Travel & Historical Research: a fun combination

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I’m planning a trip to Karlovy Vary, Czechia (aka Karlsbad, Czech Republic) to do research for my historical novel-in-progress. My initial idea was to visit the locations in the story. take numerous photographs and notes, and soak in the atmosphere to make my novel more vivid and authentic. 

Many of these locations are tourist sites, such as the Elisabeth Spa, where my novel’s protagonist works. Austrian Emperor Franz-Josef built the opulent baths to honour his late wife Elisabeth (Sisi). The spa opened in 1906. My novel takes place in 1914 during the months leading up to World War One. On my short visit to Karlovy Vary thirteen years ago, I saw the Elisabeth Spa building and its gardens and park setting. On this refresher trip, I’ll get a peek inside by enjoying swimming and relaxation pools. Research is tough work.

During my trip planning, I discovered that Karlovy Vary has an excellent museum with exhibits on the history and development of the town since the 15th century, famous Karlovy Vary doctors and visitors, and local crafts, art and historical collections. Might the museum have archives that I could view with advance notice? It also occurred to me that the municipal library must have books of local interest not available elsewhere. I emailed both institutions about my research trip and explained that my novel was inspired my 2013 visit to Karlovy Vary and my maternal grandparents who immigrated to Canada from Czechia shortly after WWI. I received helpful and enthusiastic replies.

Librarian Kateřina Krieglsteinová advised me to check the Karlovy Vary Library’s online catalogue and send her a list of books that interest me. She will have them available when I arrive and supplement them with other relevant books. In addition, she offered to arrange a walking tour of the city with an English-speaking guide knowledgeable about local history, a visit to the Karlovy Vary Museum exhibits, and, as a benefit to the library, an informal, evening talk about my writing and ancestors in Czechia for their readers. Since I don’t speak Czech, she’ll try to find a translator.     

David Čech from the Karlovy Vary Museum replied that he and two historians will be available to show me their museum archives that include old maps, photographs, postcards, and official documents. He supplied the historians’ email addresses so I could contact them directly and about a dozen links to websites with historical information. One of these was the “Kurlisten,” which lists every spa guest in Karlovy Vary from 1795 to 1949. I had recalled reading that Sigmund Freud was in Karlovy Vary at the outbreak of WWI and made him a character in my novel even though I couldn’t find confirmation of his visit anywhere on the internet. I asked David about this. He sent me an article stating that Freud “took the cure” in Karlovy Vary from July 13 to early August, 1914, as well as the “Kurlisten” page that records his arrival on July 13, 1914. My novel had Freud arriving a month earlier, but now I’ve altered the timeline to make his story appearance historically accurate. This will involve a number of changes, but at this first draft stage of writing, the revision isn’t drastic.  

I also asked one of the historians about current spa culture in Karlovy Vary. It’s still a thriving industry, but the pictures I’ve seen show treatments done in modern facilities. I’d like to experience one in a historical atmosphere. The historian said I’d be disappointed; the old ways are all gone. He suggested I visit the building of the former imperial spa, which has been renovated into a cultural centre and museum. I hadn’t known this building existed. I emailed it and learned the facility offers guided and audio guide tours of its displays of the golden era of the spa industry in the early 20th century. I’ll definitely add this to my itinerary. My research trip idea began as a relaxing jaunt through the footsteps travelled by the characters in my historical novel. I’d stroll down the river promenade, enjoy leisurely lunches at cafes to gather details for my story’s fictional cafe, and hike to historic viewpoints. I’ll still do all these things and more — library and museum visits, guided tours, evening talk with readers who don’t speak my language. It feels overwhelming but exciting.

Imagine Karlovy Vary in 1914

Muddling Through a First Draft

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Last summer, I started a new novel. I got half way through the first draft by Christmas and set the manuscript aside for the holidays. My New Year’s Resolution is to finish the first draft this spring.

The novel’s story begins in Czechia aka Czech Republic three months before the start of World War One. I chose this time period to make use of the research I’d done for my last novel, A Killer Whisky, which was set during the final days of WWI. This era also ties the new book to my maternal grandparents, the inspirations for my new story. They emigrated from Czechia (then part of the Austria-Hungary empire) shortly after The Great War and settled in Canada. 

Matous and Emilie Slovacek

Unlike A Killer Whisky, this novel-in-progress isn’t a whodunit mystery. A murder will take place – I think – but it won’t happen until later in the story. My original plan was to kill off the victim at the book’s one quarter mark, prompting my protagonist and her friends to escape to North America to avoid the police and imminent war. But as my writing of the story progressed, I didn’t want to rush the killing and stumbled upon a different first quarter turning point. My characters remained in Czechia and hatched a criminal plan, but it still didn’t lead to murder half way through. Their prospective victim is also becoming fun, in an evil way, and I’d like to keep him in the story.  

Before my Christmas break, I outlined enough future action to take place in Czechia that I’m pretty sure my characters won’t cross the Atlantic Ocean before the end of the book. There are advantages to keeping them in one location. Sending them elsewhere would mean creating a new supporting cast and researching another historical setting. Instead, I can develop my existing support characters more deeply and give them larger roles in the story.

My Czechia setting of Karlovy Vary will also need to carry the whole book. A positive will be the opportunity more richly describe Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad in German), a beautiful spa city known for its hot springs and healing mineral waters. Goethe, Beethoven, Chopin, and Peter the Great were frequent visitors. A negative is that I don’t live there. I visited Karlovy Vary thirteen years ago but feel a need to return to check out the locations in my story and learn more about the spa city’s history. 

So, this spring, I’ll be adding a week or so in Czechia to a holiday in southern Germany. In Karlovy Vary, I’ll soak in some spa baths, drink the (extremely salty) mineral water from a sippy cup, visit a history museum, trace my characters’ footsteps on forested hill walks, stroll the river promenade, dine in the luxury hotel murder site, and absorb the city’s baroque architecture that hasn’t changed since the era of my story.  Not a bad incentive to finish a first draft of a book.

Sippy Cups for sale
Drinking from a sippy cup

Farewell to 2025 and My Old Piano

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When my husband Will and I bought our first house in 1981, we inherited my mother’s Lindsay piano which she had bought second-hand. I don’t know the piano’s age, but it could have been made over a century ago. In 1877, C.W. Lindsay, a blind piano tuner and repairer in Montreal, established a retail chain store selling phonographs, sheet music, and pianos that he restored and sold under his own name. 

My mother used to say that pianos were one consumer good that maintained their value. I think she paid $1,000 for the piano and felt she could sell it for the same amount 10 or 20 years later. Today it’s hard to give away an old upright piano. People want compact keyboard pianos with digital bells and whistles. 
I took piano lessons when I was young but didn’t keep it up and now can only play simple tunes. My children studied the piano when they were young and music rang through our Montreal home. In 1996, we moved to Calgary and brought the piano with us. For the next 29 years, it mainly served as living room furniture–the top was handy for displaying family photographs–although, my son’s cat spent a few Christmas holidays at our home and enjoyed tickling the ivory keys. 

Will and I have no immediate plans to downsize, but we knew that one day we wouldn’t have space for our upright Lindsay. Friends started telling us about problems they had getting rid of their old pianos. One friend hired a company that advertised itself as piano movers who would take away your piano for a fee. Two burly men showed up at her house with saws and bludgeons. They hacked her piano into pieces, damaging her floor in the process. The butchery and noise were so painful that she went to another room. She called it a “piano murder.” Another friend had to take her player piano to the city dump when she downsized to a smaller house. 
These stories prompted Will and me to look for an appreciative buyer now to avoid being forced to kill our long-time companion later. We posted ads on Kijii and Facebook Marketplace: Free Vintage Piano, the “buyer” responsible for providing proper piano movers.
We got responses from many people interested in the piano. Actually, a friend told me that piano teachers advise students looking for pianos to check Facebook Marketplace, which lists many free or almost free pianos. Competition is strong, and our old piano had two strikes against it. One is that it hasn’t been turned in over 30 years. Another is that my younger sibling stuck a large flower decal on the front that I didn’t peel off for fear of damaging the finish. The decal isn’t even centred. 

Most people who contacted us either didn’t follow up or said we lived too far from them in the city. One man came to see it with a couple of friends and a teenage girl who, I guessed, wanted to learn the piano. She pressed a couple of keys, but the group didn’t take a closer look. We got the sense they realized the piano wasn’t what they wanted the minute they saw it.   
Another man offered to take the piano sight-unseen if we paid half the moving cost. He got snarky a few times during our message exchanges. When we turned down his 50% offer, he said, “You’ll regret this one day.” As the weeks went by with no bites, I might have regretted it had the man been nicer.
Perversely, every time I thought we might have a buyer, I hated the thought of letting my piano go. I’d sit down and play my simple songs, and it felt good to tickle the ivories and create music. Despite the lack of tuning, I could tell when I hit a wrong note, aside from an F key that needs real work. 

One Friday, after three or four months of ad posts, a woman messaged that she’d like to see the piano the next day. She arrived with her husband and two children, a boy about age 13 and daughter about age 7. The husband said he’d moved here from Shanghai two years ago, and his wife and children had come this summer. His son had taken piano lessons for four years and his daughter was eager to learn. The boy sat down and ran his fingers the length of the keyboard and pressed the pedal. It sounded to me like he was playing a classical song, but he might have simply been trying all the keys. 
The family talked briefly together in Chinese, looked inside at the mechanism, and asked if the piano had been repaired. It hadn’t to my knowledge. They paid no attention to the flower decal. Then the father said that his son liked the piano, and they would take it. 
Wow. Just like that. 
They arranged for movers to come three days later. Both parents showed up with the two movers and a large van. The wife gave me a gift as thanks for the piano with a translated explanation on her phone:This is a magnolia brooch from the Forbidden City in China. The magnolia is the city flower of Shanghai, symbolizing eternal elegance and charm. I give it to you as a gift and wish you all the best. 

One of the movers told us he was a computer programmer who did moving work part time. The two men tied straps around the piano, hoisted it onto a dolly, and wheeled the piano out to a ramp and into the van. All careful, smooth, and professional.  
It was sad to see our piano leave, but Will and I are both happy that it went to a good home. 

Our piano mover/computer programmer peeks from behind the piano

Historical fiction: how accurate do you need to be?

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At this year’s When Words Collide Festival for Readers and Writers, https://www.whenwordscollide.org/ I participated in a panel titled Historical Fact and Fiction: what can and can’t be changed. Moderator Lori Hahnel began by asking how and where to find accurate historical facts. My fellow panelists, John Corry and Donna D. Conrad, talked of the challenges of historical research for novels set centuries ago. John’s novel about British author Geoffrey Chaucer takes place in the 1300s; Donna’s retelling of the story of Mary Magdalene in the first century. 

Donna said she used sources from different countries and religious perspectives to get the most accurate spin on Mary Magdalene. John noted that he had to be careful about dates in his research, since most countries changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar after his novel’s time period. 

My historical novel, A Killer Whisky, set in 1918 during World War One, felt modern in comparison, and I had more research tools available. While I found that reading historical fiction and non-fiction was useful, I learned the most from material published at the time of my novel. I signed up for a one-week free subscription to Newspapers.com and devoured the headlines of the day as well as ads for groceries, houses, jobs, and more. Online, I combed through the 1,000+ page 1918 Sears catalogue for images and descriptions of fashion and other consumer goods. Novels and memoirs published in the early twentieth century provided details of daily life, attitudes of the times, and words and expressions used. To avoid language anachronism, I suggested that the panel audience check out Google Ngram Viewer https://books.google.com/ngrams/. You plug in a word or phrase and a graph tracks its usage in books from 1800 to 2022. For instance, the word “groovy” barely registered before 1960, when it peaked. Then it dropped and hit a higher peak this century, perhaps from people writing about the swinging sixties. My WWI characters would never say “groovy.” 

Unless I try my hand at writing alternate history. 

Lori asked what we thought of television shows like Bridgerton, a Netflix series based on Julia Quinn’s novels set in early 19th century London. Main characters include wealthy and aristocratic people of colour who are totally accepted in high society. 

I said I liked Bridgerton. Everyone watching knows the world wasn’t like that then or even now, but Bridgerton makes you think, what if this alternate world were true? Donna said she enjoys these kinds of shows but cringes at the historical inaccuracy. 

Lori brought up her second concern about historical fiction: the abundance of WWII novels. Is the market saturated? Will people ever get tired of reading about that war?

John and Donna thought the trend would continue because writers are constantly finding new angles about the war. I suggested that WWII endures because it is arguably the last heroic war and it is still close to many of us whose parents or grandparents fought in or lived through the war. Perhaps, interest will wane for the next generations, until writers rediscover and reinterpret that momentous time.    

As to the panel topic question: what can and can’t be changed? We all agreed you can’t change major known facts. I wouldn’t change key dates about WWI, even though it would probably work better for my novel-in-progress if the war had started a month earlier. John and Donna said they wouldn’t change dates that Chaucer or Mary Magdalene were known to be in particular locations. 

I pointed out that Chaucer and Mary were their novels’ main characters, but it might be okay for me to write a novel set in 14th century York and have Chaucer make a cameo appearance despite no evidence that he’d ever gone there. Small changes like that wouldn’t significantly impact history or my main characters and themes, although I think it’s more interesting to readers if the historical figure really was present. We all like to pick up factual trivia from our reading and history is ripe with interesting tidbits. 

My historical novel-in-progress begins in Karlovy Vary (aka Karlsbad), a spa town in Czechia (aka Czech Republic). Somewhere I read that Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis was in Karlovy Vary at the outbreak of World War One, when my novel takes place. Unfortunately, I’ve lost the reference. (Advice to historical fiction writers: keep your references). The Psychiatric Times confirms that Freud visited Karlsbad more than once for health reasons and I’ll do my best to find my missing reference. But if I can’t, would it be wrong to make him a character in my novel? Freud’s interactions with my fictional characters would be interesting and relevant to the story. 

My Wild Welcome to Portugal

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During our trip to Europe last month, my husband Will and I flew from Naples to Portugal. At Lisbon airport, we got a taxi. Naively, we didn’t think to ask in advance what the fare would be or question the absence of a meter in the cab. Friends who have been to Portugal a few times had told us taxis in Lisbon were inexpensive. 

Our taxi driver drove quickly to downtown, which isn’t far from Lisbon airport, and arrived at our Airbnb apartment. He told us the fare was 35 Euro (about $57 CAD). This wasn’t cheap, perhaps a little more than we’d pay for a similar ride in Calgary, where I live. We gave him cash, since he didn’t take credit cards, and didn’t add a tip to his inflated price. The taxi took off and we found the phone number for Pedro, who was supposed to meet us at the apartment to let us in.  

Before we could phone, a police car drove up and parked. The officer strode toward us. 

“How much did you pay for that taxi?” he asked.   

“Thirty-five euro.”

“It should only be fifteen euro from the airport,” he said. “I want to take the driver to court. Can you show me your passport?”

We looked down the street and noticed the taxi and another police car were stopped. Presumably, the first police car had followed us from the airport and notified the second car to block the taxi from leaving the narrow street.

Pedro heard the commotion from our balcony and came down to see what was going on. He and the police officer spoke for a while in Portuguese. We guessed the officer was explaining the situation. With Pedro there, I felt assured the officer’s request to see our passports was legitimate. 

The officer photographed Will’s passport and told us that we wouldn’t have to go to court, but he needed the information for the case. He asked for our phone number and Canadian address. 

“Did you pay cash?” he asked. “What bills did you give him?”

“A fifty-euro bill.”

 “Did you get change?”

“Yes.”

“What denominations?

“Five and ten-euro bills.”

Details make the story convincing for a court case. 

Still holding onto Will’s passport, the officer jogged to the taxi and other police car. He returned and handed Will his passport along with a twenty-euro bill for our overpayment.

After the officer and all the vehicles left, Pedro led us into the apartment building and said, “I hope this is only bad thing that happens to you in Portugal.”  

“Oh no,” I said. “It was interesting.”

Evidently, Portugal appreciates the economic value of tourism and wants visitors to feel welcome in the country. Authorities are using police and legal resources to discourage locals from taking advantage of foreigners. Certain matters, like taxi fares, are less regulated than they are in some other countries and tourists should be alert to this. 

At the same time, locals need to earn a living. Was fifteen euro too cheap for that airport taxi ride, given the cost of gasoline and car maintenance? If our driver had charged us a fair rate, I hope we’d have tipped him generously.        

Looking down to the spot where the police car cut the taxi off at the pass