Two years ago I had a fantasy: I would travel the world slowly, staying for a few months at a time in quaint little towns. I’d become conversant in the language, and engage in some charitable activity. Perhaps I’d paint a mural on the wall of a school, involving all the kids, and leaving them broken-hearted at our departure? Well, something like that.
Even then I knew this wouldn’t actually happen, because Steve’s dream was to tear around the globe as quickly as possible, ticking off strange and unusual places from his bucket-list while he still had the chance.
But being a couple that quite like to staying married, we compromised: so no playground full of dancing, paint-splattered children, and no Ulan Bator (yet). However, the idea of volunteering, of offering our services, of getting involved – well that stayed…
… and segued nicely into Angloville.
(If you’re new to this blog, you’ll find more information on the links below)
Angloville
We’ve already done two of these, one in Slovakia and one in Poland, and I’m very keen to do the one in Prague. So, naturally, we sign up for two.
Normally, we just rock up at the hotel in Georgie and park her out the back somewhere, but we are ‘benched’ in the UK, thanks to the terrific luck of Steve’s three-month contract.
I book Airbnbs, and flights to Prague, and proceed to get excited – we’ve only seen the southern tip of the Czech Republic, but we liked it a lot.
The venue
The Chateau Hotel Hruba Skala sits in the north-eastern part of the Czech Republic, in an area known as the Cesky Raj, or Bohemian Paradise – a nature reserve of forests, mountains, amazing sandstone formations and natural caves.
A natural face… 
…and a ‘natural’ body.
Our hotel is equally spectacular. I can’t get enough of the views, and the hotel staff are utterly lovely. But there just aren’t enough of them to clean the rooms very often and – as I have discovered – Czech food is not my favourite (I’ve never thought to put squirty cream on my roast beef and gravy before, and I shan’t be doing it again).
And the bar shuts really early in the evenings. So, you know, there are ups and downs.
This year’s stars …
Mr One Love
Originally from Dudley, in the UK, our course co-ordinator found his passion for this work a year ago, and relocated to Prague to work full-time. He’s an entirely engaging character, with a soft, spiritual nature, and an energetic, uplifting manner.
He begins every meeting with the phrase, ‘listen with your ear-holes’ (which should have been irritating but absolutely isn’t), and ends it with, ‘one love, everybody’ (to which, ditto). By the end of the week we are all saying it. Sometimes he’ll throw in a ‘Namaste’, or ‘Hare Krishna’, just so he doesn’t leave anybody out.
Each morning, before breakfast, he leads a Tai Chi or Yoga class on the lawn where the weddings are conducted – I try the first one, only to find that all my once stretchy bits are now firmly coiled, and promptly give up for the rest of the week.
Here is Mr One Love telling a newly arrived stag party where the best bars are.
As a co-ordinator, he has a very humanistic approach to the job, which manifests in how he explains things to us. For example, he’ll tell us the rule, ‘Always be on time for every session,’ but then he explains why: –
‘The participants tend to come from one of two groups,’ he tells us. ‘There are those who want to improve their English, and have saved for a long time to be able to afford this; and those who’ve been sent here by their employers, on the understanding that – unless their English improves – they are out of a job.’
‘They are vulnerable, and have little confidence, and a lot rests on this for them. So if you are late for a session, they can be so wound up that I’ve seen grown men break down and cry. Please take your time-keeping seriously, ok guys?’
So as well as the practical and logistical things, he creates a space where we never, ever want to do anything less than our best. Good man.
The Architect
During the course of the week, we slowly glean fragments of this sweet man’s story – and it certainly helps me understand more of what living under communism was like.
He tells us that his father had been a leading architect in the days before, but under the new regime he’d been ordered to do manual labour. He’d told his young son that one day, when they were free, his son should be an architect too.
‘I wait and I wait, and then I do it for my father. Because he could not, I do it for him,’ he says.
He asks us which cities we’ve been to, and almost everywhere we say, he’s designed the parks – the big ones. When they had the Olympics in Beijing, he was called in to design the whole route from the airport to the Olympic Village.
But despite his talent and his success, this is not his first love. He has a house on a piece of land (in the most prized and beautiful area of natural land in the Czech Republic) where he keeps animals, and teaches. ‘This is my heart’, he says.
Fera and Sam
We have two dogs on our first course and they both get their completion certificates – because even though they are shit at given adequate feedback, they do a lot to help calm the more nervous of the participants.
Fera is a sweet little thing, and she takes her job description of being cute and feisty very seriously. She belongs to The Film-maker, a gentle, softly spoken lady, who’s just made her second film. Her first was a docudrama that won the Czech equivalent of an Oscar, and she shows us a trailer for her second film that leaves us all spellbound.
Sam is a black lab, who epitomises being so laid back he is horizontal. He can’t be doing with Fera and prefers to leave the room when she skips in. However, he’s always there to greet each person individually in the mornings, and will hunker down near the feet of anyone having a tough day. We all adore him.
The Poet
He is a complete sweetheart, and at first glance, it’s easy to think of him as just a really nice young man. But then we hear his story – one of gender confusion, and constant bullying from his peers, and how he dealt with it all by expressing his thoughts and feelings in spoken word.
So astonishingly powerful are his poems, that almost after his first gig he ended up on Channel 4. He also created an alternative persona as a way to empower him self, and is now a successful drag act.
When he performs a couple of his poems, spoken fairly fast (in the way that Slam so often is), even the Czechs – who struggle with understanding the words – are visibly moved.
The Learner
One charming woman enrols on the course thinking it is for people who have no English at all. Within a few minutes of her arrival she realises her mistake, and goes to Mr One Love and requests to leaving.
But he is not one to back down from the challenge of helping people, and persuades her to stay for one night to see if she’ll change her mind. He, and his Czech-speaking assistant (an amazing girl who never seems to eat, sleep, or sit down), work with her during every session.
To our delight, she stays, and by the end of a week of extraordinarily hard work on her part, she is joining in conversations, and clearly enjoying herself. Fantastic lady, so brave.
Group work
Our first group activity is the Desert Island challenge. We are to imagine ourselves shipwrecked and washed up on an island, with a few weirdly specific supplies (Captain’s hat, Chinese porcelain, a Britney Spears CD, etc.) from the totalled vessel. Do we stay and build a new community, or find a way to escape the island?
We have a big sheet of paper, some marker pens, and the supply list. In my group, we also have four dumbstruck Czechs with no idea what they want to do, however much we prompt them.
Then inspiration strikes – The Architect suddenly realises he’s the only man on an island with five women. He demands to wear the Captain’s hat and starts giving us all jobs (mine is to make us Pina Coladas from the bottle of rum and the coconuts). You never saw a happier man explaining this in their presentation.
Evening entertainments
Mr One Love takes charge of organising these: they are a great way for us all to unwind, and for the Czechs and Slovaks to keep practising their English in a more relaxed situation.
My favourite activity is when he splits us into groups, and gives us a mere forty minutes to act out, and record, a scene from a horror movie. Oh, this is epic.
On our first visit, Steve and I end up in a group filming the ‘breakout’ scene from Alien.
In the middle of the terrace dining room (with ordinary Czechs just enjoying a beer), Steve hurls himself, choking, onto a table and I simulate blood bursting out of his stomach by chucking a red T-shirt onto his chest.
I may have ruined this a bit by absent-mindedly smoothing it down as if I was about to iron it.
Anyway, we don’t win. A rather gripping version of Psycho gets the unanimous vote – mostly because The Cute Blonde is wearing an increasingly see-through white T-shirt, as she showers herself. For quite a long time.
On our second visit, The Poet does a stellar job of channelling his inner Rhianna in his group’s version of Psycho, but it doesn’t have quite the same hypnotic quality as the wet T-shirt one. And anyway, I’m teamed up with The Leggy Blonde and her husband, The Salesman, and we do an awesome version of The Ring, just awesome.
We have The Leggy Blonde in a white dress, hair hanging down over her face, appearing suddenly in a gloomy corridor, and crawling out of a TV screen (actually, a big piece of paper, taped over a doorway, with a rectangle cut out. But you get the idea).
Thanks to the salesman’s editing feature on his phone, we have close-ups of her crawling along the floor, of her stumbling zombie-like feet, of The Salesman’s terrified face as he backs helplessly away, and all to a constant soundtrack of a ringing phone.
We smash it, and win a bottle of ultra-cheap and delightfully nasty white wine. Happy days.
Presentations
One lovely chap begins his with the words; ‘I have the best job in the world.’ And he really does: he designs and builds all the huge, intricate, and amazing structures that Lego use in their theme parks.
He shows us the exact replica Ferrari he constructed, that weighs way more than the original. He plays us time-lapse film of a life-sized cherry tree (in full blossom, with integral lights) that he made for Japan. He explains the processes, and gives us mind-boggling figures on how many bricks got used, and how many people it took to build them. Nice guy, great presentation.
The Architect has a drawing he’s done of his piece of land. He explains how he keeps the eco-system in balance by breeding some animals to feed the other animals, which comes as a bit of a shock to the vegetarians.
‘You know this?’ he says, ducking his head and flapping his arms. Er, swan, pigeon, eagle, duck?
‘Yes, is duck’, he looks relieved, even though it is written in the corner of his map. ‘I breed duck, is food for … you know this?’ and then he makes a snarling face until we get the word, ‘wolf’. Great stuff, weep with laughter.
But there is one presentation that just has us all on our feet applauding and moves several of us to tears. And it is given, in perfect English, and without notes – by The Learner. Outstanding.
My birthday
On the last day of our first course, I have a birthday – not a big one with a zero in it (that’s next year) – so I’m very happy to celebrate it at Angloville, and then to have an evening in Prague, with Steve.
On Thursday night, after presentations and the evening entertainment (of a good old pub quiz), I made good on my promise to try Slivovitz. We stay up until three in the morning, so I’ve already done lots of celebrating after midnight.
But to my delight, as we accept our certificates saying we’ve ‘passed’ Angloville, I’m also presented with a wonderful homemade card signed by everybody. The Architect hands me a bunch of roses and – while he is at it – he also gives a single gerbera to all the women, and a bottle of Fernet to Steve, who is his mentor.
The loveliest goodbye
On the second course I meet The Bubbly Blonde: a gorgeous woman, who totally pushes herself with her presentation by doing a stand-up routine (this is not her job).
We really hit it off and she consequently requests me as her mentor. Unfortunately for her, so does another sweet lady, who I’m allocated to instead. But we get together when we can and enjoy our time together.
When It’s time to say goodbye, she shows me a tiny, beaded angel.
‘This is for protection’, she says. ‘It belonged to my grandmother, and then my mother, and now it is mine.’ She presses it into my hand, and her eyes start tearing up. ‘Please, I want you to have it, to keep you safe, and to remember me.’
I have never been given such a heartfelt gift, and even now, I still can’t express how much this means to me. A true treasure, from a truly beautiful soul. And a fitting end to everything that Angloville is about.
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