Entschuldigen Sie !

According to Google, that’s “Excuse me!” in German. I, who hinted about the danger of stereotypical media-influenced thinking in my last post, caught myself commiting the same “crime”. We had entered Germany on our bikes (the border between the two countries is arbitrarily marked by a few signs in the forest) and were just about…

Prague, Nazis, refugees, deer, babies, bicycles and generally life recently

Unlike the few previous posts of mine, this won’t be philosophical/philosophizing. I just need to excuse my absence in some way. I’m not here because I am working a bit more than usually these days in order to buy a new computer. My old one died of tea disease caused by Lukaš and brought to…

ephemeral habitats

Not accidentally, this is the name of a not so well carried out but nonetheless carried out mini project of mine, inspired by the flat Ksenia used to inhabit in Celle as well as by her comment that it wasn’t her home. I’m not like her in this respect. I remember Rumi telling me once that…

Love, humility, sunlet

* I am going to do something really bold here and that is adjusting English vocabulary to my own taste. This post is about the lyrics of a song that plays a lot with Czech diminutives. There is no other way I can think of which English uses to express such diminutives other than the…

Masopust, the vegetarian way

Today I was honoured to take part in a Masopust – a carnival that tries, literally, to mask the fact there is a 40-day Lent coming until Easter that, I guess, people here used to observe before Socialism turned Czech Republic into one of the countries with the least religious population in the world once and for…

Two things about Czech Republic I learned last week

I’ve always suspected Czechs of practicing too much sport but now there’s no doubt in that! Last week one of my students explained to me the essence of that strange Czech spring holiday which, probably since long before Global warming changed our ideas of seasons, has been during the winter. Yes, you read it correctly, the spring holiday…

The new sauna

(The original post in Bulgarian dates back to 28 September 2014.) I promised to tell you about the new sauna and here I am fulfilling my promise. “The new sauna” presupposes there had been an old one and yes, there was – just fifteen minutes on foot from our place in the cutely-named district of Klíše (note:…

with ducks

(The original post in Bulgarian dates back from 23 September 2014.) I’m not dedicating this publication to Ksenia (note: who loves ducks) because with “with ducks” I’m actually playing with the Czech word for “(being) back” which, for some reason, is “zpátky” (the z in the front gets devoiced and you should trust me because…

Deutschlanding

(The original post in Bulgarian dates back from 24 April 2014.) Third time lucky. I don’t know if it’s lucky but, against my whole will – for a third time in my life – I bought an InterRail ticket although the last time I’d told myself never to do it again… that is, yet again….

on the road by motorbike/bus/bicycle

(The original post written in Bulgarian dates back to 6 April 2014.) I have the feeling I haven’t written here for years but it’s not because things don’t happen to me anymore. On the contrary, they do and that’s why I have no time to sit and write about them. Otherwise, if you asked me,…

Why I’m on the second page of the local paper

Nothing very interesting happened this week apart from the fact my name was mentioned in the press. Don’t worry, no one’s found out about how last May we went around parks and hotel facilities in order to cover street lamps using black plastic bags (note: because of Lukash’s diploma project) and, generally, Czech Republic has…

How one of the biggest contemporary Czech artists ended up at our home

Actually, I don’t know how – I guess he just went out for a drink with his students, as, as far as I know, he does quite often, and they dragged him to our home. I’m talking about Jiří Kovanda – one of the biggest names in Czech contemporary art and (I guess) in performance art…