Christmas

Christmas is tinged with sadness this year for Czechs.

The 'People's President' Vaclav Havel passed away a few days ago and the country is in mourning.  It seems he touched the lives of many people, who saw him not only as their political leader that transitioned the country from communism to democracy, but as a fellow friend, someone who was looking out for them.  He was a person who lived by his simple motto, 'Truth and love must prevail over lies and hate'. 

His death I suppose is in some way the end of an era, but in other ways it reminds the Czechs that the struggles and hardships that its people and country suffered didn't happen that long ago.  For anyone under 30 it's hard to imagine but there are still generations who still feel the after affects of communism.  My husband's family are one such example - torn apart by family members running away and not being able to return for years.

Christmas will of course continue, and the Czechs it seems love this holiday as much as the Brits do, the Christmas markets still draw the crowds, there are intricate nativity scenes dotted around Prague, Svarak (or mulled wine) can be found on every corner, and there are decorations and trees everywhere.

Czechs celebrate on the 24th of December, and it's mainly centered around an evening meal.  I suppose it's no surprise that a nation of meat-lovers has fish on this special day, but it's no ordinary fish....it's carp which has spent the year growing exponentially in ponds around the country.  The fish get 'harvested' in November when the ponds are drained and the fish are moved temporarily to farms ready for the supermarkets and markets.

But naturally most people like to buy their carp fresh....but if you want it really fresh you'll buy it live from the many fish tanks around town, take it home and keep it in the bath tub for a few days.


Just make sure you've had a bath first.


...some carp lucky and get released back to ponds and rivers once the kids have made pets out of them, others are destined for the chop if you're not too squeamish 
(I'm thinking we might just get a filet...).


Then it’s breaded and fried and served with a potato salad.


The Christmas tradition here is that Ježíšek, a sort of baby Jesus, brings presents under the tree and lights the sparklers on the tree at the same time after the meal is finished....it's always a bit of a struggle working that one out whilst sitting at the table, and not burning the house down.


Ježíšek is having a hard time in the Czech Republic at the moment - because the much more robust and commercial Santa Claus has muscled his way in on the scene and traditionalists are up in arms.  The problem is Ježíšek / baby Jesus just doesn't have a great marketing image, he's not arriving on a great big sleigh with bells tinkling shouting 'ho ho ho', in fact most of the time he's not even depicted at all.


My kids are lucky.  They get to celebrate twice as Ježíšek and Father Christmas have worked it out between themselves, they get a gift under the tree on the 24th, and a stocking on the 25th so let there be peace and harmony between all.

My family are due in the next few days, which we're very excited about - so before the christmas madness begins.... 

All that's left for me to say is Veselé Vánoce and Štastný nový rok....Merry Christmas and Happy New Year  xxx

Creative, Crafty, Christmas...

I'm tempted to lie and say I made these, and overnight I was transformed into this creative goddess, but I suppose it wouldn't be fair on the children.

Yes, they made them  - it was nothing to do with me....They did it all at school and yesterday we went to the 'christmas craft fair' where each class had produced a different selection of products to sell.

I have to say I was really impressed.

but I shouldn't be surprised, Czechs seem like quite a handy bunch...in fact I think Martha Stewart the American Queen of Home Making must have had some Czech in her.

Czech women have this gene that I swear Western women don't have - they can bake 100 different types of Christmas biscuits, make stunning home made decorations which they magically sprinkle about the house like fairies....(and talking about fairies they must have at least 5 cleaning ones working for them).

And then to add insult to injury, they themselves look immaculate, effortlessly groomed and quaffed.

It's just not possible.

It's just not bloody fair.

At the craft sale my son's teacher reminded me that they have a Christmas party next week and mums again can bake something to bring in, she quickly added, but if you don't bake you can bring some juice.

Now I have a dilemma.  Do I just bring in the juice? Or do I rise to the challenge, pinny on, rolling pin at the ready and show these Czech teachers just what they've been missing?

Cool head, warm heart

On Friday my daughter was rejected from the Christmas concert.

She played out of rhythm on the piano and so the teacher told her in no uncertain terms that she couldn’t play.

I think my daughter was a bit shocked.

To tell you the truth so was I.

I’m still not quite used to the direct way in which Czech teachers operate. 

I have to smile when I think about how the mums in our old school in London would take the news that their 9 year old had been unceremoniously dumped from the Christmas concert because they played The Entertainer too fast.       

They would be up in arms.

There would be outrage.

Frankly the headteacher would be hung drawn and quartered, or at least be asked to step down ; )

Instead we have to take it in our stride, and laugh with the kids about how things are different here.

Thank the Lord…the kids have been doing super well in class (phew, can you imagine otherwise?...I shudder to think).  In fact both were given something called a ‘Pochval’, a certificate of praise, it was a real surprise for all of us, including the kids, when they received it so that was nice.

But even funnier was that even though the kids both scored an average of 1 (the highest grade) on their certificates, the comments written by the teachers weren't full of superlatives and praise, ‘excellent work, great job, brilliant effort’ -  instead there was a brief mention on how they are doing well, but then a list of ways in which they could improve!   

Czechs aren’t known for their smiles and warmth, even though underneath they have a heart of gold - it takes quite a while for the icy exterior to melt. 
However, once they get to know you they will do anything for you.

And it always amazes me how much they do help each other.  I often think it’s something really missing from our Western European lives, the ability to help each other without blinking an eye, a sort of community spirit amongst friends and rellies.  For example, it’s really common for women to go back to work and Grandparents are the main carers here, if you need something done like plumbing you call a friend not a professional.  You never pay anyone, maybe you'll cook them a meal, give them a bottle, or return the favour someday but it's not expected.

I used to get annoyed when my husband would announce a friend of a friend of a friend was suddenly coming to stay on our sofa bed for god knows how long.... but now I’m used to it and I realise that it's really nice to have that support, and maybe it comes from communist era when times were tough and you shared what you had, whether it was a skill or a floor to crash on....I don't know.


One thing I do know though is that it can take a bloomin' long time to pierce that cool facade....

But I should be celebrating.  One mum asked me for a coffee last week... Hurrah!  It only took 3 months ; )

sweet tooth

This is what my son had for breakfast the other day.

Nutritionists would have a field day.  I'm not sure if any of the ingredients actual fall into any  recommended food group.

My son went on a sleepover at the school (lovely idea, again he was packed up with roll mat, sleeping bag etc).  The school letter said, 'prosime maminky, aby nam napekly upecene sladkosti slouzi jako snidane' - mothers please can you bake something sweet for breakast.

Bake?!

This obviously wasn't aimed at the English mum in the playground.  Instead my son got a donut and some cakes from the local store : )

Czechs don't have a word for 'sweet tooth', but gosh don't they personify the phrase.

They love anything sweet.  There are Cukranas everywhere (a kind of bakery) but they don't really sell much in the way of bread, more like slabs of cake - with nuts, chocolate, cream, coconut, sprinkles, icing, you name it.... all screaming out Eat Me!

I've been know to indulge in the odd cake or two given the chance, but what I can't stand is eating sweet food for a main meal.

It seems this isn't a problem for most Czechs.

I nearly gagged the first time I had 'ovocne knedliky' for lunch at my future mother-in-laws, it was a sweet fruit dumpling covered in icing sugar.  This was the main meal...yes followed by....desert!

And how can I forget the first time I had 'nudle s makem'.

My sister and I were visiting the in-laws family deep the Czech countryside and we were served what we thought was pasta for dinner.  But it wasn't like any pasta dish I'd ever tasted - it was bathed in butter, covered with icing sugar and sprinkled on the top was a mountain of poppy seeds.

My sister helpfully christened the dish, 'Pet Shop Pasta' as it had the aroma of a pet shop - that kind of bird seed smell.  Yummy.

My daughter has already inherited the sweet gene off her father and she's in 7th heaven, especially as the kids are allowed to take sweets to school and teachers positively encourage their sugar addiction by handing them out to the class ALL the time.

Even the doctor gives out lollies as regularly as she does prescriptions!

How can I fight that?!  I can only retaliate with plates of fruit as pure punishment ; )

Although my taste buds have got used to the eccentricities of Czech cuisine, I can guarantee I'll never embrace sugar like a true Czech.

Bitter Sweet

We’ve just come back from a whirlwind trip to the UK.  It was absolutely lovely to see everyone, to feel reassured it was all still there, and everything’s ticking along as normal. 

I do feel I need a week to recover after spending too many nights drinking, and not sleeping very much.

We ran around like headless chicken and there were a ton of people I didn’t even get to call, let alone see, but we couldn’t do it all. The kids are exhausted after fun sleepovers and the excitement of seeing their friends and it was lovely for me to catch up with people and celebrate Dad's birthday with the family.

But it’s always a little weird stepping into your old life, then popping back to your new one, never quite fitting into any of them.

We all felt it coming back, the kids didn’t want to go back to school on Monday and we all felt a little flat.  But it is amazing how quickly you have to get back into the swing of things – what with school, homework and stuff to do, it’s almost as if we never went away.

I asked my mum if indeed it did it feel as though I was far away,

‘No' she said, 'Not really, and Skype really helps, I feel as though we are in the same room’

It’s true.  Technology, Skype, email, mobile phones mean that we’re really never more than a click away.  

I can’t imagine how my parents ever let me go travelling around Asia, the only communication between us was a few phone calls when I could afford them, and letters between home and the Poste Restante.

Does the Poste Restante still exist I wonder? Or has it been driven to ground by new media, facebook, facetime etc.  I’ll never forget trying to find where my post had ended up in Indonesia, we'd gone to the main post office only to find it was being refurbished and we took a tuktuk out of town to the warehouse where the post was being stored.  I was desperate to find the parcel from my mum – it  contained 2 precious objects essential for travelling – a new contact lens and a bank card it in (I’d lost my lens partying in Ko Phangan).

Nowdays I can see my mum, chat, hang out, even if it’s virtually, and it’s amazing. 

Still it will never replace the one on one contact and with that, I’m so glad we came this weekend.

bilingual brood

I heard my daughter talking to her dad this morning – she was whining about something that he’d done wrong, or was supposed to have done.

Nothing new there.

But what was different was how she was speaking.  Her Czech was amazing (and I’m not just talking about use of vocab).  She sounded like a Czech kid - with a Prague accent to boot. 

A Czech kid, moaning at her dad.

When we lived in London my kids spoken Czech was passable, some people voiced their concerns, ‘why go?', 'how will they cope?’, ‘what will they do?’.  I never really worried about how they would communicate, I knew it could only get better, and after only two months I see it already has.  By leaps and bounds.

Last week I read a really interesting article about being bilingual.  There was an old preconception that being bilingual meant speaking two languages equally.  Nowadays experts say that’s not possible because ‘the two languages will modify each other...and that being bilingual means being able to function in each languages given the need’.

And that sounds right to me, language is a fluid live thing that’s constantly changing, and I see with my kids being bilingual means moving in and out of use of two languages - not always well, and certainly not always equally.

But speaking the language is only one element of being bilingual.  My kids have a secret key that opens up a door into another world, they can connect with a different group of people, fit into a new culture, learn about another history, and gain new perspective on life.

It’s a gift being bilingual, and even though it’s a struggle sometimes, it’s so worth it.

Now when it comes to me.  Therein lies a different story.

My kids cower in shame when I open my mouth.  They tell me time and time again, ‘mummy please don’t ask, I’ll do it for you’.
It’s ‘so embarrassing’ when I speak : (
No matter how much I try to improve, I’m always just touching the tip of the iceberg.

Oh to have a young, bilingual brain… sigh.

Love and lattes

There are a couple of things that one needs in life.

Love, warmth, shelter, good friends, food and …..lattes.

We live deep in the suburbs of Prague where finding a latte is about as common as a lesser spotted eagle.   We don't live in the gorgeous old town in the centre of the city, nor in one of the foreign ghettos, instead we have gone 'native' but that means no cute high streets and a dirth of coffee shops : (

In fact this loss has lead to the serious overuse of my expresso machine (I'm not sure a domestic machine was designed for such heavy usage).

Can you imagine my absolute delight when I discovered a cafe 2 minutes from our house?  It's brand spanking new, the paint is practically drying, and it opened a week ago.

I couldn't contain my excitement and spoke to the owner in very bad Czech, I think he understood my desperation and gave me a latte, and the kids some cake.

It's no Belgique...but hey who's complaining?

As I sit here with my latte and croissant, I think back to only 20 years ago when I first came to Prague.  I was inter-railing with friends and it had only been 6 months since the Velvet Revolution.  Prague was yet undiscovered, the streets were empty (in fact the shelves were still empty, and there were lines for bread).

Being English speaking and a vegetarian at that, meant it was nigh on impossible to communicate, let alone find anything that resembled a fresh vegetable in the land of meat - we lived on omelettes and bread. The only other languages spoken other than Czech were Russian, and German if you were lucky.

Now there is an explosion of cafes and restaurants, the golden arches and Starbucks are on every other corner and everyone wants to speak English.

Prague has become a modern city, attracting European businesses and an international community.  For many years it's been the most popular tourist destination in Europe.

For me that means choice of products, cafes and restaurants.  But the old Prague is sometimes hard to find, deep beneath the tourist trails and buried behind globalisation and so-called progress.




And when you do find it, it's magical.  I just hope it doesn't get lost completely.

Expat

It’s official.  I’m an Expat.

In fact I’m so expat, that I went to an ‘Expats Expo’ a few weekends ago where an estimated 6,000 or so people like me jabbered away in English in a beautiful exhibition hall.

There were a lot of stalls offering services to help us expats acclimatise: - banks, gyms, English newspapers, internet services, etc.

The event was organised by Expats.cz, a website offering invaluable information to those of us looking for libraries/ yoga studios/ restaurants/ providing advice and forums, discussing everything from car insurance to clubbing.

There was a stall selling English products – tea, marmite, Shreddies, English bacon, Flakes, After Eights you name it.  I didn't feel that desperate to buy anything (just give it a year).

But the biggest surprise were the English speaking schools, offering the British national curriculum.   Not just one school - but I counted seven stalls...trying to tempt those of us with kids with face painting, 

bouncy castles, clowns, and sweets....

but also appealing to our paranoia, our inner fears, saving us from the Czech school system with its antiquated draconian style learning, non existent teaching of critical thinking, lack of creative outlets like drama and creative writing.

But of course it comes at a hefty price (even more than private schools in the UK).

And so with that I noticed a distinct difference between the expats - those working for English speaking firms who have a fat relocation packages, kids in English-speaking private schools, memberships to the gyms, investing in wineries and enjoying fine dining...and those who sit on other side of the fence whose kids go the local Czech schools, who shop like the locals do, and drink good Czech beer instead of terrible cheap wine.

Just don't ask me which side I fall on ; )

   

Growing up...fast

Today I gave my 7 year old a knife.

At 7am we had a lesson this morning before school on how to use a knife, how to open the blade, how to slice, and mainly how not to cut yourself.

No, he doesn’t have to defend himself, and it’s not part of the school curriculum, he’s off on a scout trip this afternoon.  Not just any old trip – a trip away for 2 nights in the mountains staying in a Chalupa (a kind of wooden large building).  Did I mention he’s going on his own?  No parents in sight.

In fact both my kids are going away this weekend with their respective scout’s groups, not together it’s just by chance the trips are at the same time.

It’s utterly terrifying for me. 

It’s utterly thrilling for them.

I can't but admire how brave they are.  Kids just go for it, thankfully they aren't like adults who worry and think about things to much.  Kids just do it.  Yes, there is a little apprehension and excitement mixed in with fear, but they are going off in an all czech speaking environment, doing something they have never done before, with a group of kids they've only known for a few weeks.  It's amazing really.

I’m a wreck just packing for them (in fact most Czech parents at this point aren’t even packing for their kids they are probably doing it themselves).  These Czech kids, I don’t know, they are so independent (walk to school alone, let themselves in at home alone, help around the house).  In some ways it’s amazing and what I want my children to experience., but just not quite so suddenly. 

On their list of things to take – sleeping bag, bedding roll, pan for cooking, cutlery, rope and a sharp knife, spare clothes, walking boots, and a 2 bus tickets!  

No health and safety malarkey, no mollycoddling, no fuss.

Here are my babies trying to carry their heavy rucksacs (pains my heart)  

Both my kids also have mobile phones, even my youngest.  Shock, horror, gasp!  It’s the norm here, I suppose that’s what you get when you have kids walking around on their own, going away for weekends alone and catching the bus without the watchful eye of parents.

I was trying not to cry when I said goodbye.  First my eldest with her group, and then my son.

- I’ll call you in a few hours ok?   (or maybe in 10 minutes if I can even wait that long)

- Don’t call me mummy, I’ll just text you.

Oh my god, oh my god.  Growing up. 

  

Summer is over

And if the change of weather wasn’t enough of a reminder that Autumn and Winter are on their way….

nothing was more evident than the stock in my local Tescos.

Ok, it’s a fairly large store, but here’s what I saw in the aisles this morning:-

  A selection of sledges,

skis and poles, and in the background Ice Hockey sticks, 

                                                                                                                                                                and ice skates - not for ice rinks BUT for skating on ponds and lakes and rivers that get frozen over!!

I have to say that all this snow stuff is making me slightly nervous about the cold winter ahead ….

Luckily for us we arrived in Prague at the beginning of a month-long Indian summer, so that really helped psychologically – doors open, kids running outside, blue skies...

I was inspired with the hot weather and saw a trampoline on sale at the local DIY store and somehow managed to communicate that I wanted it, and got help packing it up into the car.  Of course the kids love it.

Hubby was in London so I brought along the dictionary for help as I also needed to buy a plunger, a plug for the sink and some stuff for painting the bench in the garden.

I also bought what I thought was white spirit for cleaning paint brushes, but it didn’t seem to be doing the job.  I asked our neighbour, in my best Czech, if he could help me – that’s when he told me or I understood it was something for the BBQ or fire, he gesticulated flames dancing in the air.

Ahhh, lighter fluid (luckily we weren't near any open flames!)... I think I should start my own dictionary.

Czech Survival Kit

Today I opened my Czech survival kit.

It was a box of goodies prepared by a lovely group of London mum's, who thought in case of emergencies I might need:

Tea and marmite...

Kendal mint cake in case we get
stuck up a Czech mountain,

The Union Jack to hang outside

the front door to annoy the neighbours 

A shot glass in case times get desperate 

The British Embassy address and some 

useful phrases to pin to my coat

like this one

'I'm sorry I'm from England, and I do not understand a word you just said'

I wanted to add my own survival tips:-

Keep smiling and nodding yes, even though you haven’t got a clue what’s going on.

Don’t rely on google translate it can cause all sort of trouble.

Although one’s Czech may improve suddenly after 2 beers, be warned it rapidly goes downhill after a few shots of anything stronger ; )