.  Wander around the corner into Stepanska and look even further up (the zoom on my camera wouldn’t reach that far) and you’ll be rewarded by seeing a row of lions’ heads with golden teeth jutting out from the wall.  Seeing them gets me thinking.  Who put them there?  Why lions?  Thinking in this way is good: it means I’m engaging with my surroundings not just sleepwalking along in a routine-induced daze.

If you’re scared of getting lost, walking out in front of a car or bumping into people, then you can engage in active noticing more safely from the window of a tram.  Try jumping on the 9 at Jindrisska.  Fight your way to a seat – not the ones for invalids by the doors as you’ll soon have to leap up again for a senior citizen or someone on crutches.  However much you love people-watching,  ignore the people inside the tram, tilt your head back and look out of the window.  Don’t move until you get to Andel. 

Now experiment.  Try other tram routes.  Stare up to examine the buildings around you while you’re waiting for the bus or tram in the first place.  You could even try taking things a step further.  Disappear down side streets just to see what’s there.  I know you know this already but sometimes it’s easy to forget.   You might find something worth seeing or you might end up nowhere.  Don’t worry.  We know the world isn’t flat: there’s no risk of falling off the edge into a void.  Except here of course.

In praise of Czech thrift: five ways to save during the credit crunch

 

Canteen food, Czech style, complete with meat, dumplings and a thick sauce.

Thanks a lot for all your comments to my last post on the issue of spoilt and Western behaviour.  Rather than trying to reply to them all, I thought it would be easier to write a new post.

Just in case I didn’t make myself clear, I don’t think Czech thriftiness is a bad thing.   Far from it.  As one of you already said, what’s so impressive about the way Czechs save money is that they manage to do it so instinctively.  It is rare that Czechman would forget to prepare an adequate amount of sandwiches and other provisions to take along with us on the train or plane and why not: they’re cheaper, tasier and being wrapped up in tissue paper, better for the environment too.  However, what I do find funny (in both senses of the word) is that now I’m in Czechland the way I handle money marks me out as prolifigate while in British terms I’m considered to be what is euphemistically termed ‘careful’ (i.e a bit of a skinflint) .  

You should have my sister’s reaction when I made her have lunch in St Barts Hospital canteen (cost £2.50) rather than splashing out on poncey-nouveau-fusion-grub at a restaurant  (potential cost £10+). 

‘I come here sometimes with Czechman,’ I explained by way of justification.   

‘You deserve each other,’ she replied, looking up from her burger and chips with a contemptuous look.

Anyway, in the interest of balance and for the benefit of my sister, here are some valuable tips in the art of financial management I have learned from the Czechs.  None of them are going to make you rich overnight but hey, there’s a credit crunch on so every penny (or crown) counts… 

1) Grow your own.  Not a practical option for city-dwellers but this is something the Czechs excel at.  A weekend with Czechman’s family always means returning back to Prague with a sack of potatoes big enough to see us through a nuclear winter. I guess since they knocked down the Berlin Wall there’s less chance of that actually being necessary.

2) It is possible to make two perfectly good mugs of tea with just one teabag.  I was shocked when Czechman first attempted this but provided you avoid the horrible Lipton rubbish and stick to the Tesco Red Label builders kind, the results are perfectly drinkable.

3) When buying for any Czechs in your life, remember that inexpensive but thoughtful gifts will be probably be more appreciated than they would in the West.  For example, one Christmas when I was particularly short of money I managed to buy a copy of the Independent newspaper from 1989 featuring the Velvet Revolution on the front page.  It only cost me £3 including postage but he loved it.  Job done.

4) It is also possible to knit a bathmat out of old rags.  There’s nothing Czech about this but I think it’s the strangest thing I’ve ever done to save money. Czechman was very impressed by my ingenuity though.

5) The main lesson to be learnt from the Czechsters is this: you don’t need to spend a fortune to have a good time.  During my long weekend at Czechman’s brother-in-law’s family cottage thanks to some clever budgeting we spent the grand total of 180Kc (£6) on food each.  This covered all our meals for three days.  Yes, we did eat some rather suspect pink luncheon meat but we didn’t resort to boiling any rabbits’ skulls or consuming any offal. 

My next post will steer cleer of matters financial and will not include a list.  Instead I’ll be writing about another Czech cultural institution: the summer film festival…

How to be spoilt and western: a beginner’s guide

 

 

The first time I heard him say it was during a trip on the 254 bus. We had passed through Stamford Hill and we were now travelling along the Seven Sisters Road towards Manor House tube.  This long straight stretch of road was flanked on both sides by a collection of vast housing estates. Although they weren’t the high rises filmmakers use as a backdrop when they want to suggest urban decay, something about them depressed me.

 ‘Can you imagine what it would be like to live in one of those?’ I said in a low voice.

‘You are just spoilt and western,’ came the reply from my Czech companion.

 I admire the way Czechs know how to get by without spending a lot.  I do, really.  I’m pretty thrifty myself: most of my clothes are second-hand or bought during the sales, I can make a roast chicken stretch for at least three meals and unlike many of my British friends, I have modest savings rather than a whopping overdraft.   That’s why it puzzles me that my behaviour is still somehow deemed spoilt.  Anyway, here’s a list of my deviant actions I have complied so you can judge for yourselves…

 8 Ways to Impress your Czech Partner with your Spoilt and Western Behaviour

1)      Paying for anything you already have or could somehow get for free.  You’ll notice how very few Czech people ‘forget’ to bring a carrier bags with them to Albert or Billa now you have to pay for them. 

2)      Owning more than two pairs of jeans.  It has taken me a number of years to convince Czechman that owning more than six T-shirts, two sweatshirts and two pairs of jeans is not bad and wrong.

3)      Spending money on having a tea or coffee not because you really want to drink it, but because you want to sit somewhere warm while waiting for the train/bus.

4)      Using a taxi.  Ever.

5)      Refusing to eat sandwiches in a bus shelter in a remote part of Scotland in the rain while on holiday and demanding to be taken to the nearest pub for lunch instead. 

6)      Believing it is acceptable to spend more than 100Kc (£3) on a hot meal at lunchtime (including a hot or cold beverage). 

7)      Believing it is acceptable to spend 150kc (£5) on a hot beverage and a slice of cake while socialising with girlfriends.

8)      Refusing to travel abroad by coach rather than by plane.  It may reduce your carbon footprint.  It may be cheaper.  It may be a way of avoiding annoying stag parties.  I’m not sitting on a coach for fifteen hours.  Sorry.

DISCLAIMER 

The points listed above may or may not be based on actual events or reflect the current views of Czechman who may or may not exist. 

Sorry.  I had to put that bit in or he’ll get upset.

Family holiday Czech style

 

 

 I hate people who produce blog posts consisting solely of their holiday photos.   Save it for Facebook or the round robin email to your mates back home.

What you see above then, aren’t really holiday photos at all, more like documentary evidence from my latest expeditionary trip deep into Czechland.  Czechman’s parents rent a cottage (chata) near the same man-made lake every summer: they invited Czechman and I, along with his sister and her husband, to join them.  

The cottage is in a holiday camp in a place called Podskali (literally ‘under rock’). The whole place had a ramshackle feel to it with chalets and tents and caravans scattered along the edge of the lake around a rundown looking hotel. A holiday camp back home in England usually means a place with a bingo hall, several amusement arcades and an entertainment complex where cabaret acts in the twilight of their careers put on a show for a few bored pensioners.  Not in Czechland.  Here the only ways to spend your money were playing table tennis, buying a paper or renting a rowing boat.  Or, of course, in the pub which we visited only once to get a beer to take to Czechman’s dad while he was fishing.

I’m not complaining though.  I think that this is just an example of how Czechs have mastered the art of having a good time without spending too much money.  We spent our time playing board games and cards, rowing back and forth across the lake and going for walks in the countryside. One of these expeditions turned into a spontaneous mushroom picking session.  I’m not very good at picking mushrooms, it turns out, probably because as Czechman’s dad pointed out, ‘you don’t really have a lot of this terrain in London, do you?’   Communication between myself and Czechman’s family remains limited due to my painfully slow progress in Czech but at least we can share the odd joke.  I know I should be patient but I wish I could speak Czech better though.  Not really being able to say much makes me feel shy and silly and invisible.

I should also mention our day trip to Orlik, the white castle you can see in the photograph at the top.  It was inhabited by the Schwarzenbergs, a bunch of soldiering aristocrats who filled the palace with the antlers of deer they’d shot and lots of guns. There were so many dead things mounted on plaques and displayed on the walls I’m surprised they had time to do anything else but hunt.  The place must have looked even more impressive perched on the edge of a cliff as it would have been before the river was flooded to create the lake which powers the nearby hydroelectric dam.  It is worth seeing if you get the chance.

I spotted a woman striding into the lake with a bottle of shower gel in her hand, presumably to get a wash without having to pay for the showers.  Am I alone in finding this odd?

Heavy weather

 Here is a picture of the view from my window. If you look really closely you can just make out the tiny silouhette of Prague Castle on the horizon. It’s hard to make out because of all the cloud. That’s because it’s raining.  It’s been doing that a lot here recently.  Not just ordinary rain, but torrential downpours with thunder so ear-poppingly loud it made me wonder if a grenade had gone off outside.  We have plenty of weather in England too – sometimes our entire summer consists of two or three sunny days in August – but nothing quite like this. 

 In England cold and rain go together like fish and chips or milk in tea. (Yes, there should be milk in tea and no, I shouldn’t have to ask for it.  Sugar is an optional addition to a nice cup of tea.  Milk isn’t).  In fact, this crazy Prague summer time weather means a baking, oppressive heat which lasts most of the day punctuated by a swift opening of the heavens around five or six in the evening.  The water buckets down cats and dogs. There’s none of that fine spray we call drizzle or the few scattered drops that might be described by the forecasters as a light shower: it’s like monsoon season wandered north.

 This is macho, no-nonsense precipitation; its mission is to soak you to the skin. If you forget to take an umbrella, there’s no hope for you.  Your best plan of action is to dive into the nearest pub and drown your sorrows until the storm passes.   Don’t bother asking for a mineral water unless you want to get a very dirty look from the waiter and have the others around you assume you got lost on your way to an AA meeting.

I want to go out now but it’s still raining. 

Not Charles Bridge

***

***

This is not Charles Bridge. There are no soot covered statues of long forgotten saints. There are no guided groups of tourists here, no traders selling fridge magnets or offering to draw a caricature of you for a very reasonable price.  There are no musicians playing old jazz for spare change or trying to flog you their CD for only 500kc. There are no pickpockets, no crowds, no scaffolding.

  

There is, however, for those who have the initiative to take the tram half a dozen stops from the centre, a picture postcard perfect panoramic view of Prague as you can see here:

***

***

The bridge is primarily for trains but there are two narrow pedestrian walkways either side of the tracks which run along the centre. When the engines rocket past they seem to be within touching distance, speeding along with such force that violent vibrations shake the wooden planks, just like at the start of an earthquake.  There’s no way the Health and Safety brigade back in England would allow it.  While there’s little chance of coming to harm in a collision with a train, do watch out for cyclists and enthusiastic joggers. 

Officially, the bridge doesn’t have a name (according to this reliable source anyway) but as it connects Vysehrad with Smichov, it’s known as the Vysehrad Railway bridge or Vyšehradský železniční most.   This means that if you tear yourself away from the view of Prague Castle and face south west, you’ll see the gothic towers of Saint Peter and Paul’s Church, Vysehrad’s main landmark.  You can also see a couple of nearby beautiful Cubist villas, a style of architecture pioneered in the Czechland in the early 20th century.

Of course the main reason to escape the tourist trail is to observe Czechs in their natural habitat.  While standing on the bridge, I noticed quite a few people fishing; a lone girl in a hooded sweatshirt sat on a bench feeding ducks in peace, at least until some crazed English blogger sneaked up and took her picture.

***

I wanted to take some arty shots of the bridge which juxtaposed the ugliness of the rusty girders with the beauty of  the surrounding landmarks. I did my best, really I did.  I tilted the camera at odd angles. I zoomed in.  I made sure the sun was behind me.  Here’s my best effort.  Hopefully you’ll find it atmospheric in some way:

Girl in Czechland decides to see Prague from a quirky angle - literally...

Ok, it’s terrible. Lone Girl Feeding Ducks is as arty as it gets today.  Ten points for effort though.

I’m not suggesting that those visiting Prague don’t bother with Charles Bridge, which is undeniably beautiful.  Unfortunately, if there’s a crowd of tourists somewhere, it’s usually because there is something worth seeing nearby.  If you really want to have Charles Bridge to yourself you could try getting there at 6am before the hawkers and holidaymakers are still in bed. Alternatively you could travel just a few tram stops off the beaten track and see a city from somewhere most visitors overlook.  Try it: you never know, you might like it.