Created by Tony Fell on 09/09/2012 Family and friends knew Petra as a fine linguist, with fluent Vietnamese as one of her many accomplishments – she was also an inspirational and gifted teacher of her native Czech language. We were privileged to join her for a year in one of her last classes at LMU, a basic introduction to conversational and written Czech – where she gently encouraged us to see the essential signposts of the language with her innate flair for communicating patterns and simplifying the complexities to sensible guidelines – all with enthusiasm, charm and good humour. Our lessons were one of the highlights of the week and even if we didn't manage to do our homework, Petra never allowed disappointment to get in the way of the excellent and quite inspirational relationship she developed with each one of us. She had that knack of the truly gifted teacher in supporting us 'krok za krokem' step-by-step along the learning journey, with curiosity and delight at discovering new insights into language. All of which she shared with her students with the transparent clarity deriving from her excellent memory and her enthusiasm for all things Czech – especially at Christmas/New Year. As an inspirational teacher, Petra is missed by us all – as a wonderful, warm and generous personality, Petra is irreplaceable.