GIRL IN CZECHLAND

Some of you will know that there have been some exciting developments recently chez Girl in Czechland (was it Orwell who said never use a French word where an Anglo-Saxon one will do?)

I was recently interviewed by Czech magazine cilichilli: check out (pun intended) Ms Girlova attempting to protect her secret identity with wig and sunglasses. I might publish bits of it in English here if Google Translate doesn’t suffice for my readers.

Back to that not-so secret identity. Recently, a co-operation with a national British newspaper (yes, that’s definitely Czechish) led me to step out from my Girl In Czechland persona. I decided to share a link to said article featuring my name and picture on Facebook and Twitter.

Czechman was unimpressed. Unimpressed is an understatement of epic proportions. He’s very cross indeed.

Anyway, I apparently have two options.

Option 1: Continue to write as Girl In Czechland but without making any further explicit reference to who I am in the offline world.

Option 2. Put my real name on the blog as part of the About page. This means a) having to stop writing about anything Czechman or Village People related b) sinking in Czechman’s estimation as I become just another online attention seeker c) losing a certain kudos.

I haven’t entirely made up my mind yet but for this post, as you’ll see, in my last couple of posts I’ve stuck with Option 1.

Even discussing this feels a bit silly and navel-gazing – what really matters surely is whether what’s written here is worth reading or not rather than whose name is or isn’t attached to it – but it is something I have to decide. I’m interested to hear what you all think.

Ooh, yes and more shameless self-promotion if I may. I’ve been nominated for an Expats Blog Award. To win, I need my loyal readers to pop over there and leave a short positive comment. Reading some of the ones there so far has really made my day so a big thank you to you all in advance.  The winners will be decided on Sunday 16th December so do cast your vote soon.

Recently I was fortunate enough to be whisked away for a romantic weekend by Czechman to a top-secret location in the Jizera mountains.

We even stayed in a hotel with a wellness as we say in Czechlish: I believe the correct term is spa. All very spoilt and western (in a modest way of course) which means I loved it.

Anyway, I got to go in a whirlpool – sorry jacuzzi – and to try out a Finnish sauna and of course, to do a lot of walking in the nature – I mean, the countryside.

Do we actually say ‘in the nature’ in English? Sounds wrong but I can no longer tell with certainty.

Whether it was in the nature, countryside or mountains, a good deal of exercise was required to burn off the calories incurred by indulging ourselves at the zabijacka or pig killing. No porcines were dispatched with in front of us, but on Saturday evening every imaginable bit of the poor unfortunate squealer was served up for dinner at a kind of feast.

There was goulash, black and white sausages, strange savoury mashed up bits of inside you serve on bread, tlačenka (bits of meat suspended in fat) and that personal favorite of mine, prdelačka - aka arse soup. Making our way through a sample of that was a workout in itself.

Anyway, while on our mountainside wanderings, we came across the ski lift I have obligingly included in the photo above. Those huge red metal pulleys look odd without the snow; they seem marooned with no purpose. Which brings me to my first point.

5 Reasons I’m Looking Forward to Winter in Czechland This Year

1. Learning to ski.

Maybe.  I’ve done a spot of cross-country skiing but I’ve never even attempted downhill. Remember my fear of falling over in icy conditions in Prague? I’m afraid that any attempt to master skiing as an adult will inevitably involve a lot of ending up on my backside – or even breaking my neck. Czechman is keen for me to embrace this leisure activity. I’m less enthusiastic. He’s trying to bribe me with wellness hotels and švarak (mulled wine). I’m currently resisting but may give in simply because I’m sure my efforts would make an excellent blog post.

2. Drinking svařák on Old Town Square

I don’t care if it’s touristy or tacky. I’m partial to a bit of mulled wine on Old Town Square while admiring the enormous Christmas tree. It’s guaranteed to get me in the festive mood – but do watch out for rogue Segways.

3. Eating/making vánoční cukroví aka Christmas Biscuits

The English have mince pies; the Czechs have vánoční cukroví aka Christmas biscuits. They come in all shapes and sizes: there’s the wasps’ nests (tastier than they sound), vanilla crescents (vanilkové rohlíčky), bears’ paws (medvedi tlapicvky), mini-gingerbread thingys (perníčky), coconut balls (apparently the easiest to prepare): the list really is endless.

According to that great cultural authority Ona Dnes, it’s already a bit late to be preparing vánoční cukroví. Apparently, if I want to be in the running for Czech Super Wife of the Year 2012, I ought to have started baking about a week ago.

Oops.  Don’t tell Czechman’s mum.

4. Snow

I am looking forward to the snow.

Let me get this straight. I’m not looking forward to traipsing around outside in the horrible grey slush which will invade Prague once the snow has come and then begun to melt. I’m not looking forward to gingerly traversing pavements in hiking boots while trying to avoid patches of black ice. Nor am I looking forward to dodging killer icicles as the thaw sets in.

I am looking forward to being ensconced in a cosy cafe/restaurant/my living room drinking something warm (tea, mulled wine) while watching the snow fall from the window. It’s pretty and soothing  just as long as you don’t actually have to go anywhere in it.

5. Carp for Christmas Dinner

 Actually, this last one is a lie.

I’ve done Czech Christmas. I don’t object to it in principle. It’s just for me, a bit of fried fish and potato salad isn’t really all that festive. Sorry.

My sister is preparing for a long weekend in Czechland as we speak to explore the Christmas markets. Expect some kind of   amusing post all about the joys of trdelnik – shock news! it’s not actually Czech! – and the array of tourist tat on sale in those oh so cute little wooden huts very soon.

Oh, and they’ll be a few words about my (not-so) secret identity too…

That giant alien ray gun: Zizkov TV Tower

commute

1. travel to and from one’s daily work, usually in a city, especially by car or train

2. change (a judicial sentence etc) to another less severe.

According to Joe Moran’s wonderfully entertaining piece of pop-sociology, Queuing for Beginners, the bored commuter has become a symbol of the drudgery of daily life.  If, like me, you have braved the perils of London’s public transport system with its frequent hiccups and full-scale breakdowns, you’ll understand why.

Scientific studies have shown that the humble commuter undergoes more stress than a fighter pilot despite being in no imminent danger – only the wrath of an irate boss should they turn up late. The reason? Unlike the fighter pilot, the urban traveller has no control over what happens to him.  He is powerless.

Now I live in Prague, my journey to work has ceased to be a chore and has instead become one of the minor highlights of my day.  For a start, it’s much shorter. As I’ve said before, Prague is far more compact city than London: there’s none of that “I must allow an hour to get anywhere, even if it’s ten minutes down the road as the crow flies” or “Whipps Cross? No problem. I’ll just get a bus, train, hop on the DLR then flag down a camel.”

My last post may have had a (metaphorical) elephant in it but I was joking about the camel. However, I did spot four camels grazing on the outskirts of Letna from the window of the tram the other day.

No, Ms Girlova hasn’t been dropping acid. They belong to the circus.

I don’t have to venture underground for my commute but I love the metro tunnels with their metallic tiles that seem to belong in a science-fiction film. Before you get down to the platform, those endless escalators have to be negotiated. They do offer male passengers certain delights which have not escaped the attention of  a certain Ricky and Richard – see the comments on my last post to discover what I mean…

I travel by tram. As many Czechs still operate on Austro-Hungarian time and are at their desks (or company-sponsored English lessons) by 7:30am, I usually get a seat. Now I can stare out of the window and watch Prague strobe past the glass. Man cannot live on architecture alone but I delight in those pretty little details – a couple of svelte caryatids or a gilt decorative swirl –  at eight in the morning.

My tram ride takes me along the river. On the other side I can see a tiny stone General Zizkov sitting on his horse; he looks like he belongs on a girl’s charm bracelet. Then there’s the TV Tower, a giant alien ray gun left behind by fleeing UFOs where vineyards once were.  Soon afterwards there’s the Art Wall where a few months ago they had giant photos of men hanging themselves or perhaps they were being hung? It was a bit too provocatively disturbing for first thing in the morning.

We fly across the Vltava. There’s that king of the Castles looking picture-postcard perfect as always. I’m doing what all commuters do: daydreaming of escape, worrying about work, wasting energy reflecting on unsolvable difficulties but as I look about of the window, I feel soothed.

As a one-time Londoner now living in Prague, my journey to work is a daily reminder that my sentence has been commuted to a less harsh one.

This last sentence doesn’t communicate anything except my desire to end with a stylistic flourish.

A couple of male carytids holding up a balcony

Clever gag, eh?

This post has been sitting in my Drafts folder for a long time.

I’ve Googled, I’ve mused, I’ve brainstormed.

The fact is though that I only have one thing to say. I know it might be controversial – and before you ask, yes, I am aware of the recent local election results which depressingly showed that a significant number of Czechs would like them back –  but the essence of what I want to say is this.

Stop blaming everything on the Communists.

I’m talking especially to you, Mr Smug Expat. I’m sick of your supposedly insightful pronouncements.  You may think it makes you sound wise when you say, “Ah yes, of course, but you must remember that they used to live under Communism,”  in reply to every grumble raised by your fellow foreigners. Frankly, it’s starting to get on my nerves.

Surely if a twenty year old waitress is rude to me that means she needs an attitude adjustment – or a slap. Can it really be blamed on a regime which ended before she was born?

And the bureaucracy. Isn’t that more a hangover from the Hapsburg Empire as much as it is part of the Communist legacy? After all, Kafka didn’t live under a Marxist-Leninist regime.

“Ah yes,” Mr Smug Expat continues, “but you must remember” – that stupid grin is spreading across his irritating face – “that the impact of Communism is still being felt here. Things don’t change overnight. The legacy lives on.”

In some ways, yes. Take corruption, for example. It’s obviously due in no small part to the power vacumm left when the country switched to a market economy.

Blaming it all on the Communist past and shrugging your shoulders isn’t going to do much to improve matters though.

I don’t want to underestimate the very real suffering undergone by so many during the forty years as a satellite Soviet state. Let’s not also forget the salient fact that plenty of senior party members simply switched jackets and are still in positions of power.

However, may I politely suggest that sometimes it seems to me some are using the Communist past as a crutch or a scapegoat: it’s those Reds, they crippled the country, we just can’t overcome our country’s past.

Mr Smug Expat wants to talk about the twenty year old waitress again. Perhaps it’s because she has particularly pert breasts.

“Communism may have been finished before she was born. But what about her parents? Didn’t she pick up  her behaviour from them? That’s why it will take generations before Czech society really recovers.”

Alright then Mr Smartypants. Perhaps you have a point. Even Vaclav Havel said that it would take Czechs several generations to recover morally from its Communist past.  But it still seems like some – Czechs and non-Czechs alike – are just shrugging their shoulders and pinning everything negative on Stalin and his chums. How can things ever really improve if you fail to examine the real root cause of a problem?

I didn’t get around to reading The Rise and Fall of Communism by Archie Brown which I ordered from Amazon in preparation for writing this post but I did watch this excellent BBC documentary – and you should too, even if it’s just to assess Havel’s level of English in the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Watch the first part below and educate yourselves.

Greetings.

As you’ve hopefully realised by now, I’m not one to brag. Honest. But there’s something I can’t resist sharing with you all.

Girl in Czechland has written a column for this month’s edition of  Traveller: the free magazine you’ll find stowed away next to the sick bag (also free) should you be flying with Easyjet this October.

You needn’t reach forty thousand feet to enjoy more of my musings though: I picked up a copy (well, actually around six) on my way home from The Big Fat English Wedding I recently attended.

The Village People are very impressed – despite not being able to actually read the text in question due to their lack of English. Czechman, however, is more skeptical. His comments included ” it’s not as good as your blog posts” and that “your usual readers won’t really be interested”.

Judge for yourselves below.

He’s still a bit cross about me revealing some of his secrets in a recent interview I did recently with a Czech magazine – while wearing a wig and sunglasses to protect my secret identity, naturally. Ah well. More of that in November once it actually appears in print.

Let me also say hello to those of you who’ve discovered Girl in Czechland for the first time recently. I’m loving reading all the comments you’ve left, even if I haven’t had a chance to reply. And if you’d like to buy me a coffee using the widget on the sidebar, I’d be most grateful.  The Village People nearly fainted with shock when I told them that there are people out there who would actually do such a thing – as did I. Anyway, a very big thank you once again to all of you who read and enjoy my ramblings.  Has it really been three years since I started sharing my words of, ahem, wisdom with cyberspace? I do believe it has.

God, this is beginning to sound like an Oscar speech. But it’s true what they say: time really does fly when you’re having fun. Being a Girl in Czechland certainly has been entertaining – for me and hopefully for all of you too.

Until next time, nashledanou!