Richard takes us to Dinner

It was our third camp in the Czech Republic,

situated on the shores of a fresh water lake at Ceska Skaljce just outside the city of Nachod When the camp owner walked up, I greeted him with my two words of Czech, then the standard

 "Do you speak English

"Yes I do, and I wish I did'nt"  Solidly built, shaved head, with a big hole in one earlobe, he looked like a tough cookie.

"Oh, why is that" I asked

"My wife is American and I have to speak English all the time at home!"

He had been an economic immigrant, presumably legal, worked in the States for 7 years on building sites and in that time met his wife.

"Problem here tonight is, we have no power" The storm we had experienced at the previous night's camping ground had been widespread, and late the next day they were still working to resore power.
"That's ok" I said, but in reality we were using camping grounds to keep our artillery of electronic gadgets charged up.

Chatted for a while, then unpacked and began to set up camp. Shortly our host came over and sat down,
We introduced ourselves, his name is Richard.

"I would like to take you out to dinner tonight, I have to pick up my wife from work and we can go to a restaurant for  a meal. Only thing is I have to leave in 25 minutes.

Well, the offer of a meal is hard to refuse at the best of times, but when you've just hopped off your bike after a hot 60ks ride, it's a no brainer.

"Well that would be very nice, we can be ready by then"  Must be that his wife just loves to find someone else to talk English with. A fast ride into the city -

"Does your wife know we are with you?" I asked

"No" Richard replied. What had taken us an hour on the bike was compressed into a five minute car trip.

A pleasant short haired woman of medium height was standing outside the pickup point when we shot around the corner almost bowling her over. Giving Richard a lpuzzled ook, she hopped in and we were introduced to Rachael, she teaches English as a second language, on contract and works 70 hour weeks.

Something was going on, there was tension in the air, but Rachael made a nice fist of chatting to us and finding out where we were from  and what we were doing.

We got seated in the restaurant and the tall dark headed waitress (named Luci) came and took our drinks order, and then things began to unravel. It became clear that our role in the evening was that of a foil, taking the heat off Richard over something that had been going on in their lives recently.

It appears that a highly intelligent "nutty professor" type had stayed at their camp and tried to get Richard interested in investing in some form of 'bio building method"or system, on which the Professor had spent the last 20 years of his life, his life savings and his marriage and was now fleeing from his desperate wife who was filing divorce and trying to pin down some of the last shared assets for her security.

The wife had been ringing , the Professor was lurking, Rachael thought he was a potential phychopath and the whole affair was throwing their already turgid life into overdrive.  After ten minutes on the sidelines, with a thrown line or two  of explanation, they finally put the matter to rest for the evening, Richard, drawing a sigh of relief and we had a pleasant evening with very nice Czech food.

 Rachael & Richard

It's tough in the business world of Czech Republic, their camping ground business is undermined by local farmers who rent out illegal sites to fishermen and the local council does nothing about it.