Czech Homecoming

It is difficult to express in words how filled my heart felt last weekend when I returned to the Czech Republic to visit friends I hadn’t seen in 20 years.  Since I’m a blogger, however, I will give it my best try.

I’ve now lived in 14 villages/towns/cities in 5 countries and have developed varying degrees of connection to each one thanks to the people I met there, the energies of the land, or the quality of experiences. My connection to the Czech Republic, however, has always been one of the strongest, both on a soul and heart level.  First, the speed at which I learned the language and some magical moments I lived there in the 90s have me convinced that there’s a strong past life connection to this place.  Second, I cherish the friendships I developed there, the multitude of new experiences I lived, the scenery filled with forests, red roofs, and old architecture, the culture, the more social side of me that came to life there, etc.  It’s not like I’m choosing to wear rose-coloured glasses – I was also reminded this weekend of a couple of near-near-death experiences (one in a canoe and one due to a roommate’s mental health crisis), betrayals, personal challenges, weight gain due to an excess of deep fried cheese and pastries, etc.  Nevertheless, I feel a very deep fondness for the Czech Republic and its people, and 20 years hasn’t changed that.  If it’s true that “Home is where the heart is”, I actually have several homes, and this weekend was a true homecoming; my cup was filled to overflowing with love given, received, and felt … and for that, I am grateful!

There.  That’s my introduction. Now for the details.

Friday was a holiday in Austria and so at 5am, I headed to the Praterstern train station by tram and got there an hour early (of course), which gave me time to figure out where my platform was and to observe all the costumed drunk Halloween party-goers making their way home.  Halloween is pretty new here, I’m told, but it’s definitely catching on.  Once on the train, it took me a while to figure out that I was only allowed to sit where there were no little papers in the slots beside the door – those seats were reserved.  I was hoping to find a cabin filled with Czechs so that I could listen and practice my Czech that I hadn’t used in 20 years, but no such luck.  I ended up with a young Austrian couple who I’m sure would have preferred the cabin to themselves.  They soon left all their stuff behind to go explore the rest of the train.  It’s only 1.5 hours to Brno with a bit of a stop in Břeclav, where the cabin filled up, but unfortunately not with chatty folks.  Still, I spent some time peering over my neighbour’s shoulder at her newspaper, trying to jog my memory with the occasional recognizable word.  Before I knew it, we were in Brno, and no one had come by the cabin to check passports.  That was really strange for me – but once in the European Union’s Schengen area, there really isn’t very much border control anymore. Interesting!

I was meeting my friend Antonin (Tony) at the train station.  I wasn’t worried about finding him in the crowd (you’ll see why in the photo below), so I followed the other travelers from the platform down the stairs and back up into the main lobby where things started to look very familiar (I used to use the train a lot between Brno and Adamov – two places I lived – and for weekend trips).  This was really the first time I had returned to somewhere I had lived long ago, so in a way, I felt like an old person on a memory trip all weekend (“Do you remember when?”  “Oh, I remember this!”  “Wasn’t there a Cukrárna (bakery) right here?”).  It was strange in a way, but also a lot of fun to test whether I remembered where things were.  I soon recognized Tony coming up the stairs, even before his height gave him away. Some people don’t change much in 20 years! After a great hug hello (that lifted me right off the ground), we headed to the car.

Antonin was my first contact here.  My first day in the Czech Republic in 1992 was on the eve of his wedding.  I came one month before my ESL teaching contract started, thanks to one of the other teachers in our sister-city program who had been invited.  The program, it turns out, was cancelled while we were on the plane, but we only found out a couple of weeks later, and it didn’t matter because Tony found us jobs in the city and places to stay.  For the month before moving to Brno, however, we stayed in his apartment in the small town of Adamov where his new wife remained while he was off to some other country for work.  Since Tony was the only fluent English speaker around, I was completely and gratefully  immersed in the language and culture.  Perfect!

After leaving the train station, Tony drove me around the downtown core at my request, just to see if I could remember anything, and then we headed out of town, through several villages (picking up a hitchhiker who missed his bus from one village to the next) and to the Adamovka tower in the forest overlooking Adamov.  The leaves were mostly all fallen and it was a bit foggy, but I can’t tell you how good it felt to look through trees or across fields and down into valleys after living in Vienna, where you often can’t see past the buildings across the street. I especially got excited at seeing apple trees – that’s where fruit come from? (I’m turning into a real city girl!) Don’t get me wrong. I do love Vienna and its amazing architecture, culture, etc., but I simply want it all and am finding ways to get it.

Although we only talked in English, catching up on each others’ lives, Tony did get a few calls on his car’s speaker phone for work and to coordinate meetings with our friends and so my ears started getting used to the Czech language again.  Oh how I love it! But when we stopped for lunch in the chateau behind the Krtiny pilgrim church built by Santini (in a location where Mother Mary appeared in the 1200s), only German came out when it came time to order (something that continued happening in restaurants throughout the weekend).  So what did I have for my first meal back in the Czech Republic?  Well, I almost got wild boar when Tony misread the upside down menu, but my surprise at not remembering the word for “chicken” (which they had run out of) helped us realize the mistake and I ended up instead with a big brick of breaded and deep fried Edam cheese with french fries (my old standard pub food that I must confess I had been looking forward to).  Myum!  After I was done though, I declared that that was enough of that for the weekend (only to have it again two other times, once more because they had run out of duck and dumplings and another because they offered a healthy baked version I just had to try… ).  While Tony took a few minutes after lunch to work on a task for his job, I explored the church and its surroundings – beautiful!  The vibe of the land and the look of the village around it was so familiar.  It felt fantastic being back!

We then headed to Blansko where Tony and most of my other friends now live. It’s a bigger town than Adamov, but still much smaller than Brno, which is the 2nd biggest city in the country after Prague.  When I walked into Tony’s beautiful new condo, I was greeted by another huge smile and hug. Seeing Sonia again was great, and that’s when my Czech started spilling out – shocking both them and me.  Sentence after sentence, it was rolling off my tongue (with the occasional missing word, of course). The biggest shock, however, was seeing Iva and Honza – their children who were no longer children.  Although Tony and Sonia hadn’t changed much in 20 years, there’s no hiding the passing of time with babies.  Wow!  Iva was born while I was here and Honza wasn’t even an idea yet.  After catching up a bit and seeing some of Tony’s skydiving videos, including a recent one of Sonia’s first tandem jump, they showed me to their other condo 2 floors down where Iva is living with her boyfriend Jakub.  Although it totally wasn’t necessary, they gave me their apartment for the weekend, sleeping upstairs for one night and in Jakub’s village for the next.

Jakub and Iva

Sonia and Honza

View from above Blansko

By 6pm, we were at the restaurant for what felt like a family reunion (Lenka and Milan (no longer together) with their daughter Petra, Tony and Sonia with their daughter Iva and her boyfriend Jakub, and I).  Although they still all lived in the region, some hadn’t seen each other in a while, and so the night was filled with stories and laughter. It was simply awesome!  This is where words can’t describe how I felt seeing everyone again.  And surprisingly, I could follow most of the conversation and even contribute a lot to it until I got tired and stopped understanding altogether.  I do know that Tony shared some of my updates with everyone, but I am not sure how much of it was accurate, not only because he’s not too much into the esoteric stuff (as Sonia confirmed while I was admiring her chakra mandalas on the fridge), but also because he’s famous for exaggerating details… a great storyteller indeed!  So I’m not sure what they actually know about the last 20 years, but that’s OK.  I went to sleep that night in my big comfortable bed in a state of total bliss.

Iva, Jakub, Milan and I

Lenka and her 6 week old puppy

Milan, Petra and I

Milan, Lenka and I

Petra choosing her magnetic bookmark

chocolate anyone?

a nice restaurant

The next day, my good friend Lucka (oh, it was so good to see her too and I learned that her spiritual path and mine are quite alike these days) came from Brno and joined Lenka, her partner Ladya, Sonia and I for post-breakfast pastries before heading out to Rudice to see the 120-year old school where Lenka is the principal.  It’s currently under renovation and she and Lucka (who is also a school teacher) had a lot to talk about.  Lenka still had one of my paintings in her classroom, something that touched me deeply.  We then visited a historic mill in the village, as well as an old sand pit where the colours were stunning.  After lunch, we headed to Milan’s, where I was happy to meet his new family and friends and listened to more of Tony’s stories once he got back from his morning’s trip to northern Moravia, where he was supposed to skydive, but the weather had turned bad.

Rudice mill

Lucka and Lenka

We left in the late afternoon as Tony and I had plans to head to southern Moravia for a Halloween party in a village where some members of the old skydiving gang would be.  I brought all my stuff with me as it was just like in the old days – we didn’t know if we would sleep there on the floor with dozens of other folks or head back to Blansko.  There’s an informal, down-to-earth, welcoming social quality to the people and lifestyle I encountered through Tony that I always enjoyed.  By the time we got there, it was very dark and we made our way to the very large backyard with a roaring campfire, a big group of adults and children dressed up for Halloween, several dogs (I was in dog heaven all weekend!), and a pathway lined with over a dozen lit up carved pumpkins that led to the great unknown.  After all the gatherings of the day, however, I was tired and mostly sat content by the fire, taking in the festivities and engaging in occasional conversations, both in English and Czech.  By about 9pm, we decided to head back as the party was nowhere near finished and Tony found out he had to drive up to Poland on Sunday again for work. I was glad as a comfy bed and a hot shower in the morning before meeting my other friends in Brno seemed like a good idea.

Sunday morning, after breakfast, we headed to the train station for our so-longs after being teased repeatedly for insisting on being there more than 2 minutes early. Still, we got there early, giving us time for photos and hugs.  I’ll be back soon – I know it!

Half an hour by train later, I was in Brno again where I was met by my good friends Jana and Robert.  Jana taught at the same schools I did, and I ended up living with them for most of my first year there and then beside them when I returned for another year following a year of ESL teacher training in Canada. They recently moved out of that neighbourhood and into a beautiful new home where we ate a delicious lunch and spent several hours relaxing and talking while it poured outside.  Ivo, the oldest of two sons, was home for the weekend from Prague and joined us for a little while.  Once again, it was great catching up and simply being in their presence.  It was just like old times, except that once again, the children had grown and now there was a cute little dog in the mix.

Once the weather cleared up, we drove around and then went walking through the historic downtown, totally memory-tripping as so much of it is relatively the same.  What a wonderfully mellow day.

At 9pm, Robert dropped me off at the train station. Once I found a spot in the train, I quickly fell asleep until I woke up in Vienna, groggy and confused because one of the passengers in the small cabin was talking about Florisdorf being the last stop instead of Praterstern due to technical issues.  The name of that station was familiar, and I was relieved to find out it was actually the end stop of the Underground line that takes me directly home.  Unfortunately, nothing was open at 11pm and the ticket machine didn’t take 20 Euro bills for a 2.10 ticket, so I had to wait until someone could change it into 2 10s.  No big deal.  I was home a little before midnight and slept well until it was time to wake up to go to school.

I’m sure I didn’t do justice to parts of this story, but you get the picture. I had an amazing weekend!  I’ll be going back for sure – it’s so easy to travel there from here and even learned about a Czech bus company that charges a fraction of the price of Viennese buses or trains.  Perfect!  Either way, I’ll definitely be going back. It’s amazing what time with good friends can do. Yesterday, one of my classmates was commenting on not having seen my silly side before… I definitely feel more open, happy, free, etc. after my time in the Czech Republic with my old friends.  I could even see a significant jump in my drawing skills.  That place definitely brings out the best in me.