There’s some slightly unusual stuff going on in Prague.
Thursday morning I got up at 6.45 am to go teach at the Peugeot headquarters in Pankrac. I had had 3 hours sleep and 3 cups of coffee. As I left the house I bumped into some of my friends just coming back from the pub. Bleh. The lesson went well, I bought some strawberries and yoghurt and returned to the house where I found Russ and Chelsea in my bed so I returned downstairs to make my strawberry thing in the blender. It was about this time that the buzzer for the front door downstairs went. I answered it and got a torrent of language in what I thought at the time was Czech. I told him (in Czech of course) that I spoke very little Czech and could he speak English if possible but he just kept on talking. Eventually I gave up and hung up without buzzing him in.
20 minutes later Hamish woke up and was going to the toilet when we both heard a light tapping on the door. Hamish looked through the spyhole and saw a wizened man with long blonde hair. We didn’t answer the door but he just kept tapping, for 20 minutes or so. Then he went downstairs again and started pushing on the buzzer. I gave in, picked up and said hello. There was no answer. When I put the intercom down it just kept buzzing. I had to leave it off the hook.
When Bob came down he decided to go and check what was going on. There was a matchstick stuck in our doorbell. Bob took it out and came back up but it started ringing again soon after. And again there was no answer at the other end. Eventually though, it went quiet again. And then the phone started ringing. Every time it went somebody would pick it up, say hello and the line would go dead. Or else they would hear a torrent of gibberish (not Czech) and then he would hang up. He called 8 or 9 times at least throughout the day before I just left the phone off the hook.
It was a bit of a strange thing, put me in an odd mood all day. Bea was terrified, probably a reasonable reaction but I quite enjoyed looking over my shoulder all the rest of the day.