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I got back to Prague yesterday evening. It's amazing how much things have changed in just three weeks.

In my fridge the edam cheese has gone blue and green. Rather attractive colours but not appetising. The Czech sausages had an odd smell to them. I decided not to risk either of them and dumped them in the bin. Lower down in the fridge I had left a ( Read more... )

New yearsU Jirihof is closed until 6th January,Skrytech is just closed - no details and Fakup the student bar is also shut until they all come back from their Christmas hols. Vit was recommending Barca at Cerveny Rych. There was supposed to be a live band. Again I was lucky 2 minutes at the Petriny metro station, straight on a train and off at ( Read more... )

A super Christmas dinner at Petra and Martin's. Christmas celebrations in the czech Republic are on christmas Eve.  The traditional Czech carp soup was followed by battered carp and pork schnitzels with potato salad. The two carp had been living in their bathtub for a few days before being killed. It would be difficult in England not to have given ( Read more... )

H had invited me for the weekend in Jena where she now teaches at the university. We worked together back in 2001 in Kosovo at Pristina University. It was a five hour coach trip so I turned up at Florenc coach station and got on the bus. It was warm and comfortable in the bus at 21 C and 1 C outside. It got colder as we drove up through the ( Read more... )

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I bumped into Vaclav on the way to the medical school canteen. He invited me up to his lab. He was very elated he is now a fully fledged medical doctor and will also be a Ph D by the end of the year. He was delighted that that the paper James Cragg and I worked on with him was not only accepted for publication but also the manufacturers of the ( Read more... )

Kamila has kindly invited me to come to her czech lessons.  This is really nice of her because in my experience the one thing that lecturers seem to avoid is having another lecturer that teaches the same subject, listening to them.  She is also very pretty so  I took the chance.

This means three hours of solid Czech, the most difficult European ( Read more... )

The Czech phrase I seem to use most often here is 'Ano drahá, máš pravdu'. It means 'Yes dear, you're right.' The czech words draha and pravdu are feminine and can't be used to a man. I asked a czech friend how would a czech woman say to a man 'yes dear. you're right'. She said that no woman in the Czech Republic has ever needed to say that.

Thursday 27th September

Today was the most embarrassing of my life. Well no, that’s an exaggeration there have been other moments even more excruciating ( Read more... )