Czechia in 30 minutes (Aug. 10, 2024)

Interview with Karin Gifford, a woman with both Czech and British identities.

In this weekend's edition, we meet Karina Giffard. She grew up in Prague and studied Russian and English in Olomouc. In 1968, while on a study trip to the USSR, the Warsaw Pact countries invaded Czechoslovakia. The return journey by train was quite dramatic:

“There were lines of people in Slovakia throwing stones at our train. They saw the Russian emblems and inscriptions and thought we were Russians. And we were shouting, ‘Don’t! We are Czech students!’”

After working as an interpreter and translator for several years, Karina met and married an Englishman and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1970s. But even after decades of living in Britain, she keeps her ‘Czechness’:

“I am perhaps a little different in some ways—the strange lady who goes around picking mushrooms, stinging nettles, and windfall apples. Generally, the British don’t do these things.”