Czech Republic, between leisure and work

One of the things I love about my job is the empathy that is often created with my customers. In most cases they can not even to consider such, perhaps because many of them, just because they come to pick me, in some way, resemble me. And I hope this means something very important: that in everything I do I put much of me, and who chooses me does it with care, following not only taste but just a lifestyle choice.
So in August I found myself consider doing a few days off in Prague as a continuation of two days in the surrounding countryside. Invited to view the renovation of an old barn I’m working on for some time.
Paolo and Petra, the owners, have asked me to help them in the work by giving them some technical and stylistic suggestions for the realization of kitchen, living room and bathrooms of a stable of their property that will become their home, but also a hospitality structure. The project is very charming and place is delightful: in the countryside an hour from Prague, the countries are small and suspended in time. Among fields of wheat, sunflowers and poppies, the old stables and barns with red and sloping roofs, sprout colored, telling past stories, made of farmers and working families, of those who moved away from the countryside and who returned there, of communism and whitewashed walls, which slowly are peeling, showing the color of the bricks and that time changes everything.
The facades are decorated with care and sometimes the roofs have white lettering on dark stone. And that’s where this couple with three children plans to move, once the works will be completed. And that’s where I met the neighbors, Jarushka and her husband, of which still struggle to keep in mind the name, this is where I ate a rabbit cooked specially for us and the preparation of which I witnessed, here I tasted hand made pickles and those fresh from the garden (shame not to have photographed everything, but it is my fault … if I eat, I don’t take pictures. And I ate so much …).
I could spend hours telling of this atmosphere and these people, but it is also difficult to convey certain feelings, so I will just post some photos of the country and of the barn, with its doors scuffed and the facade that we do not know where and where not plaster…

Once greeted with regret our hosts, we were accompanied by Paul and Petra in Prague, where we spent a day together and had great advices on what to see and what to discard. Only one suggestion we have not followed: given the oppressive heat, we were not able to sample the shin and goulash. A good reason to go back, maybe during the fall.
And Prague has literally bewitched. I knew it was beautiful, but it’s like Petra said, it’s not just its look and monuments that make the city beautiful. It’sthe atmosphere that we breathe in it, that makes it unique. And it is so unique and beautiful.
From the Jewish ghetto and its cemetery to synagogues, from the castle to the banks of the Vltava, from the clock tower to the Powder Tower, from Wenceslas Square to Charles Bridge, from the Petrin hill with its little Eiffel Tower to Museum of Communism, from Kampa island to the Mala Strana quarter, its baroque churches and endless museums, there is no corner of the city that didn’t excited me. I enjoyed even the beer, which I usually don’t drink…even if Giorgio was certainly the best “estimator” …
All the photos I took would have been too much in the article, and perhaps boring for those who had to leaf through them all, so I made collages to save space and enhance the colors of the entire city. Yes, because I think it is the most colorful city I’ve ever seen, and despite the heat exhausting that reached peaks of 40 degrees, we wanted to see as much as possible, and so it was. We came back more tired than when we left, but with memories that will hardly vanish.