guess where?

You know what I'm looking forward to? The three-good-things posts about each place we've been to in Czechia! Some of you might remember them, I did them for every place we visited back in 2019. A bit strange to look forward to reminiscing about a place you're actually still in. But truth to tell, we have seen so much already (and we still have three days to go) that I cannot help feeling somewhat tired and nearly ready to go home. My ability to absorb new information is nearly depleted.

I remembered quite a bit of my Czech! Before going here, I watched some cartoons in it, just to set my head a little, just to remember the sounds, the basic vocabulary and what I call the little words. And I did! After a two or three days my head just started buzzing with the language. Then, when we came here, I started speaking immediately. Well, I mean, as a tourist you don't really say much, but still - whenever I could I would ask stuff in Czech and talk to people in it, not in English. Of course, sometimes I get tired and pretend to be an English speaking tourist just because. But I just want to share this joy of being able to understand - people talking, signs around you, random pieces of text you see. My passive knowledge is much more extensive than the active, but I'm happy to realize that I would not need much to turn passive into active and to actually be able to say that I speak six languages (and not five as I've been saying all these years, because I considered my knowledge of Czech non-existent).

Another thing that was really great (apart from us actually being able to travel together and outside of our tiny country, that is) was that I got to see a lot of Czechia itself, not just Praha. We rented a car and drove around for the first 5-6 days, and we have not only visited tourist places such as Karlovy Vary and Cesky Krumlov, but also small places we saw on our way or just put a finger on the map on. And I'm happy to say that Czechia is wonderfully beautiful and friendly. And we've not seen everything. And this time around (it's my 10th or 11th time here) we're enjoying _not_ visiting tourist spots, but going to local markets and generally getting to know actual local life. Tomorrow, we're going to a flea market, then we plan to try burčak - a local kind of young wine we've never tried, have lunch at a local ten-types-of-beer-from-small-breweries pub that serves duck in orange and ginger sauce and go to a jazz concert in the evening.

Thanks to all of you for posting things, by the way. I read them for breakfast daily. It gives me a sense of stability.