A chata is this awesome place that Czech’s were given during communist times to basically have holidays and weekends away in. Obviously they weren’t allowed outside the country and had to settle on holidaying inside the country. I went with M and T down to T’s family chata and it involved driving down this country road that quite frankly last looked like it was paved the first time they paved it, and instead of continuing down said lumpy road T veered off and started driving into the middle of the field. Of course your first thought is ‘Oh my God, I’m going to be raped and murdered and chopped up into a pile then thrown in the river’.
T found good parking spot underneath a tree and surrounded by a bush, just next to the disabled parking and we then grabbed all of our stuff out the car, pushed back some branches, walked over some undergrowth until a shape appeared, a shape that was shaped into the shape of a house. It was an odd shape to appear in the middle of a woodland area.
We proceeded to walk down the path and yes, indeed the shape was a house, but to be more precise, a chata.
T’s parents and grandparents had managed to trim back enough of the forestry to essentially create a garden. They had their own things growing, plants in pots, picnic tables (albeit a rickety one), campfires set up, and everything a normal garden has.
Due to the lateness, we decided grab some food, some beer, light a fire and catch an earlyish night. Btw, peanut snips rock.
So the next morning, we woke up at a reasonable hour and I found myself able to relax in the sun for 60 minutes. And after some breakfast we went for a walk to collect elderflower. Myself, not being great at the outdoorsy stuff, felt like a city slicker whilst the other two went in search of elderflower trees and examined the flower itself before determining that realistically we should have been picking said flowers two weeks ago. I smiled nodded and picked them anyway.
After our little adventures we returned upon the chata to do a little bit of work in the garden, have and make some food. As old chata’s rarely have such modern cooking appliances it soon came to my understanding that instead of an oven, we would be cooking large chunks of turkey meat on an outside grill – not a BBQ, an outside grill, there is, as I have discovered, a difference.
Due to unfortunate circumstances, said grill was deemed problematic as the motor that would turn the meat was broken meaning that some muggins would get the short straw of sitting in front of the oven, hand-turning the meat for an hour. Who do you think got that job? Well at least I didn’t have to mow the lawn. After food we would then make our way back to Prague to commence watching the Germany vs England World Cup match…
This was all going rather well until I revealed a little too late that actually the Germany vs England World Cup football match started at four, in what would have been approximately 45 minutes. Being an hour and a half removed from Prague and only just sitting down for food it was deemed impossible that such catchings of matches would ever occur.
So post-munch, we went back to the garden retiring to the fact that no football would be viewed by our tired eyes.
The garden soon became tidy, the car soon became packed and the two travellers and I were soon on the road again. On route, a stop off became imminent as T’s mother had to be picked up.
T’s parents lived on a plot of land that literally had a shack built on it in which they housed. Surrounding the shack, they had grown lots of different foods to essentially live off, ranging from Strawberries, peppers, tomatoes, not to mention the flower gardens. The shack itself was decked out with television aerials, wifi signals, and the majority of it was run off various motors and car batteries. After strawberries and coffee, that went surprisingly well together it was time to hit the road twice, metaphorically of course not physically, well I suppose physically but not in a violent manner.
Prague was on the horizon and all was left was to pop on the internet, and of course let anyone who wants to read about my adventure, do exactly that.
P.s. from my day in the sun, I somehow managed to get a backwards t-shirt tan. I put sun-cream on my arms then proceeded to take my t-shirt off later in the day, forgetting to re-up the cream. Now I have red shoulders, chest, belly, and tops of arms, the bottom of my arms, a slight brownish twinge. I am a backwards sun-burn. Always remember to wear sun-cream kids.
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