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Today was our first day
of more or less utter relaxation. Our housemate Veronika invited us to lunch
with her friends David, Pavela, and Petra. David's an American English teacher
who came for a visit in '94 and never left. Pavela and Petra are fellow nurse
social worker colleagues of Veronika. Additionally, I got an email out of
the blue from Lawrence
Wells, another American longtime Czech resident who chanced upon a map
of Kutna Hora here a month after his
initial contact with PoD (also by chance) and
asked if he could ride his bike over as he was going to be in the area doing
research for an audio walking tour. Cyclists are always welcome here! Veronika
made delicious cabbage pancakes with potatoes and Sarah fried up some tasty
soy steaks. Pavela is one of the first native Czech vegetarians we've met
but she says it's quickly becoming more common here. She was impressed with
the steaks and asked for the recipe (the secret ingredient is vinegar). After
lunch we took a tour of the historic church across the street which was
consecrated in 1165 and lasted almost 800 years without incident until in
the 1950s a cold war airbase was built nearby and sonic booms of jets cracked
the building. The solution was to exhume all the graves of surrounding
centuries-old cemetery and fix the foundation. That's progress! We walked
around a pond, past fields of waving grain, then back to
backyard where
we sat in the sun and chatted over red wine, grapes, and chocolate. As the
visitors left, Pavela said in a kind of Seattle dialect, "This place has
good energy." "It's the people that make it," I said. We built a small fire,
Veronika played guitar and sang camping songs, saying it was strange to do
without others to sing along. Sarah and I recognized a couple of the tunes,
but all the words had been changed when adapted to Czech. John Denver's "Leaving
on a Jet Plane" became a lullabye, something to the effect of "Sleep and
Soon You'll Dream...." |
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