Owner: Adventures in the Czech Republic URL:http://czechproperty.blogspot.com Join Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2007 13:40:54 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: By a British woman who has been visiting the Czech Republic since the Velvet Revolution and now owns a house there, this blog explores the differences and similarities between the two countries and nationalities. Site statistics:Click here
Learning Czech 2008-07-13 06:35:28 I really must learn Czech
- it is getting more important for me to do so. Okay I have tried, believe me I have. It is a very difficult language for someone like me who has always found that the only way to learn a language is sheer hard graft. I have a vocabulary of several hundred words, but in Czech that is not enough. Each noun has six declensions (seven if you count vocative) and each noun has Read more:Learning
Masopust at Cowley Road Carnival 2008-07-06 22:16:55 In my post in February on Czech Carnival
- Masopust I talked of our plans to bring a Czech masopust group to Oxford's Cowley Road Carnival. Well this weekend it happened. They arrived on Friday, having travelled across Europe in a van. We had managed to get them accommodation at St Hilda's College - a lovely Oxford University college near Magdalen Bridge. I took them for a meal at the Bodrum Kebab
Chanterelles 2008-07-03 14:37:44 As you will have gathered from my earlier posts I have caught the Czech mushroom collecting bug. Although you can find early boletus in the woods, my favourite at this time of year is the egg yellow chanterelle. You will find chanterelles in small troops nestled into moss on banks of dappled shade. They are good mushrooms for a beginner as they are easy to identify with their yellow cap fluted do
The Water Spirit 2008-07-29 14:28:53 The Vodnik is the Czech water spirit. Similar to the Germanic Nix the Vodnik lives in the water (usually ponds and rivers in Czech folklore) and is someone you do not want to upset. He has a malicious streak - prone to drowning people and keeping their souls in a ceramic pot. If you meet him you will see a man covered with slime and sometimes scales, wearing a coat of tatters and a hat, another gi
More on the Castle Gardens 2008-07-24 09:25:10 Many visitors to Cesky Krumlov Castle
never make it into the Gardens
. If they do they very seldom get beyond the formal gardens nearest the Castle. In so doing they are missing out on one of my favourite haunts. The formal gardens are very fine with formal flower beds, terraces, sculptures and fountain, but beyond these are more informal areas.It is here that you will find both the summerhouse and
The rotating theatre 2008-07-21 14:34:52 Regular readers of my blog will know my views of the need for UNESCO to protect the important historic buildings of Cesky Krumlov against the pressures of commercialism. I welcomed their call for an audit of historical buildings. One of the conditions of World Heritage site listing was the removal of the rotating auditorium from its current site in the Castle Gardens next to the Bellarie Summerhou Read more:theatre
The Landscape of South Bohemia 2008-07-16 16:49:40 As I was driving our Czech visitors to Tesco's I asked them what they thought of the Cotswolds. The response surprised me - the landscape reminded them of South
Bohemia. It hadn't occurred to me, that I had managed to buy a Czech property in an area similar to my British birthplace and home. But on reflection I can see why they might say that.Certainly the area around their home town of Holubov is Read more:Landscape
Roots - A Love of Wood 2008-08-10 06:29:06 My father loves wood and he shared that love with me. As a little girl I showed an interest in doing what daddy was doing. For probably my fifth or sixth birthday I asked for a toolkit for a present, rather than give me some toys my dad took me to an ironmongers and together we selected a set of real wood tools – a small saw, hammer etc. I can remember just being able to look over the counter at
Roots - The Shed 2008-08-06 08:44:09 When I was very small my parents moved to the house that has been their home ever since. It is in the small Cotswold town of Winchcombe,a terrace house in the street that leads past the church. It is a non-descript house, but one with a long history. All the houses in the street were built on burgage plots – long thin pieces of land with a relatively small road frontage built in the late Middle
Czech Weather 2008-08-04 07:39:43 I am back in the Czech
Republic having let some friends stay in our Czech home for what should have been a couple of weeks. Unfortunately after only three days they decided to leave because it was cold. Now the thing is that at this time of year the Czech Republic is nearly always several degrees warmer than in the UK, right now it is 30 degrees and I could do with it being somewhat colder. We Cze
The Old Lady & The Caterpillar 2008-09-04 06:38:37 On the last leg of my walk along the Schwarzenberg Canal, as I started the approach into Nova Pec, I passed an avenue of silver birch trees. On one side two horses browsed the grass in a paddock and a lone lupin caught my eye. The lupin season is over here, with the tall spikes now covered with seedpods, but in some instances there is a brief late summer flush when a few flowers bloom again. I pau
A Walk Along the Schwarzenberg Canal 2008-09-01 08:46:06 The Schwarzenberg Timber Canal
is a source of some pride to the Czechs. They talk about the engineering prowess of its creator Josef Rosenauer in designing the canal to descend from the Sumava to the River Vlatava in the Czech Republic and the Muhl River (a tributary of the Danube) in Austria. This he achieved using the contours of the land, gravity and water from Plesny Lake and local streams to
Indispensable Tool 2008-09-01 08:16:26 My builder has been busy removing the dryrot in the floorboards and plaster – I am glad to say that it does not seem to have spread too far. He arrived with a huge toolbox on wheels and various electric drills and saws, but nearly all the tasks were achieved using just one tool – a handaxe. This axe was used to lever up the floor, to break through nails in the floor, to carve sections of the f
The Sound of Evening 2008-08-29 04:58:46 As evening starts to fall and even a little while before on these balmy late summer days, the air swells with the sounds of grasshoppers and crickets singing their legs off. I find it hugely relaxing listening to their hard work, there is something almost hypnotic about the sound. Normally you cannot see any of our thousand violinists, but the other day this large cricket (it must have been 3 c Read more:Sound
The Swimming Pond 2008-08-27 04:55:05 I have mentioned the swimming pond in passing in earlier blog posts, but this wonderful Czech institution deserves a post in its own right. At the bottom of the hill close to the local station you will find our local swimming pond. The pond is a man-made creation, which diverts water from a local stream into a large open-air pond for the summer. The water is heated only by the sun's rays, which gi Read more:Swimming
Yet More Czech Flowers 2008-08-25 08:35:38 Back in May I visited a local nature reserve and blogged about the wildflowers there. I promised at the time to return later in the summer and to report on what new flowers I saw. This time I went with my Czech
friend and we spent a couple of very pleasant hours wandering the reserves paths, stopping frequently to admire our finds.I was mostly in raptures about the wildflowers, whilst she was also Read more:Flowers
Forced Rest 2008-08-25 07:52:24 A fortnight ago I was trying to uncover such cobbles in the yard, when I sustained an injury. At the time it seemed nothing – I simply jarred my leg as my spade hit stone, it was sore that's all. I then compounded this by taking a long walk in the forest looking for mushrooms. It had been my intention to have a brief fungus foray, to gather just enough to give me something special for breakfast,
Chopping Wood 2008-08-20 10:30:33 I seem to be writing about nothing but wood at the moment. I have spent a large part of last weekend chopping up wood for the stoves. I was not alone in doing this – from all over the village came the sound of axes and chainsaws as my neighbours too set about getting the winter fuel stocks into usable sizes. Throughout the summer huge piles of logs rise stacked along the walls of Czech houses, r
Dryrot 2008-08-17 06:46:37 This week I have been managing the work arising from an outbreak of dryrot in the kitchen. Inevitably in an old house, which had not had a great deal done to it for years, we had had some water penetration which had resulted in dryrot in some of the roof timbers. In turn their removal meant that spores from this blasted fungus were spread through out the house – I'm afraid the Czech builders wer
Sunset 2008-08-17 06:42:49 When my brother-in-law stayed here with his family he was much taken with the way at dusk the houses on the far side of the village are bathed in the amber light of the setting sun. I know exactly what he means and regularly find myself standing at the front windows entranced. Yesterday the display was particularly impressive, the wonderful light of the setting sun was reflected not only on the bu Read more:Sunset
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