I just got back from a road trip with Tim to the far east of Czech. These are a few reflections on what I did and saw. Like most people I’d been to Praha but this was so different it doesn’t even bear comparison. Being in this part of Czech, even for a short time was an incredible experience. If you know Tim, go and visit him!
Czech people are hard working. Veronika’s mum was mopping the floor in her flat at 11pm one night we were there. Jurji woke up at 4.30am in the mornings “to meet with one brother at the church and pray” before going to work on his house (that he is building himself), before going to work in his day job. Vera was restoring a farm house whilst working full time and studying full time and helping a start up church plant!
Czech people don’t speak English. At least not in this part of the world, I’ve never been anywhere before where it was more difficult to find English speakers.
Czech people are hard working. Veronika’s mum was mopping the floor in her flat at 11pm one night we were there. Jurji woke up at 4.30am in the mornings “to meet with one brother at the church and pray” before going to work on his house (that he is building himself), before going to work in his day job. Vera was restoring a farm house whilst working full time and studying full time and helping a start up church plant!
Czech people don’t speak English. At least not in this part of the world, I’ve never been anywhere before where it was more difficult to find English speakers.
Czech is full of ‘drab communist concrete’ apartment blocks. These are ugly. They stand in stark contrast with the spectacular, much older medieval town squares and pre-communist houses. Despite their ugliness these apartment blocks are on the whole clean, solid, efficient, well built & maintained and people can afford to live in them. Unlike London, I didn’t see any homeless people in Czech.
The people don’t have any sympathy for communism or desire to go back to how things were. They seem to have benefited enormously from their accession to the EU.
Babies everywhere. There were loads and loads and loads of babies in Tim and Veronika’s area. I couldn’t believe it and I’m sure it wasn’t just because my baby-o-meter has recently been activated.
Where are the social problems? Czechs have liberal gun laws and the highest beer consumption per capita in the world. Tim and Veronika live in a high density housing area of concrete apartment blocks. It is quiet, near silent after 10pm, peaceful, seemed safe, civility reigns and there is a genuine ‘community feel’. In London there’s a teenage shooting every week, kids get around blind drunk in gangs on the weekend and someone gets mugged out the front of your house every second night. I fear that as the good bits of the western lifestyle march across Czech so will the social problems.
Where is all the obesity? It doesn’t exist in Czech, the fattest person I saw there was myself. Again, western diet and lifestyles will no doubt fix this.
Beer is cheap, very, very cheap, about 5% of the price in London – a pint for under 20p compared with almost £4 in London.
The people are welcoming and friendly, the first night there we had 3 dinners as we went to various people’s houses to drop things off or pick them up. Granted, we were a bit of a novelty, but could you possibly imagine people in Australia or the UK welcoming people who had just arrived in the country and didn’t speak the language this well?
How cheap is the property! Get in there now you property investment sharks.
Czech has a Christian heritage but a dead Catholic church. It was Moravian Brethren (Czech is divided into Bohemia in the west, Silesia in the north which is tiny and Moravia in the east where Tim lives) who were instrumental in John Wesley’s conversion.
Tim will have a great time in the land of the cheap cigar. Hunting in the countryside five minutes outside his front door, cheap beer, two hours drive from Vienna and loads of astonished visitors from Australia and the UK. Visit them.
Where is all the obesity? It doesn’t exist in Czech, the fattest person I saw there was myself. Again, western diet and lifestyles will no doubt fix this.
Beer is cheap, very, very cheap, about 5% of the price in London – a pint for under 20p compared with almost £4 in London.
The people are welcoming and friendly, the first night there we had 3 dinners as we went to various people’s houses to drop things off or pick them up. Granted, we were a bit of a novelty, but could you possibly imagine people in Australia or the UK welcoming people who had just arrived in the country and didn’t speak the language this well? How cheap is the property! Get in there now you property investment sharks.Czech has a Christian heritage but a dead Catholic church. It was Moravian Brethren (Czech is divided into Bohemia in the west, Silesia in the north which is tiny and Moravia in the east where Tim lives) who were instrumental in John Wesley’s conversion.
Tim will have a great time in the land of the cheap cigar. Hunting in the countryside five minutes outside his front door, cheap beer, two hours drive from Vienna and loads of astonished visitors from Australia and the UK. Visit them.
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