Magdalena Kožená

A blueberry pie smelled wonderfully on the table. The first piece would have nearly vanished into my gut if it had not been for the heart-breaking exclamation from the kitchen: "We are out of maple syrup!" I did not quite understand why the pie is inedible without this sweet sticky fluid; however, I would have hated to talk back to my host. Therefore, we had no choice but to get in the car and go shopping.  more

I arrived in the Scottish capital smartly equipped with several sweaters. Residents of Edinburgh, who finally got to take out their sleeveless shirts from the dressers after the whole year thanks to the 15°C weather, however, unlike me, believed that the hot summer was just peaking. They collectively gave in to various, incomprehensibly festive moods. Instead of comfortably sitting down for Sunday lunch, numerous families camping out on the lawns of city parks were joyfully spreading orange marmalade on toast, all sorts of street clowns and jokers were competing for the audience's favour against the ever-present pipers. In short, the Scots started to go wild outside and I was warming myself up in my hotel room by reading the fire regulations wrapped in blankets. "Do not run and do not yell if flames burst out," it said wisely. I decided to oust the blasphemous idea that a fire would be warm at least by the nostalgic memory of hot Spanish nights. Smiling at the idea of how I am forbidding a temperamental southerner from being loud, while her pillow is smouldering with her morning coffee instead of a cigarette, I fell asleep happily, unfortunately, not for long.  more

I share a certain desire of adventure with the French. For example, I am burning with curiosity when I order a local delicacy with my "cute" accent, like marinated legs of the queen of murky waters soaked in the tears of a sad fairy (in a low price level Czech restaurant, this dish would probably be called frogs legs with brown sauce), and they, in the presence of a girl born in one of the countries located to the right of Paris, allegedly inhaling a certain whiff of the exciting eastern atmosphere. I will lose some of my reputation of a woman of steel by claiming that in my country I do not fall asleep to the sound of machine guns and do not drink a litre of vodka a day, however, as soon as my friends find out that the bottle of Bordeaux is empty due to me, I will fix my reputation a little bit. Conversation intertwined with various cheerful board games, such as secret removal of chips from the plate continues in French until I mix up a preposition or gender. Afterwards the native speakers indulgently switch to English, the mutilation of which certainly does not bother them.  more

Even seemingly stoic Swedes like to have fun. My arrival in Stockholm was reminiscent of a field game that children at scout camps cannot wait for every year. Since I have never experienced a stay in this holiday facility, please, consider the similarity between carrying a 30 kg suitcase and completing the following instructions written by the host on a piece of graph paper, only as my illustrations. "Enter the building through one of the glass doors." (God knows which one, they were all locked.) "Unlock the gatehouse with the fifth key from the right. It is hanging on the hook at the height of your eyes. The keys to the apartment are in the envelope which is in one of the drawers. You will get the code to the front door easily, deduct three from F and multiply the result by the total number of windows." Eventually, I completed the test of independence and overall ability to solve the most common life situations to the level of tasks worthy of the Fort Boyard competition and I found myself in an apartment full of that strange milky light of a Northern night. However, I gushed over this natural phenomenon only until I realised that if I do not manage to fall asleep between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m., when the milk turned into something resembling coffee milk in the school cafeteria, sleep will definitely never come because the use of curtains is the same sin for residents of these regions as painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa.  more

We landed in Milan. Gentlemen in grey suits (when looking at passengers in the business class, I cannot help but suspect that human cloning has been going on for a long time), nervously putting in the secret codes of leather suitcases and searching for their indispensable boast number two (unlike in the boast number one, the following rule applies: the smaller, the prouder the owner – editor's note: this is no longer true today).  more

Men say about women that they have a bad sense of direction. I dare to disagree this time. Where there is nothing, it can't be bad. Women generally have no sense of direction. I am a shining example of this. I arrived in Leipzig with a slight delay because the fact that the large blue sign Teplice, advertised at several Prague intersections, does not lead drivers to the highways but it only timidly suggests the approximate direction of a nature trail across the Czech lands, ending probably in one of the cosy pubs of the Teplice area, is beyond my comprehension. (That misty morning, perhaps even the questionable businesses on the border stretch of the E55, where the audience can enjoy an impressionist scene straight out of a Monet painting, looked cosy. To reach perfection, the freezing girls in creative clothes were missing an umbrella of the colour of old rose.)  more

Does it also regularly happen to you that you forget to pack an umbrella in your suitcase? And if you somehow accidentally take it, it hangs in the hotel on a hanger the whole time or you are sure to forget it in the very first restaurant? I am really not jealous of your stay in Amsterdam under these conditions. You will get wet, several times a day. And your "guaranteed waterproof" jacket fails you again, your hair gets flat and when you pull out important documents from the bag, you can just turn them into paper planes. Do not attempt to defy today's unfavourable horoscope, make astrologers happy, cross the white line into the bike lane (don’t worry, you can do it easily, because it takes up about three quarters of all pavements), and let yourself be voluntarily knocked down by a young self-assertive man in a nice suit. (From the basket attached to the front of the bike, at best a dog, at worst the latest fashion craze – a pet rat – will be probably surprised at your awkwardness.)  more