Friar hermit stumbles over

I’m in Brno in the Czech Repub­lic for a week before start­ing work in Austria next week. The Czech Repub­lic is having a much colder winter than usual, with heavy snow. Yester­day we went down to Brno Rese­voir, which had unusu­ally frozen over.

Kostel Sv. Mikuláše

We also went to the baroque St Nich­olas’ church in Prague. I’m not at all reli­gious (and it seems neither are the Czechs), but I like visit­ing churches for the art and archi­tec­ture. I really liked the faces of the statues inside, espe­cially this bish­op type who seems to be going “who? me?”.

Prague Puppet Shop

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Puppetry is a big thing in the Czech Repub­lic. As well as being the home of Jan Švank­ma­jer and Jiří Trnka, there are a few puppet shops in the Old Town in Prague selling the work of local puppet artists. I’m afraid I didn’t get the names of the artists who made these ones I photo­graphed. I really wanted to buy a small puppet, they weren’t hugely expens­ive, but I didn’t have much chance of getting it home in one piece, so I reluct­antly gave it a miss.

Prague

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After a week in Dresden at the end of August, I went to Prague for the week­end with my work colleague Hazel. We both had to go to Vienna en route to our next assign­ment, so it made sense to fit in a quick trip to Prague on the way.

Travels Without My Aunt

I’ve spent most of the past month trav­el­ling around Germany and Austria teach­ing. It’s for an extra-curricular school programme. You do activ­it­ies to boost the children’s speak­ing confid­ence in English, work on creat­ive projects, and put on a show for the parents with present­a­tions of the projects, and drama writ­ten by the students. You don’t need to speak German to do the job, and you never speak German in the classroom, but of course it comes in useful to under­stand if the kids are being naughty, and in your time outside the classroom.

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