Lidé

When I headed out to Prague in September 2014, I put my fate in the hands of Facebook, and asked if anyone knew anyone, who had a space in their home for me. Amazingly/randomly/thankfully a friend in Scotland had a friend in the Czech Republic, who went to school with a friend, who had an apartment with his wife, in the suburbs of Prague, who for some reason said yes to having a stranger from Scotland bed down on the living-room floor.

 Petr and Petra welcomed me into their home late that Friday night and we had a stilted, shy chat (in their third language) before heading to bed. Petr and Petra, it turned out, are early to bed and early to rise. After my journey I was pretty happy to get a good sleep, and this was particularly useful as when asking me what time I wanted breakfast, Petr suggested “6 or 7 o’clock?”. I said 7ish..

Waking up bright, early and refreshed on Saturday morning, my hosts made me some traditional Czech krupičná kaše, or semolina porridge, for breakfast. Krupičná kaše is served warm, and topped with melted butter, cocoa powder and cinnamon. It was a bit weird for me, as in Scotland semolina is a a dessert, and we used to groan whenever it was served at our dinner table. Being older, hopefully wiser and definitely more polite than my child-self, I enthused about breakfast and it actually did set me up pretty well for the day I had ahead.

 

Newly married and incredibly hospitable, they spent the weekend cooking up mountains of delicious food for me, before insisting on opening a bottle of whisky that they had been given as a wedding present, to celebrate my race. Obviously I did a bit of polite British protesting first before giving in to a wee dram and a night of swapping stories.

On Sunday they spent the day cooking me more great food and I showed them all my favourite places in Scotland on Google street-view, in preparation for their summer holidays on the West Coast later that month.