It's Not How Well the Dog Dances

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Copyright © 2019 Hugh Brock

An awesome Czech saying

12 January, 2016

I just learned a Czech saying that I love:

“Co sis navařil, to si taky sněz”

Which means, roughly, “What you have cooked, you also must eat.”

I learned this when I asked a friend of mine, Jaromir Coufal, if the phrase he had used in passing, “They are eating the soup we cooked,” was a Czech phrase.

I have begun calling Jaromir “Djarda” because everyone outside of Europe mispronounces his nickname “Jarda” (“Yarda” in English) as “dŽarda” (“Jarda” in English). This is a running joke in our office in Brno.

We also have multiple Jans and Jirkas. You can imagine.

Filed Under: Brno

Back to Old Europe

30 December, 2015

Kim and I are wrapping up our whirlwind tour of America today, waiting to board our flight back to Vienna and then the train to our lovely Brno. Hopefully the fog will have lifted…

The Brno obelisk, fogged in

Here is the obelisk that stands behind the Brno cathedral Petrov. This photo makes me sad because it is going to encourage my friends and relatives to think that Brno is like Transylvania or something, which it most certainly is not. At least I assume it is not, never having been to Transylvania myself. The point is that Frankenstein’s Monster is not about to lurch hungrily out of the fog at you, despite appearances to the contrary…

Everyone says the fog, is pretty unusual for Brno. Hopefully it ends soon.

While in California, we visited my family, which resulted in this:

family-2015

Mom, in the middle front, was recently diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a kind of bone marrow cancer. Fortunately she has been responding well to the treatment and everyone seems optimistic about her prognosis, which is a real relief. My grandfather — Dad’s father — died of the same disease back in 1985. Anyway we thought it would be a good idea to try to get all of us together for Christmas, which was made possible by many many pounds of jet fuel and (on Kim and my part) many thousands of Air Miles. It was a really good visit, and exactly the right length (6 days).

We stopped in Philadelphia on the way home and saw a few folks and fixed a few things at our house there. It is always nice to see all our old friends. Kim and I are both surprised I think that, as much as we love the city, we don’t really miss it. I guess 20 years in one place may be long enough, or at least long enough that it is time to take a break.

Also, I really like not having to fix anything in our Brno apartment. Having a landlord is great!

Filed Under: Brno

Everything’s Bigger in America

24 December, 2015

Today I’m writing from a coffee shop in the Santana Row “village” (see below for rant) in San Jose, California. It’s Christmas Eve, 2015. I’ve been in the Czech Republic now with only brief interruptions since June 2015, so I’ve had a fair bit of time to acclimate to the European lifestyle. Coming back for the holiday brings a bunch of thoughts, including how weird it is that everyone understands English, but one stands out:

Holy crap everything is just enormous!

Like, seriously huge. Cars, houses, roads, plates of food, stores, things in stores… I feel like Gulliver or something. Only the people are roughly the same size. Well, they’re roughly the same height, anyway. Nonetheless, it apparently takes one of these to transport a family of four to dinner:

A go-kart, apparently

It’s not like big cars are a new thing in the U.S. After all, my father drove us around in one of these when I was a kid:

1960cadillacTTB

(Wow I really wish he had kept that car…)

What I do think has changed since the Johnson administration is the size of everything else. I’m not sure, but I wonder sometimes if the American obesity crisis is simply an attempt to expand to fill all the space we’ve made for ourselves. (Really I think it’s because we’re being poisoned, but that’s a subject for another blog.)

The contrast with Brno, where the average monthly salary would not quite buy the gas for the truck above, is quite impressive. You can make arguments for both lifestyles, I guess, but I know which I would prefer.

Oh, and about Santana Row… blearrgh. Why do we tear down real towns with character and interest, so we can build fake ones instead? Not enough room for luxury retail? Bad land-use laws (this is probably it, really)? I think I feel another blog coming on on the importance of decent legislation…

Filed Under: Brno, Cars, Boats, Airplanes

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Meet Hugh

I'm the Research Director for Red Hat, married to harpist and writer Kimberly Rowe, living in Boston. We lived in Brno, Czechia until pretty recently. Read More…

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