Writing Paper

So. This is my first post from Prague and rather surprisingly it has nothing to do with meat, beer, the Czech language, or any of the other things that strike most people first when they arrive in this country. Well don't worry, I'll come to those things later! But over the last few weeks I have taken up some of the activities that I used to enjoy while living abroad, especially, but in the busy last couple of years back in the UK have been somewhat overlooked. Two such activities are baking cakes, and writing real letters to my friends and family.

Now, in order to write letters, one needs nice writing paper. It doesn't necessarily have to be pretty, but it needs to be proper thick paper, preferably with envelopes to match. In the UK, Christmas-card-sending, letter-writing capital of the world (possibly) it's still possible to find nice notelets and writing paper. It's getting harder, but it's not difficult if you go to the right sort of shop. But here, such things are almost non-existent. Single cards, like birthday cards, and perhaps even Easter cards, are available. But packs of cards, notelets or writing paper (in packs or blocks - I'm not fussy) just can't be found. I thought I was looking in the wrong places  - so I went to a couple of stationers - I mean proper, old fashioned, individual stationers - and to the stationery section of the big tesco department store. In tesco I found one boxed pack, with 5 notelets, a few sheets of paper, and some envelopes. Bright pink with a feather pattern on the paper. Well, it was just about palatable, but not exactly the height of taste and hardly a bargain. In the first stationer, I found there was no writing paper at all. In the second stationer they again had only one pack, this time featuring an orange gerbera, plain white envelopes, and the paper has lines printed on it which looks a bit childish. Well, I bought it in case I don't find any other paper in the whole city, but wow. What is the world coming to? All I want to do is write some letters.... surely I can't be the only one?!