9. Weekend at Czech Cottage: a New Kind of Relaxation

Since we arrived in Prague, we have heard about Czech cottages. Indeed, it seems that most of our Czech colleagues and friends spend their weekends at one. We had yet to experience cottage culture when our neighbour Zdenek invited us for a weekend at their cottage near the Sázava River, so we

And on Friday afternoon got the car and headed south.

When I asked Zdenek what they usually did at the cottage, he said in the autumn they chop wood for the fire or do some minor repairs, in the winter they clear away snow. In the spring and summer they work in the garden. A weekend gardening was

because I had to relax. I had been very busy and

to Basically I needed to be informed 24 hours a day and my mo-

infomania.

bile was never Zdenek informed me that they got no signal at their cottage, so I had no choice but to be away from my email inbox and work stresses for the weekend. On the ride up to the cottage I reminisced about gardening on the weekends with my mother.

The „cottage“was more like a rustic cabin in the woods. The electricity was iffy, there were spiders as big as birds, and there was no running water. Additionally, Czech gardening and British gardening are two entirely different concepts. British gardening means leisurely cutting grass or planting flowers and then sipping lemonade in the shade. Czech gardening is more like forced labour. We cleared away huge branches that had fallen in the garden. We chopped wood, dug out rocks, and cleaned out the barbecue pit. We used a wheelbarrow to dump the dirt and rocks in the forest.

The work was undeniably hard, but our evening slivovice and beers tasted even better after backbreaking manual labour. On Sunday we had a dip in the nearby river and I found that relaxation I had been looking for. I guess a weekend of work in fresh air was just