Jana and I were walking around the open air market in Pelhrimov looking at the goods on display and commenting on them. Suddenly she said to me, "I was just thinking to myself, 'Oh, these people are speaking Czech! They're from the Czech Republic!' Then I realise that I AM in the Czech Republic. It's just that I've been speaking English to you the last few hours."
This reminds me of the late 80s when I used to commute to Zürich to visit the Gentle Giant. We might sometimes go to student-populated areas as he was working at the university at the time. After one of these weekend trips, I went directly from the airport to the University of London, where I was working at the time. There were students dotted around the front entrance steps of the college, chatting. I thought, “That’s not German. I wonder what language it is?” Although I didn’t, and still don’t, speak German, my brain had got so used to hearing German sounds that I couldn’t process English when I heard it!
(Czech Republic, August 2010 / Switzerland/London, 1987–9)
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