28th August 07

Hey Mark,

I've just spent three days in the Krkonoshe mountains on the Czech border with Poland. Sour, fresh blueberries, Krkonoshe beer and, for some reason, ultra-expensive mohitos. Every town the coach drove through en route was more beautiful than Mlada Boleslav, the factory town in which I am stationed.

I had an hour in Jicin, for example. While waiting for my bus, I sat in the square enjoying the sun and a beer, ate a cheeseburger in a bun as big as a baseball glove, visited a church, watched some boys flirt with some vietnamese girls, saw a guy in electric blue suit, bearded in shades, who was either mad or a genius. In short, it was alive. The only time most of my students get animated is to proclaim melodramatically 'This town is dead!'

I did approach IH Bratislava and was offered a job, but it was very low salaried. After investigation I had to turn them down. Poland is a new start, new culture.

This country seems ever-more beautiful now I'm leaving. Daily lunch-time menus with three options - goulash and knedlicky a mainstay on each of them - for 69 crowns, including starter of soup.

In Vrklabi I sat in a 'bistro'. It was the equivalent of a Polish milk bar: dirt-cheap food, beer at half eleven, view onto the street. Other people joining your table. I had a walk around the cemetery (Franz Schubert was buried there. I need to check if it was the Franz Schubert.) A really beautiful, unspoilt town. All the 19th century graves seemed to be crumbling, perhaps because of the cold air of the mountain. The temperatures fluctuate wildly: cold in the morning, baking by the afternoon. A fine-needled machine in the high street records air temperature and humidity.

Do you remember Steve, the Fall fan from my housewarming? He's arriving in Poland the day I start teaching. That should muddy the waters nicely with my new flatmate, a friend of the principal.

I'm trying to cram in everything I can before I leave on 14th Sept. A Slovakian double wedding on Friday. Then I hope to visit a Czech student - my first ever student - at the weekend. Next week another trip into the countryside. The last weekend a music / puppetry festival in Jicin.

I'm dreaming of my annual family curry (with my sister, parents and Carrie) in London on 18th Dec. Then we're off to Illinois for a family christmas.

So, I hope you're doing well.

Is Sara back? Everyone okay in my 'real' family?

Take care,

Matt


31 12 7

I was suddenly bareheaded.

15 Aug

Hi Camilla,

Glad to hear it, that's great :)

I'm up and down: lots of good experiences, lots of bad experiences, I feel a bit like a sock in the tumble dryer sometimes.

Which is why I am planning to head to Slovakia - there's an IH there and if I can just wrangle my way out of my contract here, then I'll be starting in early September. Maybe I'll get the regular classes that Mark always denied me in the belief that it would make me 'grow' (his words). Danube, close to Vienna, blah blah blah blah

Winter arrives in my dreams representing Carrie and Chicago and family cooking and a brief glimpse of English streets. I am very homesick at this stage. Carrie came to visit last month and it coincided with a heatwave. I took her up Petrin Hill to overlook the whole of Prague. We were delirious and had to decend to find water when we stumbled on a zoo I never knew existed. We stroked the ponies (a pony is a small horse) and looked at the turtles in the turtle pond. We couldn't see the lizards. It was built around a school - classrooms and drawing activities for all the local kids. Then we heard a scraping from one of the greenhouses. We went to investigate as we weren't sure if we were trespassing. A woman was watering all the plants. Did she work there we asked? Does she feed the animals herself? Are the schoolkids on holiday? We should see the croc, she said. It's back there but far too hot for viewing the animals now really. As she talked she kept casting an eye down at the box in my hands (my new trainers). I couldn't understand until she finally asked 'Do you have something for me?' She was used to people bringing her unwanted pets, injured bats and so on.

I didn't give her my rabbit or turtle or anything, but we headed back down. I thought it was magical that fate should come up with that misunderstanding.

I've been really into Germany since my visit to Berlin - I want to hear Zoo Station by U2 and Lou Reed's drama about an addicted mother who kills herself - 'Berlin' ('And this ... the most vile album of all' - The New York Times :) ) I've been reading Christopher Isherwood's "Return to Berlin', which Cabaret was based on, and Stephen Spender's autobiography in which he visits Hamburg and Berlin pre-WW2. Fantastic. I've just begun The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass.
I went on a tour of the Jewish synagogues and cemetary last week which was really harrowing. The Pinkas synagogue is the biggest epitaph in the world - the white walls are covered with the names - in simple calligraphy - of each of the 77,477 Jews from the Czech Republic who never returned from the concentration camps or ghettoes in Poland and Germany. It is done chromatically - the town in orange, surname in red, first names in black (often there were many members of a family who were killed) and then the dates in red too. All of them, regardless of whether they were born in 1898 or 1940 ended in the date 42 or 43. there was a section on 'Mlada Boleslav' the town where I am living.

And still people had to be asked not to take photos.

I'm not teaching till 5, so I'm off to get a potato cake.

Hope you're doing well Camilla,

Hi to everyone,

Take care,

Matt x