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Is the Czech Republic the Dog-Friendliest Country in Europe?
When you live across the world from family and you have a dog, you can pretty much just plan on bringing your dog everywhere with you. Face it – you have little other choice. (I love my dog, but I’m not bringing him everywhere because I necessarily have to have him near me) This was the first consideration we had when deciding which breed – it had to be small and incredibly portable. Also, it helped that we knew from four years of experience living here just how dog friendly the Czech Republic really is. If we had to bring our dog everywhere, there is no better country to do…
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Late Spring / Early Summer
Happy happy summer! I’ve been celebrating the arrival of this ever joyous season with cafe days, double scoops of ice cream, trip planning and rediscovering the joy of reading outdoors in the warm, sun-filled evenings (above) when we are lucky enough to have them! It comes in such a short window every year that I sort of forget about it until it happens. There’s been a literal stack of books I’ve been trying to get through as a part of two book club (“reading circles”) I’ve been participating in… reminding me how nice it would just be to pluck a book from the shelf and read what I felt like.…
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The Earth is Shifting
Hello, friends. What a strange but impactful few weeks it has been. In the days leading up to last week of May, I had rare bout of anxiety about the world opening up again after the worst of Coronatimes had wound down here in the Czech Republic. When the director of your school e-mails you and starts into “good news! we can go back to school!”, it’s incredibly unsettling because for the previous two months, we had all been unlearning how to be and teach at school. How to do everything from home. How wonderful having no commutes were, let’s be honest. That first week back, I was a little…
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Surviving March + Thoughts on Traveling “These Days”
Ahoj, friends. I spent much of February reading the novel, Station Eleven. I didn’t know what it was about at all when I picked it up as it was part of a book club, but man — this one was a doozy! It dealt with the topic of a worldwide influenza pandemic (not a spoiler) and really got me thinking about what I would do if the same situation happened to us now. Every night I would read a little bit before going to bed, wake up and read the news and feel like it was all starting to blur together. The timing of this read was all a bit…
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Czech School Curiosities
What a month! In the middle of February, it was supposed to have been our half-term break week, but several months ago we agreed to teach most of the week at a primary school waaaay out in the countryside, about an hour from where we live. I mean, we didn’t really have any plans and we have an ambitious travel year ahead, so why not? The wind storm Sabine which ripped through Central Europe made it impossible to start teaching there on Monday as absolutely no trains or buses were leaving the city, but for most of this week we were up on the early train north. Although Alex isn’t…
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Keep Smiling
A conversation occurred this week (which I mentioned in this Instagram post) in which a certain secondary school-aged class of mine, when asked what they liked about České Budějovice could think of almost nothing, but then finally offered 1) The train station is near the bus station. (this is the case in almost every Czech city ever) 2) There are a lot of things and services here. (in comparison to a small village) And that was literally it. No single teenager in my class likes České Budějovice. This is something which I take with a couple grains of salt, of course because one, they’re teenagers and they don’t like anything,…
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A Winter Cafe Day (with JORD)
Ah, the half-term cafe date. We have a lot (a lottt) of annual traditions, but this one is perhaps the most simple yet satisfying one to inject a bit of magic into an otherwise humdrum winter Friday afternoon. Almost certainly I’ll have the afternoon off, so we’ll head out to a cafe. This time, we headed to Cafe au Chat de Noir, one of my favorites in town. The coffee doesn’t really blow your mind but more importantly: as soon as you step inside, you feel like you’ve been transported to a European cafe at the turn of the 20th century. At a time where hip, modern third-wave coffee bars…
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The Books of 2019
I know it’s called “the books” of 2019, but I mean merely, that they were books that defining the year for me – I make no big claims here. But now it’s time to take a look at favorite books, disappointing books, reading goals for this year, and generally how everything went. I just barely scraped by my Goodreads goal, just completing my 25 books in 2019. (welp, that went well!) The year before I’d managed over 30, so must’ve got stuck on some slog-reads again, but I feel good about having made it, of course. Rating them an average of 3.8/5, I’d say it was a pretty positive reading…
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How Does Your Garden Grow
A couple of weeks ago, we had the most beautiful late October day you could ever dream of. Even now, in the late afternoon the sun is already setting, I couldn’t help think as I walked home with a basket full of vegetables from the garden plot for the second to last time this season how lucky we were this year with this beautiful Indian summer I keep raving on about — this sort of weather would even be out of place for late September, let alone October. Readers may know that this summer was the first year I had my own garden plot in the earth to work with…
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It’s November (Life Lately)
Hi friends, happy November! For the first time in awhile, I did not manage to make the annual ‘Spooky Movies to Watch in October’ list. Shame, that. Just for anyone interested, we did continue with our October Movie series and watched in the following order over the course of the month: The Raven (1963) – A Vincent Price classic. Hokey but perfectly Halloweeny, and containing one of the funniest spooky scenes in cinematic history: a magic duel between Price and Boris Karloff (not in a monster role) from thrones. It has to be seen to be believed. ᇫᇫᇫᇫ The Babadook (2014) – Creepy, a bit dystopic, that feeling of losing…
