Speaking English at a Czech preschool

Smalls and his friends from školka still seem to find us parents interesting.

Kája's mother, for instance, seems to attract a small crowd whenever she arrives, with many little hands desperate to touch the newborn she always brings with her.

I'm very impressed with her ability to simultaneous get her 3-year-old dressed and fend off over-inquisitive fingers.

'No, Robert, don't poke the baby's eyes.'

As for me, I seem to be known as Smalls's Mother Who Speaks English.

('But why does she speak English?' one mystified little girl asked her mother repeatedly yesterday.)

A few weeks ago, I dropped Smalls off a little later than normal and we were accosted by four little girls.

'Ahoj!' I said.

'Ahoj,' was chorused back four times.

Smalls wiggled behind my legs. I was momentarily confused about his sudden shyness, but then the onslot started - a series of questions delivered by the biggest of the four in Czech. Answers were briefly discussed among the group before the next question was fired off.

'Do you work?'
'What does Smalls's dad do for work?'
'Do you drive?'
'What is your car?'
'Is it true you speak English?'
'Are you pregnant?'

I stepped out of školka in a daze and fully intended to hide behind Smalls's legs next time.


However, Smalls seems to have decided that an offensive is the best approach. The next time I picked him up, he grabbed my hand.

'You need to say hi to my friends,' he commanded.

'That's Smalls's mama,' the friends authoritatively told each other as I walked into the room. 'She speaks English.'

'Ahoj,' I said (to show that I also speak Czech, of course).

'Hello,' one friend said slowly in English. 'I...am...Martin.'

A few other children queued up to try their English, which made me feel like some visiting celebrity.

'Hello!' 'Hi.' 'My...name...is...' they whispered shyly.

Finally, one of the bigger boys came over.

'You...' he said, narrowing his eyes as he tried to remember the right word, 'SUCK!'

Strike two, Robert. Strike two.

Competitive undercurrents and the waiting rooms in doctors' offices

Over the past year, I've become something of an expert of Doctors' Waiting Rooms in the Czech Republic.

As with medical waiting rooms probably anywhere, the waiting rooms are grim and the atmosphere is strained. Fellow patients eye each other warily and newcomers get a stern look.

'Dobrý den,' those seated growl, looking up briefly from their magazines. [Translation: Oi, I'm in front of you in the queue.]

'Dobrý den,' those who have just stepped in reply. [We'll just see who the nurse calls first, won't we?]

Things get even more antagonistic at our local GP's office towards the end of the official time when she takes blood.

The whole waiting room sizes each other up, trying to determine each other's complaint.

You're not here to give blood, are you? Everyone silently accuses each other. You'd be a real bastard to not let me go ahead of you.

Patients exiting the doctor's room clutch the inside of their arm with protective triumph.

'Na shledanou.' [It was blood, you bastards. And I got in before ten o'clock.]


However, I have recently found the exception to the silently simmering waiting room.

A few weeks ago, I had to go to a special clinic for a gruesomely early appointment.

I was the first patient of the morning and the test consisted of a series of blood draws over a two hour period, so I had a chance to 1) get halfway through a book; 2) plan an elaborate post-test breakfast; 3) study my fellow patients.

6.45 am
Empty waiting room. Nurse ushers me into the room. I hand over documents and apologise in Czech for my impractically small veins and proffer the right arm as the most likely to cooperate.

'Hm, we have to do this three times,' she replied, eyeing both sides with increasing tightening lips.
Ouch. Make that four times.

7.00 am
I settle into the waiting room with my book. A few new patients shuffle in. Several older ladies. A smiling young student. All greet me with a cheery 'Dobrý den!'

And without exception, they conscientiously protest when the nurse calls them in, 'Ale, paní tu byla první.' [But this lady was here first.]

That's no way to treat your fellow waiting room colleagues! What is wrong with you people?

'Paní musí ještě čekat ,' the tight-lipped nurse replied each time with a stern look at me. [She still needs to wait].

8.00 am
The business professionals start to filter in, wearing suits and an air of importance.

The nurse comes out to call them in.

'Možná paní...' they mutter halfheartedly, with a minuscule gesture in my direction. [Maybe the lady...]

'Paní musí ještě čekat.'

9.00 am
Finally, I am done with waiting and gathering my strength before the much anticipated breakfast.

Into the waiting room shuffle an older couple whose lips are so firmly pressed together that not even a Dobrý den can squeeze past.

The woman glares at me for having the audacity to be before them, and there is a definite air of Waiting Room Competition Winners when they are ushered into the nurse's room.


And so the world of medical waiting rooms returns to normal.

But my breakfast tasted all the sweeter now that I know there is some small window of time in the early morning light when cutthroat competition is still sleeping and waiting rooms are a place of polite conviviality. 

The case for garish green houses

'Do you think it's that one?'

'Oh no. That's much too new. We're looking for number 95. That must be at least a 200.' 

L and I recently had this rather odd exchange a few days ago when driving through a nearby village. We were looking for a particular house, which is always a bit of a challenge in Czech villages. 

Houses are easy to find. A specific house is more challenging.

The root of the problem is how the government numbers houses. Being American, I am used to grids of roads, often numbered instead of named, with neat lines of houses, numbered sequentially. The house at 395 1st Avenue West sits across from 396 1st Avenue West. The next road over is almost certainly 2nd Avenue West with its own orderly rows of neatly numbered homes. 

And the city planners sigh with satisfaction.

In the Czech Republic, houses are numbered according to when they are officially completed. Presumably, there is an official register where all the buildings are neatly listed. House number 395, which was completed on 6 July 2014 is followed closely by number 396, which was completed, perhaps, on 7 July 2014. 

And a government bureaucrat pulls out her pencil and ruler, enters another house into the register, and gives a contented nod. 

There are benefits to this system. We once got a letter that was addressed only as:

[L's last name]

[House number]

[Postcode].

I was very impressed, until L pointed out that of course we were the only house of that number in the whole village.

Which means, naturally, that the sender of the letter had been terribly indulgent to include the superfluous [Last name]. The purity of the minimalism had been tainted. Ink was wasted. 

The Czech house numbering system also means that one can fairly accurately pinpoint the ages of houses. The under-100s are the core of our village. The mid-100s to 200s were built in a flurry of construction in the 1960s. The 300 right next to an 86 was almost certainly built recently on an extra bit of garden.

Most likely fond parents who gave a bit of garden to their son or daughter so they could live closely, I tell myself with an indulgent smile as I walk past. 

The 92 that looks terribly modern? Almost certainly a dramatic reconstruction of the original building.

I've been on a mission to identify the oldest houses in the village, which has helped me keep some semblance of sanity when Smalls is on his mission to find all the snails or catalogue every rock. Finding a 20 or under is a highlight of any walk.

But, of course, there is one major downside to this system of numbering houses. One big, glaring, unavoidable problem.

Big cities like Prague have fixed this by giving houses two numbers. One, on a red plate, is under the traditional system. The other, on a blue plate, recognises that sometimes people need to know the exact physical position of a building.

However, this is not considered necessary in the smaller villages. Also not necessary in our particular village, it seems, is a variety of street names. In our section, there are no less than five roads with the exact same official name. So, for instance, U Hřiště sits parallel with U Hřiště, and they (it?) are (is?) intersected by (of course!) U Hřiště, which snakes around a corner to join into yet another U Hřiště. 

It's very similar on the other side of the village - though fortunately village planners at least had the decency to daringly try a different street name. One different street name. No need to needlessly waste street names. Let's not kid ourselves, here. We're not Prague. 

And so, when intrepid Praguers venture out of their shining blue-plated metropolis to visit us, I try to be as specific as possible.

'We are the house with the big new fence, next to an very, terribly green house. Turn right on  U Hřiště, and then take the first left on U Hřiště. If you come to another U Hřiště, you've gone too far. If you start to see 300s, you're on the wrong side of the village. If you get to the motorway, you're on your way to the wrong village.'

And, almost inevitably, 'Hi, Yes, I thought I saw you're car go by. I'll come out and wave at you. I'm in a black coat. Blue scarf. If you see someone with a dog, that's the wrong waving villager.'

Maybe this explains our neighbours' inexplicable - and unmissable - choice of paint colour.

Unexpected kindness and the Spirit of Christmas in the Spring

'First, there will be snow,' Smalls told me the other day. 'And then it will be Christmas. And then Santa Claus will come with presents.'

Unfortunately for him, this December seems to believe it is March, and there hasn't been a single flake of snow for at least a week.

I was trying to think of a good Christmassy story, and perhaps the lack of snow is why I keep thinking of the spring.

This past spring was very rough for me - a late-ish miscarriage followed very closely by an unexpected bad diagnosis for my dear old dad. And so, in an effort to keep myself sane, I spent a lot of time working on our garden.

One of the key attractions in our little village is a trade/vocational school where students focus on practical avenues of study such as mechanics and horticulture. In the spring, the school lets some of the students co-run a little nursery shop in a series of sheds and greenhouses on the school grounds.

I'd heard that the plants were both healthy and cheap, so I set out with Smalls one morning to investigate.

The students of the trade school can generally be identified as the loiterers at the bus stop, smoking a variety of substances and giving each other piggy back rides while squawking loudly. 

Smalls, of course, finds them fascinating. 

I was poking around the collection of sheds when one of the roughest of the students came sauntering up.

'Dobrý den,' he said. And then he said something else that I didn't quite understand. Possibly, I was too dazzled by the multitude of piercing sparkling on his face.

'Omlouvám se...' I began with a touch of desperation.

'Ah, English?' He said.

'Yes, please!'

'Hmmm, today.......now.......no,' he said, searching for the words and picking them with apologetic care. 'Zitra.....tomorrow?.....yes, tomorrow. Tomorrow, yes.'

I thanked him. He smiled and waved.

The next morning, true to his word, he was there again and the shop was open. He helped me pick out some plants and gave me some advice about where to put them. 

'Tohle je lepší. Better. This one.'

At the end, he tallied up my purchases, then ran back to the greenhouse and returned with two cosmos that I had been eyeing up, but had passed over since I wasn't quite sure where to put them.

'To jsou velmi dobré. Good. Many....flowers,' he said with a soft smile. 'A zdarma pro vás. No....money.'

My two free cosmos found a very nice home in my front garden and bloomed all summer and late into the fall. A cheery reminder of unexpected kindnesses whenever I went through the front gate.

I haven't seen him around the village lately, with his scruffy hair, his collection of piercings, his shy smile, and lines of scars on his inner arm. 

I hope things are going well for him and that he also has had someone give him just what he needed 'zdarma, no money' at a time when he maybe didn't realise how much he needed it. 

And that is my unseasonable-seasonable story. May all of you be as lucky as I have been to receive perfect presents throughout the year. Merry Christmas!

Christmastime and the chocolate devil

One of the first tell-tale signs of the Coming of the Christmas Time in the Czech Republic is sudden proliferation in shops of many little devils.

Not just the charming shoppers themselves, but The Devil Himself, most often embodied in chocolate and foil.

One of the many chocolate devils on offer (this one from Chocoland.cz)

The Czech word for him is Čert and he, along with Anděl (an angel) and Mikuláš (St. Nicholas), he pays a visit to Czech households on the 5th of December. Good children get fruit, chocolate, and small gifts. Bad children get potatoes, onions, coal....or worse.

 'Čert is a very good tradition,' one of my colleagues told me with a nostalgic sigh. 'When my children believed in him, they were so good.'

Much of the Mikuláš tradition is very similar to Santa Claus and his infamous naughty-or-nice list, although Mikuláš himself seems to be much less jolly....and less despotically autocratic as well. The Czech Mikuláš hears both cases for and against the child and judges accordingly.

This is perhaps a positive first introduction to the judiciary system.

But it still leaves us with the uncomfortable presence of the terrifying Čert. I couldn't bring myself to tell Smalls stories about Čert in spite of my colleague's glowing endorsement of the devil as a disciplinary threat.

Heck, I still feel a little guilty for telling Smalls that it was Santa Claus who brought him the advent calendar and small present at the beginning of December. And I feel my cheeks burning a bit when I tell him that he could try asking Ježíšek for the little guitar that he's currently coveting.

I am not very good at this lying business. Even if it is in the name of childhood wonder.

Fortunately/unfortunately, Smalls's classmates seem happy to impart what they know of childhood terror.

'Čert is hiding,' Smalls told me a few nights ago during bathtime. 'He hids in the dark. He will catch me and take me away. And eat me.'

'Oh?' I said, buying time.

'Yes. It's true,' Smalls said. And repeated the story again for emphasis.

Smalls, at three-and-a-half, seems pretty small to be believing in dark satanic feasts.

But, he also seems a little too small to be trusted with truth of Čert. I pictured him imparting his wisdom to his friends...which was quickly followed by visions of angry, bedraggled mothers accosting me when I picked J up from school chanting, ' 'Čert is a very good tradition, Our children used to be so good!'

'Čert, you know, is a coward, really,' I said, aiming for some safe middle ground. 'He's always hiding and slinking around. If you tell him, 'You're very naughty! You need to leave me alone, you horrible Čert!' he'll run away.'

Smalls seemed a bit skeptical, but I later overheard him explaining to L what he should do if accosted by Čert, so I'm relatively hopeful that I've bought us a little more time.

And even better, apparently one of Smalls's friends turned to her mother during the whole Mikuláš charade and whispered, 'This doesn't seem very real.'

This brings up the excellent possibility that it will not be my child who ultimately exposes Čert as a foil-covered fraud.

And so I find myself hoping quite enthusiastically for the growing skepticism of other people's three-year-olds. 

A downside of being a foreign mother

I've spent the last week desperately looking for a lampion. And a drak.

It all started last Thursday with a text from Smalls's školka, which was a friendly reminder that at 5 pm, parents were welcome to join the kids for a walk with 'lampiony'.

This was the first I'd heard of this event, and I didn't have time to pick anything up from a shop. Also, 'lampiony' is a general word for lanterns, so I wasn't quite sure what they meant.

'Perhaps they've carved pumpkins. Or made lanterns out of glass jars. Or put candles in paper bags,' I comforted myself. And brought J's beloved flashlight just in case parents were supposed to bring something.

Ten excited kids. Three focused teachers. Ten pleased parents. Nine paper lanterns-on-a-stick with candles merrily burning inside. One little orange flashlight.

So, it turns out that in the context of easily overlooked notices on the noticeboard at školka, 'lampiony' is not, in fact, an all-encompassing word for various lanterns.

'Proč nemáš lampion?' [Why don't you have a lampion?] one of Smalls's friends asked him, while happily waving around his own one.

See, that I understood.

'Protože mám baterku!' [Because I have a flashlight!] Smalls proudly pronounced.

Because you have a foreigner for a mother, I thought.

And, of course, this should have been the end of it. I should have poured myself a lovely cup of tea when we got home and filed this away under Things to Remember When Smalls Slams Doors as a Teenager.

But, then the noticeboard at školka informed me that this week, they would be flying 'draky'.

The blessed chance for redemption!

The word 'draky' can either mean 'dragons' or 'kites'. I was relatively certain that kites were the things required in this case. We already had a kite for Smalls, but it is a cheap affair and I would put the chances of it breaking pre-flight close to 80%.

I could practically hear Smalls's friend again: 'Why don't you have a kite that isn't broken?'

No. I had to prevent this from happening to Smalls.

A new, better kite was required. One that would be sturdy, colourful, impressive. A kite that would be the envy of Smalls' friends and would convince the teachers that I am a good, if sometimes inexplicably foreign, mother.

Also, I decided, while I'm at it, he should have a proper lampion-on-a-stick.


This was, of course, never a logic-based mission. In fact, as I was going from shop to shop, a not-insignificant part of me reminded me that Smalls did, in fact, have a kite and that this really was about guilt and ego more than anything else, wasn't it?

But, sometimes we need to be a little irrational.

Three stationary shops, two book shops, two supermarkets, two toy stores, one Tiger, and three 'Vietnamese' corner shops later and I was the proud, exhausted owner of both a new kite and a lampion-on-a-stick.

I also have a much better understanding now of the goods on offer in Prague shops.


'How was the kite flying today?' I asked Smalls when I picked him up from školka.

'It was ok,' he said. 'I stepped on my kite and it broke.'

Getting used to driving in the Czech Republic

As you might have gathered from previous posts, I am the very proud bearer of a Czech driver's license.

However, this extreme privilege comes with one major downside: I now must drive on Czech roads (fine) with other drivers in the Czech Republic (problem!).

In fairness, probably 80% of Czech drivers are perfectly acceptable.

The other 20%....

A few weeks ago, I was driving home on the motorway and some enthusiastic member of the 20% club had caused an accident which caused the whole three-lane road to be bricked for a solid, miserable 5 km. And what, I ask you, do the other drivers do?

Me, I swear a bit and become good friends with first gear and the radio. A dark calm settles on me, very similar to the feeling as one waits at the Foreigners' Police or any other of the grand Czech bureaucratic institutions.

The other 80% take a similar approach, or use the extended interval to take an impromptu roadside pee break.

However, those strange souls in the 20% start waving their arms wildly, spring into any gap between cars that is more than 15 cm wide, and make their way to the shoulder, which they commandeer into a fourth lane and zip at terrifying speeds between the overloaded trucks and the yawning ditch.

I'm pretty sure that not all of them are heart surgeons with a transplant specialty and a waiting surgical team.


A few days ago, I was driving through the village next to ours and a car came speeding up behind me. He kept trundling along until he was practically on my bumper, and then started gesturing at me from behind his windscreen.

I would like the record to show that I resisted the temptation to ease off the gas at this point.

'Just driving like my dear old Dad taught me!' I said cheerily instead. And pointlessly, of course.


I officially learned how to drive (the first time around) at 15 and a half through after-class lessons at my Junior High School. (I am now horrified when my 18-year-old students tell me they are taking driving lessons.) But my real driving approach was honed by early morning drives with my dad.

Together, we'd brave icy twilight mornings. I'd drive to school, he'd carry on to work. Along the way, he taught me the Dad Approved Way to drive.

'They'll give you tickets for going even a few miles per hour over the speed limit,' he'd tell me, with the bitterness of experience.

'Always leave plenty of room between you and the person in front.'

And the generational wisdom of: ' Take your time! As your grandmother used to say, if you wait long enough, there is always a hole.'

Driving is very different where I grew up. Traffic is ten cars waiting at the stop light on Main Street. I can't bring myself to call the main roads here in Europe 'highways'. The highways of my youth stretch for miles in straight lines, dotted by the occasional semi truck. So, 'Czech motorways' it is.

The drivers are different too.

'You really need to watch out for drivers here,' my sister warned me when we were visiting this summer. 'They are crazy.'

L and I laughed a little bit. Crazy? Compared to Czech drivers?

But at soon as I got behind the wheel, it all came flooding back. A different kind of crazy.

20% of Czech drivers seem to believe they are in some timed video game and the rest of us are computer-generated obstacles.

On the other hand, 30% of drivers from my sister's town seem to believe they are dream-driving and the rest of us are invisible.

The whole experience tends to be slower, but equally terrifying and considerably more unpredictable.


As for me, I've had to adjust my driving approach somewhat. I still hover around the speed limit, but my thinking is sharper. I spend more time identifying the heart-surgeon drivers. I am more assertive.

And I've amended my grandmother's saying.

'If you wait long enough,' I mutter to myself with grim satisfaction at weaving, waving, tailgating drivers, 'there's always an a-hole.'