Adventures in the Czech Republic

A Menu

2012-01-31T17:41:00.000Z

Traditionally Czech restaurant food has been heavy on meats, and it still is, although there is now more choice for vegetarians. Czech restaurants often offer a selection of grilled meats cooked over a logfire on a griddle (as here), these are eaten with a choice of side vegetables. Others offer casserole-based dishes such as goulash or meat smes (a mixture of meats in a spicy saunce). Then there is the offering of various roasted meat in sauce such as the Czech classic svíčková (when cooked well one of my all time favourite meals anywhere in the world) which is roasted marinated beef in a spiced vegetable sauce with cream.

Sometimes the translated menu can bring some interesting images to the mind of the bewildered foreigner, as here in this menu from a restaurant in Slavonice. But then one has to wonder how on earth one could translate English popular foods such as spotted dick or roly poly pudding. I shall say no more than that I had a chop of Mrs Katerina and it was excellent and my husband enjoyed Zacharias' chop.

The Coasts of Bohemia

2012-01-15T15:06:00.000Z

A few days ago as I was looking at the Google Analytics account for my new business website Czech Holidays to see what search terms people on the internet were putting into Google which led them to my site. It is a source of endless amusement and bemusement to me.

The first source of bemusement is just how many people still search for Czechoslovakia - even though the Czech Republic and Slovakia split happened in 1993 nearly twenty years ago.

The second is the number of ways people come up with of spelling Czech (bear in mind that this is an English language search), here are some from last month: Czek, Czexh, Tchech, Chez, Cheze, Chczh, Chek, Chec, Checkz, Cezk, Chec, Cezh, Check, Chech and of course Chekeslovakia and Checkislavkia.

The third are some searches which say something about perceptions and misunderstandings:

sex tour Czech Republic - I'm not going to comment on that one
is Czech Republic safe to visit? - answer: yes very
Hogwarts Castle in Czechoslovakia - I love this query, the country is full of wonderful magical medieval castles (NOTE to Author: possible line for marketing?)
beach holidays in the Czech Republic - despite Shakespeare talking about the coast of Bohemia* in the Winter's Tale the Czech Republic is right at the middle of the European landmass, the only beaches the Czechs have on lake and river banks and probably not what the searcher had in mind.

Alas, all these search terms show what a task I and other Czechophiles have to increase knowledge of this lovely country.

*watch out for a full blog on the coast of Bohemia/Winter's Tale which I planning to write soon.

Coals to Newcastle, Fezes to Turkey

2012-01-04T22:10:00.000Z

In the museum housed in Strakonice Castle you will discover much of interest, but nothing is so extraordinary as the story of the Strakonice fez industry. How did this provincial town in South Bohemia come to be the centre of world fez production?

The story is that a Linz businessman came to the town and asked for someone to make fezes to sell in Turkey. That someone was a knitter called Jan Petras. Petras was so successful that other knitters soon followed and the Strakonice fez industry was born.

In the 1820's a Jewish entrepreneur called Furth established the company that was to take fez production in the town to a whole new level. With mechanisation the production grew and the company expanded selling fezes to Egypt, India and the middle east as well as to Turkey. By 1937 business employed 3000 people, sadly with the war the Germans took over the factory and then after the war the business was nationalised. Now the successor company no longer makes fezes but instead creates fabrics for car upholstery.

I was in an antikvariat the other day and found a selection of fez labels (see above) and there it is in French (so presumably it was destined for Morocco) - "Societe Anonyme des Fabriques de Bonnets Turcs. Strakonice, Republique Tchecoslovaque".

I will be taking a group of people to the Museum on the Czech Tours Hussite Tour .

A Czech Winter Slideshow

2011-12-23T21:02:00.000Z

Some of my best pictures of the Czech Republic in winter set to music from Iva Bittova's album Kolednice (the carolsinger) to just give you a flavour of what a special and magical place the Czech Republic can be winter.

Of course if you fancy visiting we have some lovely cottages and hotels on the new website http://www.czechholiday.co.uk

the first snow

2011-12-15T14:59:00.000Z

We had the first snow of the winter on the evening of St Nicholas, the day when Christmas celebrations begin in the Czech Republic. Unfortunately it was blowing such a gale that we had a virtual whiteout, which meant I was unable to go into town to photograph the celebrations.

The town squares fill up with people dressed as the saint, accompanied by devils and angels, ready for the ritual which repeated in homes too.

Small bells ring and chains rattle and the children, who have been getting more and more excited all day, are asked by St Nicholas if they have been good. On one side of the saint is a devil, on the other an angel - the two sides of man's nature with the saint a balance between the two. The children recount some of their achievements and some of their misdeeds and maybe say a poem and are rewarded with a present.

After the happy children have gone home, the adults get to play. St Nicholases, angels and devils retire to the pub for a warming slivovice or a cold beer.

The Last Mushrooms

2011-12-06T14:24:00.001Z

And so at last we come to the end of the mushroom season. The last mushrooms are to my mind some of nature's best - wood blewits with their lovely lilac gills, floral scent and firm flesh. They arrive when the first good frosts turn the other mushrooms to a brown mush, in fact they seem to need the frosts to fruit.

I picked these in the woods above my Czech home, but have picked them among the gorse bushes on Cleeve Hill in the Cotswolds. I was alone in the woods apart from some wild boar snorting in the undergrowth and making me jump and a herd of maybe a dozen deer. Many Czechs are not aware of the blewits, indeed I have been told categorically by neighbours that blewits are not good and even poisonous. It was a delightful walk - the air crisp and still, sunlight glancing through the trees. The blewits were a nice extra, a surprise even because I thought they might be over, but there they were nestling around a fallen fir tree, pushing up through the needles which they clinged on to as I tried to pick them.

But now I think they are over. It snowed last night (more of that in my next post) and there's more to come.

In Praise of Czech Windows

2011-11-28T11:02:00.000Z

It has been freezing lately - see photographs of frost in my previous post - but my room is as they say in Britain 'toasty'.

One reason for this warmth is the wonder that is my wood-burning stove, of which I have blogged in the past. But another reason is Czech windows. In a Czech winter you need serious windows with serious double-glazing. The traditional windows in an old house like mine are made up of effectively two windows, each with its own handles, about four inches apart.

This arrangement has various advantages apart from keeping out the cold. One is that you can open the outer windows should you wish and leave the inner closed (or vice versa) which is useful for getting rid of condensation and cooling the place down a bit without having a breeze. Another is that you can put flowers in there - useful for deterring flies. And the last is that the space makes a brilliant fridge, allowing you to avoid having to go downstairs for the milk (see photograph above).

Sometimes a Picture...

2011-11-24T18:05:00.001Z

We have had freezing fog for two nights (-5 degrees yesterday early evening) which covered everything with sharp points of frost. Then this morning I woke to find the sun pouring through the windows. Under the warm sun the ice was already falling from the trees like snow, so I grabbed my camera and walked over the hill to Horice na Sumave. Here is a collection of photos from that walk. Half an hour when I returned it all melted away.

Calendar

2011-11-18T11:02:00.000Z

I came across this calendar in a Czech second-hand bookshop or antikvariat. It dates back to 1975 and features the art of Cyril Bouda. Each month is decorated with traditional Czech scenes for the month in question. Above we see Cervenec (July) - note the delighted mushroom finder at the bottom and the woodsmen bringing a raft of logs down the river to the sawmills. In the centre is a list of name days for the month. And below is Brezen (March) with easter celebrations, the traditional execution of winter and the arrival of the stork heralding spring.

What I love about the calendar is that it features both customs that still are alive and some traditions which have died out.

As for the artist: Cyril Bouda was one of the best Czech twentieth-century draftsmen and illustrators. A student of Kysela and Švabinský, he was famous for his illustrations (such as The Autobiography by Benvenuto Cellini or Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift) but he was also known for his tapestry designs. His motto was “Not a single day without a line”, attributed to Apelles, an ancient Greek painter and he kept to it, by the time he died in 1984 he had produced thousands of works of art. This means you can collect examples of his work relatively easily - why you could start with some of the 30+ stamps he designed!

New Website

2011-11-09T14:18:00.000Z

My apologies for not posting for a week or so. I have been very busy designing and creating a new website for my Czech holiday business. And inevitably it has taken longer than I thought - twice as long at least.

There are two reasons for the new website:

it became clear to me over the last year that in addition to my Czech Tours website I needed another to promote the Czech Republic as a tourism destination more widely as British people really don't know how wonderful the country is and what it has to offer
and to promote the other side of the business which I will be offering from 2012 - namely two-centre holidays in different towns right across the country and holiday cottages for rental.

As a result the new website is very different from the Czech Tours one which basically offers the tours. The new site allows the visitor to explore by destination (ie by different areas of the Czech Republic or by town) or by accommodation type (hotel or country cottage) or by interest (eg cycling, natural history, arts and culture).

The new website is on http://www.czechholiday.co.uk and already I am getting feedback along the line of "I never knew that the Czech Republic was so beautiful" which suggests that I am at least beginning to address the first of the issues.

Do please visit the website and give me your feedback - the email is on the site.

Thanks.

Economics?

2011-10-26T11:41:00.000Z

I thought I understood the basic rules of economics, but sometimes when I look at things in the Czech Republic I doubt it. Take for example the price of petrol.

In the UK if I want to buy cheap petrol I go to a big supplier, especially a supermarket petrol station. I would like to support one of the local independent stations, but the price differential is enormous. In the Czech Republic the reverse is often the case, better prices are to be found in the smaller outlets, so much so that it really is worth following the cheap signposts to the small independent supplier. Sometimes this is because fuel sales are a sideline to the main area of business (eg bus or lorry transport) but sometimes the reason is less obvious. How is this possible? Why does it happen? Surely the big suppliers can bulk buy fuel at a cheaper price? Answers to this conundrum welcome.

Trebic Jewish Quarter

2011-10-17T16:50:00.000Z

After our visit to Slavonice and the 1938 bunkers (see previous post) my husband and I drove to Trebic, where we stayed in the old Jewish quarter. The quarter is now on the UNESCO World Heritage list, being one of the few well-preserved Jewish gettos left in Europe. Through my tourism business (see column right) I am fortunate to have discovered a wonderful hotel in a building which dates back to the 17th century. The hotel must be unique in having an ancient Jewish ritual bath (mikveh) in its basement.

Having offloaded our bags in our room, we went for a walk around the quarter. The first place we visited was the Jewish cemetery, which sits on the hill above the Jewish quarter. There are over 3000 gravestones (we didn't count them) set on a steep slope and thousands more unmarked graves. You see two memorials as you enter the cemetery - the first is a large memorial to the men of the community who gave their lives in World War 1 (presumably fighting on the side of the Germans), the second a simple memorial to the 290 Jews who were victims of the Nazis. In the museum in the old synagogue you can see a list of their names. Family names appear on both.

The one hundred and twenty three houses and two synagogues of the Jewish quarter are squashed on to a slope between the river and the hill along two roads which go nowhere, but are linked by alleyways, some of which go through the houses. Now relatively quiet, the area would once have been vibrant and noisy, full of industry and a large Jewish population (1500 in 1890). The Jewish community was already in decline by the 1930s, but as the gravestones tell noone was left after 1945. It is a remarkably atmospheric place, as yet undiscovered by tourists. As we walked the empty streets back to the hotel in the falling dusk, the ghosts of the past walked beside us.

Bunkers in the woods

2011-10-12T08:48:00.001Z

Czechs view the events of 1938 very differently from us Brits. For them British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's betrayal at Munich (where he agreed to Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland) still galls and is one of the most important "what ifs" in modern history. We Brits have been led to believe that there was no point in supporting the Czechs in resisting Hitler, they lived "in a far-away country" with "people of whom we know nothing" (Chamberlain 1938) and needed British help to fight - help we could not provide. But if you explore the forests and mountains that ring the Czech Republic you will find evidence to the contrary.

Near Slavonice in South Bohemia my husband and I visited some of the bunkers, which Czechoslovakia had been building for Nazi invasion for several years upto 1938. The bunkers were approximately every 100 yards apart, giving a continuous field of fire. In front of the bunkers were barbwire and anti-tank defences. These fortifications went all the way along the border. The little Czechoslovak nation was mobilised in 1938 - the army that would have faced Hitler's troops was nearly as large as the Nazi's. And as the Czechs will tell you they were prepared to fight for the country that they had so long been denied and they will also tell you that they could have won. What would the history of the twentieth century have been like if they had?

Gypsy Devils in Krumlov

2011-09-28T20:23:00.000Z

After leading three tours of the Czech Republic I was due a break and my husband came over from the UK to make sure I took it. To help us Cesky Krumlov held its annual St Wenceslas Celebration. The town square was filled with a craft and food market and a large stage.

On the first evening of the celebrations, despite not being dressed for the drop in evening temperature with the sudden arrival of Autumn, we found ourselves transfixed by a performance by the Ciganski Diabli (Gypsy Devils) who give a gypsy flourish to adaptations of some well-known classical music.

The local Roma population was out in force for these wonderful ambassadors for gypsy musical virtousity. The younger members were at the front with their reversed baseball caps, whilst senior members stood or sat behind. They were joined in their enjoyment by a large number of other Krumlov residents and some foreigners such as ourselves and a group of Japanese who watched for a while before moving away. We might have been freezing (you could see your breath), but we weren't going anywhere until the last note had been played and the audience had risen to its feet to applaud.

If you want to know more about the group, visit their website on www.gypsydevils.com.

Walking around the World

2011-09-18T15:37:00.000Z

I walked around the World on Thursday and it only took me three-and-a-half hours (it would have taken three but I stopped in a pub for a drink and an ice cream). The secret to this feat is the fact that a pond near to Trebon is called Svet, which translates as "world".

I was researching a possible walk for a short walking tour for a client and this was one on my list of possibles. It is now a definite. It is a wonderful walk, which with the exception on mountain scenery (it is in fact a very level walk) encompasses nearly every type of Czech landscape you can find. In just over 12 kilometres you walk alongside a lake/fishpond, past reedbeds filled with birds and brilliant jewel-like dragonflies, enter a protected woodland with its peatbogs and rare flowers, go through traditional farmland and flowermeadows and a forest with bilberry and cranberry plants, and finally through parkland. Along the walk are information boards about the animals (eg otters, edible and tree frogs), birds (eg ospreys and kingfishers) and plants (eg venus flytrap, mosses, and grass of parnasus) that thrive in the different habitats, as well as information about fishponds, traditional vernacular architecture and the formation of peatbogs.

It was a blissful walk: not too demanding, educational, and varied. Even the weather was perfect - sun, but not too hot with a slight breeze. I recommend it to you.

Views

2011-09-04T11:36:00.000Z

One of the things I miss in the Czech Republic is the British habit of placing laybys at viewpoints. There are many places where I would love to stop the car and take a photo or at least not risk driving the car into an oncoming lorry because I was too busy looking at the wonderful view. But that is not to say that the Czechs do not love views or indeed have their own approach to appreciating them.

All across the Republic you will find lookout towers - not for sighting approaching foes or shooting deer (although there are deer hunting towers everywhere) but for admiring the view. One of the best is on top of Libin Hill near Prachatice. I took a taxi to the carpark and then climbed the two kilometres to the summit, paid my 10 crown entrance fee and climbed the 120 steps to the top of the tower. And what a view there was to be had from it - a 360 degree survey of the Sumava Forest, Budejovice plain and even beyond to Germany and Austria. Here are some of the photos I took there.

Then I descended both the tower and the hill, taking the medieval saltway the Golden Trail back to the ancient town of Prachatice.

Czech Workmen

2011-08-30T10:18:00.000Z

A British ex-pat was talking to me the other day about the infinite fascination he finds in watching Czech workmen and their ability not to actually do any work. There always seem to be, as in this photo, a great deal of discussion involved, which can appear to be heated, heads are scratched, hands waved, shovels leaned on. Then there is "moving things" - piles of stones will get moved around alot, from one side of the site or hole to the other. This moving things business can take a lot of time, as was very apparent when the riverworks were underway in Cesky Krumlov, stones were dredged from the river bed, deposited on one side of the river and then moved to another. It took months. My ex-pat friend is convinced that Czech workmen are as expensive as their British equivalents not on an hourly basis but per job.

There are of course exceptions to this. Over the last few months the cliff by the road that enters Cesky Krumlov from Ceske Budejovice have been stabilised. Cliff falls had been known to close the road at times. The work required men to climb the cliff face and there hanging from ropes to drill into the cliff face. I watched the work in awe, especially as these guys seemed to be working all hours and through the weekends too (a remarkable occurrence). The work is now finished, alas. Alas - because unlike most Czech workmen who show the results of too much imbibing of Czech beer in the shape of their bellies, these guys were lean, muscular and fit, and in the heat of the Czech sun were usually stripped to the waist.

Music in Cesky Krumlov

2011-08-21T13:01:00.000Z

Cesky Krumlov has been playing host to some world-famous musicians. Cura was performing here for several nights, whilst yesterday the town made national news broadcasts as it played host to a concert by Placido Domingo. As I drove home yesterday evening the town was awash with people dressed up to the nines, the car parks full and the police directing traffic. The best tickets for Domingo's concert were priced at 9000 czech crowns (at 27 crowns to the £ I leave you to work out how expensive they were).

I didn't go. I am in the middle of a tour and besides an outdoor concert in the centre of Cesky Krumlov does not appeal. If I'm going to pay that sort of money I'd rather be in a concert hall with proper accoustics.

But you don't have to pay anything sometimes to hear wonderful music in Krumlov. Last weekend the town square was taken over by Slovaks. There were information and market stalls in the centre and on a stage near the town hall I watched these wonderful Slovakian musicians. Their music is in the gypsy tradition, and done superbly.

What a difference a ten days make.

2011-08-12T18:31:00.001Z

The day after I drove back to the Czech Republic from England I did what I always do on my return and went for a walk in the forest above the house. I went of course with mushroom basket in hand. I returned with it full of giant chanterelles - as you can see from the picture above. I had two meals of these treasures and froze enough for probably six more. I duly made a mental note to go back this week.

So it was that a Czech friend and I arrived in the forest this afternoon, but despite nearly two hours walking we found only small and sometimes dessicated mushrooms. This seems just weird to me as we have had several days' worth of rain in the village in the intervening time. Maybe our weird microclimate meant that the forest above us did not receive any rain. Mind you I'm not complaining I still have enough for a couple of meals and there's only limited space in the freezer compartment (which is full of wild strawberries, cherries and now chanterelles).

One point of note is that this wet and for the Czechs mild summer has had an interesting impact. The Prague News is announcing that as a consequence the famous bark beetle is dying off. It seems the environmentalists were right - nature is taking its course and intervening to restore balance and the Sumava authorities' drastic logging actions may not have been necessary afterall.

Update on Sumava Protest

2011-08-04T14:02:00.000Z

The stand-off between environmental protesters and the Sumava Park Authority and its loggers continues. The protesters have been chaining themselves to condemned trees in an effort to stop the felling of trees in a restricted biological area. Apart that is for a brief period when there was a bomb scare, which the protesters claimed was designed to portray them in a bad light and seems to a cynic like me to be a means of getting them to leave the area. If so it worked briefly, but before the loggers could move in the protesters returned.

The protesters are arguing that the trees should not be felled and removed as proposed by the Authorities but left to decay and nature allowed to take its course. The Authorities claim that the trees need to be removed so that neighbouring trees are not attacked by the beetles.

Politicians have been divided over the issue. Now the European Commision is looking into what is happening, as the Sumava is part of a network of protected nature areas in Europe. The argument has been going on for some time. Back in November last year the former Park Director resigned, environmentalists believe due to pressure from the environment minister. The new director is Jan Stráský, former Prime Minister, who has been praised by the Czech President and climate-change denier Vaclav Klaus for his agressive approach to combatting the beetle. One thing seems certain - the issue is unlikely to be resolved through dialogue as the two sides have a totally different attitude to the forest and nature generally.

Sumava Logging

2011-07-20T21:10:00.000Z

Regular readers of this blog will know my views about the danger of the Sumava National Park's response to the problem of bark beetles. No one is underestimating the damage to the forest of the beetle. I have seen areas full of dead trees, but I do not believe that the wholesale clearance of trees which the Park authority proposes is an appropriate response.

Nor am I the only one. Five days ago a group of environmentalists (Czech Friends of the Earth) moved into an protected nature reserve which was under threat. In their press release they state:

The head of the National Park Šumava Jan Strasky launched a massive felling hundreds of trees in a unique mountain forest around Bird Creek on Modrava. Large-scale use of chainsaws is however in stark contradiction with the law. Friends of the Earth, while the park management has repeatedly pointed out that the felling without permission is illegal, but without result,. Sumava lovers from different places of the Republic, therefore, from this morning trying to prevent illegal logging on the spot. Friends of the Earth also serves initiative of the Czech Environmental Inspectorate, to stop the devastation of the park.

So far there has been a stand-off between the protestors and the authorities. I'll keep you informed of developments.

More on Birdwatching

2011-07-14T17:23:00.000Z

The area around Trebon is packed with man-made ponds dating back to at least the Renaissance and even the late middle ages. I say ponds, but they are actually often as large as any lake. They were built as carp lakes to supply the tables of the Catholic Czechs on Fridays and holy days (and frankly any other day given the Czechs' love of carp). The lakes may be large therefore but they are also shallow enough to farm carp in and therefore they make the perfect home for waterbirds - those that stay all year long, part of the year and those that are passing through. As a result of the richness of the birdlife the Trebonsko area is designated a UNESCO biosphere.

Two lakes of particular interest to the birdwatcher are the Velky and Maly Tisy. The Velky (Large) is easily accessible - take the 148 road from Horni Slovenice to Lomnice nad Luznice and turn right down a small road which takes you past the fishery at Saloun. Just before the fishery the road bends, park here and you can walk along the raised tree-lined embankment of the pond.

I had a wonderful time, but I wished I had brought binoculars. In order to take a zoom photo of this grebe with a steady hand I rested on a concrete pillar on the edge of the pond. I am as my family will tell you capable of great concentration, ignoring everything else if I need to. It has been a boon when working in a busy office, but it can be a disadvantage. When I had got the shot I was after, I rose to discover I had been leaning in a pile of birdshit. My shirt was sodden and stinking and I had not noticed!

Jan Hus Day

2011-07-07T22:11:00.003Z

Yesterday was Jan Hus Day (John Huss), a national holiday in the Czech Republic. While for many Czechs the day is just the excuse for a holiday, it actually commerates the death at the stake of the country's most influential son.

"Seek the truth
Listen to the truth
Teach the truth
Love the truth
Abide by the truth
And defend the truth
Unto death."

This is my favourite Jan Hus quote, which I think sums up the man. While he was and is seen by his followers as a forerunner of the Protestant Reformation, Hus saw himself as a true Catholic, wishing simply to bring the church back to the truth of Christ's teaching and the practices of the early church. But in a world where there were at least two popes and sometimes three fighting it out for control of the church and using and being used by the secular powers Hus was always likely to fall foul of the political shifting sands.

After he died and his ashes scattered on the River Rhine his followers in Bohemia expanded on his teachings in a way that he might not have supported and then one hundred years later Martin Luther too claimed to be a follower of Hus.

Hus' significance within Czech history goes beyond theological history, Hus has huge significance on national identity. He preached in the Czech language and was a leading reformer of the written language (he is responsible for the hacek accent). Rightly or wrongly he was identified as a hero by Czech nationalists: he was deceived and destroyed by a German Emperor. His importance is reflected in the fact that you will find statues of Jan Hus in most towns and indeed Hus Squares and Streets.

But which Jan Hus is it - the man or the national myth? Which truth?

Check out the tour I am running - In the footsteps of Jan Hus and the Hussites

Tabor

2011-07-02T14:17:00.000Z

A few days ago I was in the South Bohemian town of Tabor. I will be going there with a tour I am organising this September and my purpose in visiting was to gather material for the information pack I give my clients. Tabor has to be one of the most remarkable historic towns in the Czech Republic and I realised that I had not blogged about it, so here we go.

Two names dominate the history of the town - Jan Hus, the church reformer who died at the stake before the town's foundation but who wrote some of his most important works in nearby Kozi Hradek castle and Jan Zizka - the one-eyed military genius who turned the Hussites into a fighting force to be feared. Zizka's statue stands in the main square and another of Hus in a neighbouring square. Both men deserve posts of their own, which I will give them soon.

Tabor is above all the town of the Hussites, created by them in the fifteenth century as a fortress town and soon the centre of their religious and military movement. Their presence is to be felt at every turn. On the main square stands the Hussite Museum - newly refurbished and hugely informative it is a must for any visitor. The Museum also allows access to some of the enormous network of underground tunnels built by the Hussites and extended over the years. Other attractions include the Tabor Treasure exhibition, the city fortifications including the Kotnov tower and the lovely Deanery church.

When I visited last week the place was relatively quiet - the market on the square was just closing and there was hardly anyone around and certainly no tourists. I was able to view the beautiful facades and gables of the medieval and renaissance burgher houses at my leisure.

When I return with my tour the place will be transformed. We will be coming for the three days of the Tabor Meeting (Taborska Setkani), when the town celebrates its Hussite past. There will be a torchlight parade through the town, fireworks, medieval market, the Old Bohemian market, performances by Czech and foreign ensembles, street theatre, concerts, children’s activities and a lot more. The Sunday will be devoted to European Heritage Day, when the doors of normally closed historic buildings are opened.

This is a major event in the European living history calendar made even more important by the fact that this will be the 20th Tabor Meeting. Every hotel room in the town will be full. And I and my tour will be there. So she says, shamelessly plugging, book now to avoid disappointment on http://www.czechtours.co.uk/hussites-tour

Harvests

2011-06-26T08:45:00.000Z

I am told the Czech news has been full of doom and gloom about a failure in fruit this year - no cherries, no plums, no apples and pears. But they clearly haven't been in my orchard.

The branches on my early cherry tree have been weighed down with deep red fruit or they were until I and the birds relieved them of their treasure. The freezer is now full of bags of cherries and in the cupboard jars of cherries preserved in a mixture of gin and sugar are sitting waiting for my return from England in August.

Then there are the strawberries - my friend Hannah loved her strawberries and grew them both at her Krumlov riverside house and the house she was restoring by the lake. I have keeping an eye on both houses, as the slow business of Czech probate proceeds, and I pay myself in soft fruit - strawberries and raspberries.

But the greatest of fruits are the ones that no one plants or tends. They have a special richness that comes from God or Nature being their gardener. The wild strawberries are magnificent this year in their size and abundance. Usually there are too few even to survive the trip to the basket and certainly not to the house, but this year there have been so many that there are bags full in the freezer.

And what shall I drink with these fruits? Of course it is a drink made from another harvest. I have two bottles of elderflower syrup sitting in my cupboard. An easy drink to make and a delicious one that speaks of early summer. My method is simply to layer the flowers with sugar in a jug and leave for a day or two, then simply add bowling water and hey presto - elixir.

For the last few weeks I have been

Green Guerilla Strikes

2011-06-20T19:50:00.000Z

In a covert operation Cesky Krumlov's very own Green Guerilla has struck a blow for all those who opposed the Town Council's and River Authority's destruction of a verdant island in the middle of the Vltava near the base of the castle cliffs.

In the early hours a few days ago the Green Guerilla in an action similar to that of the old Milk Tray advert hero scaled natural and man-made barriers to plant willow trees in the silt near the artificial island installed half-heartedly in response to the many protests of local people. It is unclear whether he abseiled in from the bridge or even a helicopter or whether he forded the roaring torrents, but unseen by drunken passers-by he planted a total of eight willows. Earlier reconnaisance missions (from the windows of a nearby shop) had revealed that despite the Council's vandalism of last year the river is already beginning to reinstate the island in full as a silt bank builds in the centre of the river. The willows' roots will aid this island's formation. His work done the Green Guerilla disppeared into the shadows.

"All because the lady loved her duck island"

The Voice of a Bird - Iva Bittova

2011-06-14T18:33:00.001Z

Firstly my apologies for the slight break in my posts. I have been busy running a Czech arts tour for a lovely bunch of Australians and so have not had time to blog while I was doing that. I will be putting up a number of posts about the tour - we did some fab things, even if I do say so myself.

But today I will blog briefly about what I did last night by way of a reward and that was to attend a concert by Czech singer and musician Iva Bittova in Ceske Budejovice. It took some doing - no one in the information centre knew anything about it nor in the main music shop. Eventually I found the box office for the venue only to discover that its opening hours were restricted to Mons to Fris 4pm to 6pm. As I arrived on a Saturday I was forced to come back on the Monday, the day of the concert. I arrived at 4pm to make sure of a ticket. But I needn't have bothered - even though the venue must have had a capacity of about only 200 and Bittova is a major international artist when the show began there were still empty seats. So I found myself with a central aisle seat six rows back!

I can honestly say that the hour and half that followed were some of the most enjoyable of my life. Listening to Bittova on cd or even watching videos is nothing to seeing and hearing her in person. She so clearly enjoys what she is doing that there is an excitement that spills into the hall. Although she can do emotion (just listen to her singing in Godar's Mater), there were also some wonderful moments of Czech whimsical humour. I don't know of any other singer who can use their voice as completely and in so many ways as she does. Just watch this video - and see how she has the voice of a bird as well as that of a human.

So powerful was the impression on me that I found myself crying with delight, something that has never happened to me before at a concert. Although I confess that my tears were also for my friend who loved Bittova and who had wanted to come with me next time Bittova played locally.

Birdwatching At Home in the Czech Republic

2011-06-03T15:24:00.000Z

Our area of the Czech Republic is rightly famous as a destination for birdwatchers. There are several internationally recognised areas where ornithologists can see many unusual and common European birds. I am going to do a post or two about my birdwatching trips, but I actually don't need to go anywhere as the birds just come to me.

I am surrounded by birds and birdsong every time I work in the garden and orchard. The most common bird is the redstart (shown here in photo taken from Wikipedia) and it is as cheeky as any robin. In fact it is so friendly that the other day one arrived in my house, fluttering around the living room and bumping into the window. Then a few days later a swallow expertly flew through a crack at the top of my window, took a swing around the house, decided there was nothing worth investigation before equally expertly flying out again.

Other regular avian visitors to the garden are treecreepers who explore the rough granite stone walls of the barn for insects, woodpeckers (green, spotted and the non-British grey-headed), fieldfares, nuthatches, wagtails, tits, finches of various types,(including serins, siskins, and bramblings) and the ubiquitous magpies. A friend of mine has had the stunning scarlet rosefinch in her garden, but she lives closer to the forest edge.

Birds of prey are also to be seen from my garden. As I have said in a previous post we sometimes see black kites here and buzzards (common and rough-legged) are usually circling somewhere. The other day I saw three birds of prey being attacked by one brave magpie. The two larger birds (buzzards) ignored it, but the smaller of the three suddenly responded with a hurtling dive at the pesky magpie. You could almost hear the magpie cry, "Shit!!! It's a sparrowhawk." as it fled.

Toilet breaks

2011-05-26T10:33:00.001Z

I was driving along a country road the other day behind an old Skoda. The road was typical of many one gets in the Czech countryside - built at a time when there were no cars and few carts and so narrow enough to make overtaking difficult. And as is the case with many such roads it was lined with fruit trees which made overtaking even more dangerous, so there I was - stuck but philosophical. Then suddenly the car in front started to indicate - I could see no side road down which it could be turning and sure enough all the Skoda did was pull up. I could do nothing but stop behind the car as the road rose to brow just beyond the parked cars.

What was the matter? Imagine my annoyance when the male driver and his passenger jumped out of the car and walk away. Then in clear sight they proceeded to pee against one of the fruit trees. When they had finished they walked nonchalantly back to the car doing up their flies.

I have observed such behaviour regularly - Czech males peeing in public. On any car trip of length you are likely to see this (and not just on car trips). As a Brit I still find this lack of embarrassment strange. What is it about the Czech male? Is it, as I suspect, a cultural thing? A friend of mine once told me "I do enjoy peeing in nature." Getting back to nature certainly has a great appeal to the Czech psyche, maybe this is a reason. Or is it related to the copious amounts of beer Czech men drink?

Sharing the Garden

2011-05-19T09:33:00.001Z

Having spent so long doing up my Czech house I am at last turning my attention to our enormous garden. Well, I say 'garden' it's really an overgrown orchard - very overgrown. As long-standing readers of my blog will be aware I started the hard process of mowing some of it a few years ago. At first my only option was to hand scythe, but each year I have managed to get more of it to a point where my electric strimmer can take some of the strain off my shoulder and arm muscles.

The improvement is such that this year I decided to start planting some shrubs. My friend Hannah had always urged me to improve the garden. She was a great one for planting decorative shrubs and plants with edible fruit (very Czech) and what little was left of her busy life was spent gardening, including removing snails from her strawberries and throwing them over the fence. I pointed out that that was all very well if you are in the Czech Republic all the time, but I am not and so the battle against pests would be lost almost as soon as it began. Now with Hannah's death I found myself rethinking my position. With a large population of snails and ground riddled with mouseholes it was a no to strawberries and runnerbeans but more substantial shrubs might be possible.

I returned from the garden centre (Czech garden centres are very different to English ones - less flowers and more trees) with an aronia bush, two sea buckthorns (male and female to allow pollination), an edible amelianchior, raspberries, thornless blackberry and cranberry. After a day's digging the shrubs stood proud on a bank half way down the garden, where the blossom and bright fruit will be visible from the window by my desk.

A few days later I inspected the plants to discover that someone/thing had chewed the bark of my aronia. This was unexpected - snail damage on the raspberries yes, rabbit attack on the blackberry - but not a large shrub. Look closely at the photo above and you will see the culprit - a deer. I knew they regularly strip my plum trees of fruit on the lower branches, but I was not expecting them to eat bark in early summer. During the day I never see them in the orchard (this photo was taken at dawn from the window hence the lack of clarity), but I do see their droppings.

I checked the internet and discovered that the answer to this problem was human urine. Apparently they are scared off by human scent. So urine it was. I leave you to work out how it was delivered to the aronia bush!

A Relationship With Trees

2011-05-15T21:59:00.000Z

When I was in the Cesky Raj - Bohemian Paradise - I passed this old tree on the side of the road and had to stop and take this photograph. For the Czechs the old limetree merits a wooden roof to protect its stump, a sign and to be marked on the map. But a cursory examination of most Czech maps will find 'significant' trees - 'dub' (oak), lipa (lime) etc.

I have been unable to find out any real significance in these trees, other than they are usually old and so have been a feature in the landscape for several generations - this tree is about 280 years old.Yes, we Brits do on occasion preserve trees but usually they have some historical or at least legendary claim on our thoughts and time. When I contrast the Czech veneration for these trees to British attitudes it seems so much greater.

As I have said in previous posts the forest plays an important part in the Czech psyche and I think this tree veneration is part of this. But in the case of limes - they are a symbol of nationhood. The limetree is the national tree and linked to the legendary founder of the Czech nation Queen Libuse. My research into the life of Czech religious reformer Jan Hus (John Huss) reveals that he reputedly preached regularly under trees. These trees or what is left of them are now of course significant.

Rock Castle at Sloup v Cechach

2011-05-02T10:44:00.000Z

A few weeks ago I was visiting the Bohemian Switzerland on behalf of a client and was making my way to Jicin when my satnav decided to take me on the scenic route. I am very glad it did, because it brought me through some lovely old villages with the traditional wooden houses of the northen Sudetenland and to this rock castle at Sloup v Cechach.

The northern part of the Czech Republic cannot boast the wonderful unspoilt towns of South Bohemia, its towns have been too industrialised. But it can boast spectacular sandstone formations like the one above and is a mecca for lovers of spectacular scenery, geology and rockclimbing. Some were converted into rock castles when robbers or local leaders built forts on the top of them. But in this one much of the castle is hollowed out of the rock itself (Sloup means column in Czech).

You enter the castle via a small door at the base of the rock and then climb a staircase cut through the rock, with toolmarks on the wall, further up you will find rooms - a black kitchen, chapels, living rooms, and more buildings on top of the rock itself. It probably started as a shelter for local people and then in the later middle ages became a more formal fortress. After a period as the base of a robber knight it was besieged and taken. During the Baroque period the rock was home to a hermit and several chapels were built for pilgrims to the site.

It really is the most weird place and one unlike anything I have experienced elsewhere. You are left alone to explore the rooms clutching an information sheet and imagining the past, so much better than the rather boring guided tours the Czechs normally insist on providing. My visit did not take long, but I left grateful to my satnav.

Czech Customs Museum - Easter

2011-04-27T15:46:00.000Z

Easter in the Czech Republic is one of the most important events in the year. I have blogged before about the custom of painting easter eggs and women being beaten with woven willow switches in return for luck and easter eggs before now. A troupe of my neighbours' children (girls and boys) went round the village collecting eggs, chanting Easter rhymes and waving switches on Easter Monday (although not necessarily in that order). Twenty-first century commercialism has sadly got in on the act - if you are too lazy or have not been trained to make the switch yourself you can buy them in Tescos! As I have covered egg painting and switches in a previous post, I will leave my comments at that and move on to something else.

No, in this post I want to talk about a wonderful Prague museum, which is regularly and sadly overlooked by foreign visitors. My excuse for doing so, (not that I need an excuse, as this is my blog and I can post what I like) is that it is the Musaion - the Museum of Czech Ethnography - in Kinsky Gardens and of course features the Easter celebrations in its displays.

The picture from the museum collection above is of a figure of death or the old winter - called Caramura (in Moravia) or Morena (in the Sumava). The figure is usually made of straw and decorated with a necklace of eggs. The figure is processed to a river where it is torn apart, burnt and the remains thrown into the river. With winter dead, spring and Easter can begin. Other easter exhibits included a large collection of traditional decorated eggs (different areas have different forms of decoration) and switches.

In all the time I was in the museum, which was over an hour, I think there was only one other visitor. We were outnumbered by the old ladies who were the Museum's attendants. As I left I said "Muzeum je krasne" (the museum is beautiful), to which I got broad smiles Why wasn't the museum full of Czechs, let alone foreign tourists? I can't tell you how much I enjoyed the exhibits - there were exhibits on the Lent and Christmas, Masopust, Harvest festivals, birth and marriage traditions, traditional folk costumes, folkart, crafts and furniture and even more recent traditions such as the Czech hiking tradition. Most of the notices were in Czech, but all the rooms had summaries in English.

I combined my museum visit with a walk up onto Petrin Hill - another one of Prague's well-kept secrets. The Hill has is covered with woods and orchards and allows the best view of the old city. I went in spring, my favourite time for visiting the hill - it was covered with wildflowers (grape hyacinths, yellow stars of Bethlehem, blue squill and violets) and the fruit trees were in blossom.

Flashes of wonder

2011-04-22T20:08:00.003Z

Today has been a remarkable day for insects.

Yesterday morning I was working in the orchard clearing some space for some shrubs I had bought, when I noticed that the cherry tree blossom was about to burst. I withdrew into the shade and cool of the house for a midday break and when I re-emerged at 3pm I found that the miracle had happened and the cherry tree was covered with white blossom. Today I returned to the orchard to plant the aforementioned shrubs and was amazed to find the cherrytree was buzzing loudly and the blossom shimmering with frantic bees.

Then this evening I went to Cesky Krumlov to feed Hannah's (Salamander's) cats, my way took me along the bank of the River Vltava. Another miracle - the air was full of mayflies (even if it is still only April). I watched with amusement as the diners at the riverside restaurants waved their hands as insects landed in the food and hair. By the time I made my way back to my car it was nearly dark and the mayflies were swirling flashes of light in the ray of the spotlights that illuminate the castle. It was a magical moment and one Hannah would have loved. Looking back through this blog I realise how often when I spoke of her, it was because we were sharing a moment of wonder such as this. In a way I feel we still are.

Other parts - 1 - Litomysl

2011-04-19T06:48:00.000Z

My Czech travel business gives me the most wonderful justification for going on trips to various parts of the Czech Republic. I have a customer for whom I'm organising a fly-drive holiday aroung some of the best of Czech countryside and towns, so of course I have to go and check the hotels out, don't I! Over the last four days I have been up in the north visiting Bohemian Switzerland, the Bohemian Paradise area, and Litomysl, and I managed to call in on Hlinsko on the way back too. I have taken loads of photos and so over the next few posts I thought I would do some photographic blogposts about what I've seen. So let us begin with Litomysl.

Litomysl is like Cesky Krumlov on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list. It has a wonderful arcaded square, the highlight in which is for me the Knights House (now used as a gallery). The facade of the house is decorated with a series of carved knights.

Litomysl's Renaissance Palace is covered with the most incredible sgraffito decoration. The decoration on the outside is just amazing:

But the work on the inner wall of the courtyard is even more spectacular and include this portrayal of the Battle of the Malvian Bridge.

I cannot do justice to the Palace and its decoration in this blog, you will just have to visit Litomysl yourself.

Litomysl's other main claim to fame is that it is the birthplace of Czech composer - Smetana. The town plays host to a major international music festival in June - the Smetanova. I came across this fountain - currently dry for the winter - in which children were playing. What a photograph cannot portray is the fact that speakers built into the wall were playing music by Smetana.

Saying Goodbye

2011-04-11T21:04:00.000Z

Today saw the funeral in Prague of my friend Hannah. I didn't go, I daren't - I drove for nine hours yesterday and a similar time the day before and a further round trip to Prague was beyond me and my aching back. In any case I always think funerals should be for the family and although Hannah was the older sister I never had that doesn't quite count. Tomorrow there is a get-together of her friends in her house in Cesky Krumlov, which I will go to. But today I had the day to myself to think and to say goodbye.

About a month ago - maybe a bit less - we were having a whimsical discussion about what to do about funeral arrangements. It was already clear that she almost certainly had terminal cancer, but Hannah was the sort of person who is able to enjoy the funny side of the darkest things. I suggested that we should put her in a boat and launch it on to her beloved Lake Olsina, so that she could sail off into the sunset - sunsets there are often spectacular. She liked the idea but then said it would be too much of a shock for the poor carp fishermen when they come to drain the lake next year for the carp harvest - it might even start a "woman in the lake" murder enquiry, so we moved on to other equally unrealistic ideas.

Yesterday as I drove across Germany I was thinking about this conversation. Her son Danny has created a website in her honour and I had searched out some photos of her prints to send him, among them was the print shown above (the original of which is in her Olsina cottage). It made me think. Today I made an origami boat, dipped it in wax to make it last longer. I printed out the photo and cut out the little man. With these on the car seat beside me, I drove off to Olsina as the sun headed towards the horizon.

On the bank above the cottage I stopped to pick some of the violets which had so delighted Hannah in previous springs and which alas did not come out this year until after she had gone into the hospice. I had at least been able to tell her about them in a telephone conversation only five days before her death, and she was pleased. I stood on a small beach of the lake where she and I last summer had stripped down to our pants and swum in the warm summer water, whilst the carp rose to the surface a few feet away. The carp were still rising this evening. Out on the water two crested grebes were calling each other. The only other sound was the lap of small waves against the shingle and the beat of a heron's wings overhead.

As the sun slid out of sight, I rested the boat on the water. At first the little man stood in his bobbing boat waving at me, until it turned and the current took him on a new adventure, first out into the lake and then along the shoreline away from Hannah's cottage. The boat soon disappeared behind a small headland, covered with willows and fringed with bullrushes, and was gone. It was turning dark, I walked back to the car and made my way home.

Learning English

2011-04-07T19:20:00.000Z

I saw this advert on a building in Prague. It reads "Pingu's English. English courses for children from three years old."

What next - Czech children learning German with the telletubbies? Japanese with Bill and Ben the flowertop men?

Woodstacking Update

2011-04-07T16:19:00.000Z

Further to my last two posts - here it is ten cubic metres of cut firewood. This took my husband, son and I two half days solid stacking. The logs are two deep! As we were working from all over the village came the sound of wood being cut ready for next winter.

Solar Power

2011-03-25T19:27:00.000Z

In my last post I was explaing that electric central heating in one of these old farmhouses is for the rich only. Worse is to come, as the price of electricity is going to rise above inflation next year. This is due to the rise in solar panels.

“What?” do I hear you say? “But surely!”

No, it is not logical. But the Czechs seem to have got themselves in a fix. As I understand it under a laudable scheme to encourage alternative and more sustainable fuels, subsidies were offered to people setting up solar panels with a guarantee to buy the energy produced at a certain price. Nice idea but can you see the flaw?

Subsidised investment with guaranteed profit. The profiteers were on it immediately. The scheme was too successful – there were too many investors making a killing. And who is to pay the costs? The poor average Czech Joe, through the electricity bills, who couldn't afford to get on the solar panel gravy train in the first place. When this became public, there was naturally an uproar. The politicians tried to get out of it, but no, the investors had contracts and lawyers.

And that is why my husband, son and I have just spent the afternoon stacking firewood ready for next winter.

Wood

2011-03-20T10:39:00.000Z

My apologies for the slight gap in my posts. I have been otherwise engaged. One area of activity was taking delivery of 10 cubic metres of firewood.

Although I have electric central heating, electricity costs thanks to EON's virtual monopoly are extortionately high, far higher it feels (I must do a proper comparision) than in the UK and let's face it electricity prices in the UK aren't exactly low. A friend was telling me recently about the difference in EON's electric prices in the Czech Republic and neighbouring Germany, a ratio of 2:1 she reckoned. It's not as though the Czechs are as wealthy as their teutonic neighbours, the average wage here is still comparatively low. Hence energy makes up a significant proportion of the average monthly bills. One reason the prices we are paying such high prices apparently is the disastrous solar energy subsidy - more of that in my next blog.

But back to my heating, although my heating system is the most cost-effective that can be bought, using only off-peak power and although the house is well insulated with walls at least two feet thick, in order to keep the bills manageable I only use the central heating to maintain a basic level of heat and boost it with wood burning stoves. My stores of firewood were getting badly diminished and so it was time to order fresh.

My experience and those of friends is that you don't always get what you pay for. There are quite a few cowboy suppliers who will charge you a very reasonable price, but then when they deliver somehow there isn't quite as much as you expected. The worst example of this were some local gypsies who sold me 6 cubic metres and delivered 1! I had to admire their cheek and put it down to experience. Of course if they had supplied what they promised, they could have been supplying me for years, but such long-term logic did not enter into their calculations. This time I turned to a neighbour and a friend to organise the supply and I decided to order ten metres on the basis that I would get less.

Last weekend a small lorry turned up and emptied its entire contents on to the road outside my house. The man waved away my money saying I would pay him when he came back on Monday with the next lot. Another lot! The pile was larger than a car. I set to throwing the logs through my open gate to form the heap you can see some of above. It took me two days to move them all into the yard, where they sat (and still sit) waiting stacking. True enough on Monday he returns with a second lorry load - another pile on the road outside the gate. I start to clear away a space so that my neighbours can park their car. Then the following morning I wake to find I can hardly move.

So the pile is still outside my gate, with the other still in the yard. My back is a lot better, but I am nervous of doing any major log moving. My husband and son are arriving at the end of the week, we were going to have a short-break in Prague but instead we may be doing something a lot less pleasant. I blame EON!

Saying Yes

2011-03-10T10:41:00.000Z

Czech Waitress: Would you like some more?

Potok: I wouldn't say no

Czech Waitress: Does that mean yes?

Potok: Yes. Sorry!

For any Czech waitresses reading this blog the following is English for yes:

I wouldn't say no
I don't mind if I do
I could be persuaded to

There are more and I will add them as I think of them. Comments with suggestions welcome

For any English visitors to the Czech Republic - just say yes or better still "ano prosim" (yes, please)

Winter sports at Lipno

2011-03-02T09:28:00.000Z

Lake Lipno in the summer is a vast man-made lake in the south of the Czech Republic popular with holiday makers as a place to swim, sail and generally have fun. In the Winter it turns into the largest skating rink you can imagine.

On Saturday I happened to be passing on my way to Horni Plana when I noticed the lake was particularly busy. Curious I walked along the shore until I came to the centre of all this activity. It was a windboarding event, the lake resounded to electronic music emitted by two large speakers and trendy young people were setting up the huge kites which would pull them at speed across the ice on their boards. Soon I was watching enthralled as they took to the ice.

For the more sedate users of the lake an ice-skating path had been cleared, it seemed along the several kilometres from Cerna v Posumavi to Horni Plana. Young and old were skating up and down occasionally interrupted when a passing windboarder crossed the path.

The following day I passed the lake again, gone were the speakers and loud music, gone too alas were the bright sunshine and perfect views. But still there were maybe half a dozen windboarders and many more skaters. I even saw a car driving across the lake! The Czechs know how to have fun.

Masopust - Czech Carnival

2011-02-26T14:49:00.000Z

Here is a video of Masopust (Czech Carnival) in my local town of Horice Na Sumave. I made for to promote cultural holidays in the Czech Republic with Czech Tours What I love about the Horice version is that it is very much by and for the locals. Masopust will be celebrated in Cesky Krumlov in just over a week's time. I will try and get a video of that too, so you can see the differences between the two.

Of course there is far more to Masopust than what you see here, for more see my previous blogs on the subject, or better still come and experience yourself.

PS Sorry about the spelling mistake at the end of the video - goodness knows how many times I watched the thing and still I didn't see it until it went up on Youtube!

New Trains

2011-02-24T17:52:00.000Z

The Czechs are busy upgrading their railway system. The latest development has been this swanky yellow replacement for the little train on the line from Ceske Budejovice to the Sumava via my home station of Horice Na Sumave. And very nice it is too. My only grouse with it is that for some stations like Hodnov which serves Olsina Lake you have to make a request stop. I found myself hurtling towards Hodnov without the means to attract the conductor who was clearly ensconced in the nice warm cab chatting with the driver. I ended up pressing the button by the door several times which seemed to do the trick. The conductor came out in time to speak with me only when I had dismounted (maybe I pressed the wrong button). But then this is only problem if you board at a station without a ticket office. The advantage was he was too late to collect the fare!

The other major change that is coming is the upgrading of the line between Prague and Ceske Budejovice. The change will mean the line can take high-speed trains, which will in turn cut the travel time to South Bohemia. Sadly part of this upgrading has been the installation of large concrete sound-proofing screens to protect houses along the route from the increased noise. I say sadly because one of the joys of the route was looking at the villages and into people's orchards and gardens.Now all you see is the corregated concrete wedges.

The new trains will replace what my nieces refered to as "Harry Potter" trains, with their individual compartments. These could be a blessing and a curse - a blessing because they afforded some privacy, a curse because if you were unlucky to get in one with someone with body odour there was nowhere to go and if you opened the window you could almost bet your fellow travellers would close it again! Meanwhile I have stopped using the Prague train, the Student Agency Coach is currently faster and delivers me direct to Cesky Krumlov and at the moment because of the works on the line you may start your journey on a train, but you usually end up being transfered on to a coach and back again.We'll see whether the new fast trains can tempt me back.

Snow, ice and yaktrax

2011-02-20T11:29:00.001Z

This is what I woke to yesterday. This is the view from my window. It had started snowing again late on Friday afternoon and continued to lunchtime. I decided I would walk to the bus through the winter landscape and enjoy the snow whilst it was soft and pristine. All very poetic.

But my relationship with Czech snow and ice is a somewhat fraught one. You will have seen in previous posts how much I love the snow here; it is in my opinion in a different class to the British version – dryer, finer, crisper. Ice and compacted snow however is a different matter.

Whichever way I approach my home I am required to go up hill. Two roads enter the village and neither of them are ever gritted. The passage of cars and the snowplough turn my lovely crunchy snow to ice in a matter of a few days. I probably should buy myself a sledge and slide down to the station, but I would still have to haul it back up the slippery slope.

Whilst in England on the recommendation of my osteopath I bought myself some Yaktrax. This incredible invention is probably best described as snow chains for shoes and the difference it makes is remarkable. They have one, rather major, drawback – they should not be worn on gravel or tarmac. When the snow thaws on my roads, which this year it has been doing off and on a lot, I am faced with expanses of bare road and patches of ice. I tried leaving the Yaktrax on and had the alarming experience of the metal springs actually sparking on the granite grave. And so I leave them off and try to avoid ice patches.

A week or so ago I walked down to the station on just such a day of thaw, I had done well. And I turned off the road on to the concrete path to the station. It was covered with black puddles and I walked confidently on looking at my goal. Suddenly my legs just slid out from under me and I landed on my side in an inch of icy water. Unsteadily and somewhat painfully I made my way across what I now realised was black ice to the station, only to discover that I had misread the timetable and I had a further forty minutes to wait on the cold platform in my wet clothes.

I am beginning to think, that like all the other villagers, I should get a car.These romantic walks in the snow are all very well, but I'm a fifty-year old woman with a back to think about

Winter in the Sumava

2011-02-13T13:35:00.000Z

This is a picture of my Czech home. It huddles under a hill called Liska Dira (Fox Hole) and is well-named given the number of foxes I hear and see in these winter months. It sits just outside of the Sumava natural landscape protected area, in the foothills of the Sumava Mountains and Forest.

The name Sumava comes from the sound leaves make in the wind - the whispering or russling forest. But at this time of year there is very little sound of whispering leaves, just that silence that comes with snow and maybe a "whoosh" as snow falls from the branches. Right now, I'm sitting in a friend's cottage which sits next to a frozen, snow-covered lake. In a few minutes I will put on my walking shoes and head off into the forest. I need to clear my head and fill my lungs with fresh Czech winter air. But first I am writing this for you.

Our local little train which I travelled on this morning was full of Czechs heading for the deeper snow and forests of the Sumava National Park. The Park is one of the Czech Republic's best kept secrets - forming with the neighbouring Bohmerwald the largest forest in Central Europe - "Europe's Green Lung." Only it's not very green now. On the slopes of the Sumava's mountains there are ski resorts - affordable ones - and through its forests, across its plains and along its lakes run hundreds of kilometres of landlaufing trails.

The sun is out, the snow is virginal and I'm heading for the hills.

Diamonds in the Snow

2011-02-06T13:04:00.000Z

I keep writing about diamonds in the snow in the Czech Republic and my British friends and family nod and say "Yes, how lovely". But until you've seen them, I don't think you really can know how remarkable these ice formations are. Even in the recent snowy British winters I have not seen anything like them. They are not just the occasional flash of light against pristine winter snow. They are large crystals that grow in formation as the result of a succession sunny days followed by bitterly cold nights. The UK just doesn't get that sort of weather - a couple of bright days if we are lucky, before the grey presses in once more.

They are inevitably not easy to photograph - so my apologies that my efforts here do not do them full justice. But perhaps they might give you, dear reader, a glimmer of the pleasure they bring me.

Mice again

2011-02-02T13:52:00.000Z

I have arrived back in the Czech Republic to find pristine snow glittering with ice diamonds and clear blue skies. I have also found that I share my home with mice. I suppose it is hardly surprising given the long grass surrounding the house now a foot deep in snow. My local field mice have packed their bags and taken to the warmth of my house.

This is not the first time I have had this problem, as long-standing readers of this blog will know. Before I left the house I spent a great deal of time blocking holes in skirting boards with sadra (plaster) and cutting strips of wood to fit the gaps in the floorboards (my builders had very kindly supplied the mice with perfect nest-building conditions by putting insulation materials under the floorboards). All in vain, alas.

I had left one bed ready made for my return, I turn back the duvet ready to climb in and lo! - a pile of bean husks and mice poo. The following day I searched the house to find that the little furry darlings had knocked over a container of dried peas and struck lucky as the lid had come off, not one pea was left to be seen. Well not to be seen there, all day I found stashes of peas - among the bedclothes, in the towels, in my stationary drawer. Then as I lifted a pillow off the wardrobe a huge quantity of peas fell through a hole which had been gnawed in the pillowcase. I still cannot work out how they got up there, I had to stand on a chair to look, sure enough there was another pile of peas.

Back in the bedroom where I had first found the remnants of mice midnight feast, I suddenly noticed the corpse of a mouse by the table and then, as I picked that up with a shovel, another under the radiator. There was no sign of injury on them and they were as fat as mice who had been living on the products of my larder should be. I carried them into the yard and left them for the farmcat. I am hoping the dried peas disagreed with them. It will save me from extracting mangled corpses from mousetraps if so.

Photographic lane

2011-01-23T21:26:00.000Z

Back in November I visited Jindrichuv Hradec to arrange a visit by a group from Australia to the town. As part of the visit we will be attending a demonstration at the world-famous tapestry studios established by the Czech cubist Marie Teinitzerova. That studio is to be found along a lane which runs between the walls of the town and a river channel, it also runs at the foot of the beautiful Jindrichuv Hradec castle, hence its name Pod Hradem.

I don't know whether it was because the tour I was organising was for artists, who want a tour which will allow them to see examples of Czech arts and crafts and to create their own art, but I found myself making a photographic study of the lane. I was helped in this by buildings in the lane being both old and mostly unrestored.

Many have retained their original doors and windows with their lovely decoration and patina.

And ancient windows. It was just like parts of Cesky Krumlov and indeed Prague used to be when first I started to visit this country. Perhaps that was another reason why I found myself so drawn to capturing it photographically, I knew it would not and could not last like this for long.

Even the street lights take you back in time.

And then there was this sign outside a small building on the riverside. It's a sign for a beer sanitorium and spa! Maybe I should take the Australians there as well - after all the Czechs have turned brewing and consuming beer into an artform. If I do take them, I will tell you all about it.

The Greatest Czech

2011-01-17T23:11:00.000Z

In 2005, following the success of the BBC's 100 Greatest Britons, Czech Television launched a competition to find the greatest Czech. Who won? Not Vaclav Havel, Charles IV, Jan Hus, Jan Zizka, or the country's first president Tomas Mararyk. No, the greatest Czech as voted for by the Czech public was Jara Cimrman.

Never heard of him? He's very well known in the Czech Republic. I was recently reminded of that by the large number of posters on the Prague underground for a Jara Cimrman book. He has his own museum in Prague.

Cimrman was born in Vienna in either 1857, 1864, 1867 or 1894 - the exact date is uncertain, since the doctor recording the birth was drunk. He grew up to be a hugely influential inventor - his inventions include the CD (Cimrman's disc) and yoghurt. Unfortunately he was always a few minutes late at the Patent Office, so someone else got the credit. He was also influential in the theatre, he advised Chekhov that Two Sisters were too few and also corresponded with George Bernard Shaw (who never replied). For a fuller list of his achievements check out his Wikipedia entry.

And yet despite this, Czech TV refused to accept the public's decision.Why not? Well there was the minor problem that he did not exist, has never done so in fact, apart from as a fictional comic creation. The wonderful Czech public had refused to play ball.

But in many ways Cimrman would have been so right for the title. He works not just as a comic character but as a summary of Czechness. The Czechs know that they would have invented everything if they hadn't been distracted, that they would have been great explorers if they had chosen to (Cimrman nearly was the first man to the North Pole - he missed it by seven metres), and that they have wrongly have been overlooked. The trouble is they can't quite take things seriously - things like tv competitions for example.

Hospitality

2011-01-11T15:33:00.000Z

We Brits are told that we are reserved and private in our behaviour, compared to other nations that is. Looking at the Czechs superficially that may appear to be true, but look closer and in certain crucial ways things are not so simple.

We are told that an English man's home is his castle. Then what is a Czech's? I have seen inside very few Czech homes. I've sat in their gardens drinking coffee and/or beer but as for going inside, that is another matter. If we want to get to know people, we middle-class Brits will invite them to dinner (usually a dinner party to be precise). The dinner party will often include a tour of the house. Again that has hardly never happened here in Czecho. Well one reason is, I suppose, the fact that the main meal of the day in this country is lunch, but still I think it is deeper than that. Only one Czech friend has cooked for me - lunch or dinner.

I am not sure why this is. Perhaps it goes back to the communist days, when the only people you could trust were family and close friends and the only place you felt (relatively) secure was in your own home. You didn't let strangers into the sanctuary - a Czech's home was indeed a castle, whereas the Englishman's was actually his family seat.

If you do get invited to someone's home or garden - then take a gift. And if you invite someone to yours expect at least one jar of jam, or some home-made slivovice, or a whole tin of cakes, or vegetables and fruit from the garden or a mixture of these. In my experience the gifts will be home-made rather than shop-bought, especially if your guest is female. No matter that you only invited them round for a cup of tea - it is simply not done for them to arrive empty-handed.

I was talking about this to a friend, who although Czech by birth and upbringing spent twenty years in Britain, and we came to the conclusion that it was something about the Czechs wanting to show that they can afford to give food in return, again a harking back to a time when indeed there was very little to go around.

New Year, New Website

2011-01-09T18:11:00.000Z

Happy New Year to you all.

I apologise about the absence of posts since the New Year. I have been busy. Firstly I have been busy with the Czech Tours business and secondly I have been upgrading the family website about Cesky Krumlov. Our Ceskykrumlovholiday website hadn't changed much since we created it several years ago and it was beginning to be out-of-date and worse look it. So a revamp was needed and once I'd started I realised just how much work I had taken on.

Although we now have the new business, I decided to leave the website as primarily an information resource for potential visitors to Cesky Krumlov. The official Cesky Krumlov website, although enormous and full of information, is not the easiest to use. Indeed the very fact that it is so big makes it rather overwhelming and off-putting. Any way our website remains our personal take on what to see and do on a holiday to Cesky Krumlov. I would welcome your feedback and suggestions, so please have a look at it on http://www.ceskykrumlovholiday.co.uk

Regards Zoe

Hussite Video/Slideshow

2010-12-30T22:44:00.000Z

Here is the slideshow I made as part of the publicity I am producing for the Hussite Tour, which I am organising in September 2011. Have a look at the Czech Tours website, if you are interested.

The Hussites were followers of the teachings of theologian Jan Hus (John Huss) who was burnt at the stake as a heretic. Their one-eyed general Jan Zizka turned his followers from inexperienced peasant farmers into a formidable fighting force. The music is one of their hymns - "Warriors of God".

The Real Good King Wenceslas

2010-12-23T03:41:00.001Z

There are many myths and few facts about the original Good King Wenceslas.

Let's start with the facts. Wenceslas was Vaclav I Duke of Bohemia from 921 - 935 AD. He was born into the house of the Přemyslids, the first rulers of Bohemia, at a time when Christianity was only just beginning to take hold among the Slavs. His grandfather Borivoj was converted by St Cyril and St Methodius (the Apostles to the Slavs) and Wenceslas was brought up a Christian by his father Vratislav. When Vratislav died Wenceslas was only 13 and his care passed to his saintly grandmother Ludmila. But a power struggle ensued over control of the young king and his kingdom between Ludmila and Wenceslas' mother Drahomira, which resulted in Ludmila's death by strangulation. In 924 or 925 Wenceslas had his mother exiled and took control of his dukedom.

Under his rule Christianity was promoted in Bohemia and the chronicles attribute to Wenceslas great acts of piety. In 929 the army of the Duke of Saxony, Henry the Fowler, attacked Prague and Wenceslas sued for peace and pledged allegiance to the German Duke. This action together with Wenceslas' support of the Christian church angered many Bohemian nobles who turned to Wenceslas brother Boleslav as an alternative duke. At some point later Boleslav invited Wenceslas to a religious feast and when Wenceslas was on his way to church Boleslav and his allies murdered him

So Wenceslas was actually Vaclav; he wasn't a king but a duke and we can't even be sure of the dates - he may have died in 929 or alternatively 935. History is also unclear about his enemies. Was Drahomira a pagan - the chronicles can't make up their minds. Was Boleslav - well he didn't exactly stop the growth of christianity after Wenceslas' death. What we have here is a pretty typical example of realpolitik in the Dark Ages, with the usual fratricide, invading armies, conspiracies and a dose of religion to boot. After which we get the postumous and highly unreliable hagiographic royal biographies.

Now for some of the myths -

The story of the old man seeking fuel appeared in 1853 - a piece of Victorian whimsy by John Mason Neale. The tune however is older - it's a medieval spring carol.
Wenceslas is said to be sleeping with an army of knights under Mount Blanik waiting to ride out to save the Czech nation - though why you would want a leader who failed to defeat the Germans in his lifetime escapes me.
In an extension to the last myth Wenceslas will take the magical sword of Bruncvik from a stone in Charles Bridge, and with the sword he will defeat the country's enemies. Myths it seems are the same the world over.

Well there you go - the real Good King Wenceslas stays as illusive as ever.

Queuing

2010-12-18T13:18:00.000Z

I was waiting for a bus a fortnight ago in Cesky Krumlov. There was quite a crowd of people at the bus stop, but none of them were queuing. That includes me - a Brit! We all milled around chatting, I and a number of others sat on a bench. The bus appeared and still no queue materialised, instead everyone moved towards the bus door and formed a disordered huddle. It was a very polite huddle, but a huddle nonetheless. The only friction arose when some schoolchildren pushed in front of an elderly lady, but they soon were put in their place by a stern word.

Then a few days ago I waited for a bus in Cheltenham. Of course there was a queue. There would have been a queue, regardless of how many people were waiting. In fact the Brits will form a queue of one - I do. There's an empty bus stop, what do I do? I stand next to the sign looking in the direction of the bus. Arrivals at the bus stop then form a queue behind me. If anyone pushes into the queue they are subjected to stares and even the muttered comment "Some people have no manners, really!" But they are unlikely to be challenged.

Such queuing behaviour is relatively easily to read for non-Brits, what is more difficult is the virtual queue. What do I mean by that? Well, a good example is in a pub. In my youth I worked as a barmaid and so had an opportunity to observe it closely. You do not form a queue when you want to buy a beer, but there is a virtual queue. The barman serves people in the order in which they arrived at the bar. To register your presence with the barman you catch his eye, often with a jerk of the head backwards. He will nod to acknowledge you and then you wait your turn. This can be problematic in a very crowded bar, but as a barmaid I soon learned that the skill of remembering the order of the virtual queue is essential.

Once a snooty customer said to me ""When are you going to serve me, I'm an undergraduate of Oxford University?" There was a stunned silence in the bar, fellow students tried to hide and the locals clenched their teeth. Every rule of English behaviour had been broken.

In such a circumstance the barmaid is entitled to lose her British reserve. "And I'm a graduate," I replied, "And you'll bloody well wait your turn." General cheers.

I've heard the argument that the British queuing habit is due to rationing. But I think that is complete tosh. Rationing was over 50 years ago and still we are doing it. Plus I rather suspect that under the Nazis and then under the Communists the Czech too would have been used to queuing, indeed Czech bureaucracy still requires it. They just don't do it all the time.

A Visit to Volary

2010-12-09T14:24:00.002Z

My posts about the history of this part of the Czech Republic don't usually look at the more recent past, but there is plenty of it around here. A few weeks ago, before the snow, I drove over to Volary. I had been through it many times on my way to the Sumava, but never stopped. This time I did.

If you go the cemetary in Volary you will find a memorial just outside the main cemetary along with ninety-six graves. When the American forces entered Volary they came upon a barracks and in it over one hundred women, starving (their average weight was 82 pounds), ill and indeed dying. These were all that remained of a group of women who had been made to make a 700 kilometre death march from concentration camps in Poland. A few days later the Americans found the mass grave of women who had died of disease or been shot by their Nazi guards. The local German inhabitants were made to exhume the bodies and dig new graves. They were then made to attend a burial service for the women. An account of the US army's arrival with photographs is to be found here

The graveyard is incredibly powerful, set on the hillside overlooking the Sumava. The spot was so beautiful and peaceful when I visited, that it is hard to bear the knowledge of what happened here. It is a place, like too many in this country, where angels weep. The names of the graves show that the women buried there come from Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the USSR, but most moving of all are those that simply bear the word "neznama" - unknown. It is a tribute to the care and work of the US Fifth Infantry Division that so many have names - this is the only cemetary to holocaust victims where there are names at all.

But the last word goes to a survivor Szewa Szeps -

We were sent on the March, some of the girls sick with a fever of 39 degrees. Every day the snow-covered roads became littered with corpses. My sister was in a very bad way. I had to support and pull her along, so that she would not be shot. We marched in the direction of Czechoslovakia and Bavaria. During the march my sister pleaded with me to leave her and continue alone. Frozen, starving and thoroughly exhausted, we managed to drag ourselves along. At night we were packed like herrings in barns or sheds. In the morning those who didn't survive were left behind. Our transport, with its skeletons in rags, caused the local residents in the area to close their windows and to run from us as if from an epidemic. Many of the unfortunate were [simply] shot along our way.

During the night of 2-3 May, the Germans abandoned us near a forest in Volary (Wallern) in Czechoslovakia. In the morning we noticed that the guards were gone. Me and another person – the only ones who could still continue – left on the first American tank which approached.
The Americans brought us to the local hospital. My sister was in a really bad way, and three days later, on the 9^th of May, 1945, she died. She was buried in Volary. On her tombstone, I requested her epitaph be taken from her diary:

“The day of our liberation should just not be a day of bitter sleep.”

But I added:

“The day of liberation, my dear sister, was for you a day of bitter sleep."

Extract taken from http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/Dabrowa/dab346.html
It is to the soldiers, medics and Jewish chaplain Herman Dicker of the Fifth Infantry Division that the victims buried in Volary are the only victims in any Holocaust cemetery that headstones bears the victims name.It is to the soldiers, medics and Jewish chaplain Herman Dicker of the Fifth Infantry Division that the victims buried in Volary are the only victims in any Holocaust cemetery that headstones bears the victims name.

Weekend Shopping

2010-12-03T22:51:00.000Z

Do not go shopping on Saturday afternoon in the Czech Republic - you will find the shops closed. Never mind Sunday opening, Czech shops as a rule close at 12.00 or at best 1pm on Saturdays. The exception to this is often the modern shopping malls, but your regular town centre shops are closed. Even a city like Ceske Budejovice turns into a ghost town at noon on Saturdays, the streets empty and even many cafes and restaurants are closed. Walking across its huge central square on a Saturday afternoon can be disconcerting - it's almost as if you've walked in to a wild west movie just before the outlaws ride into town.

Cesky Krumlov at first sight bucks this trend - most shops are open. But look closer and you will see that only the tourist and vietnamese shops are open, the in-town supermarkets, chemists, shoeshops, etc are all closed. Even the little supermarket opposite the Castle is closed. And yet the weekend is when Cesky Krumlov receives most of its visitors. You can sit on the bench by the castle gate and watch as bemused Japanese tourists try the door. No matter that the supermarket is missing out on all that trade, the Czechs have always stopped work on Saturdays at lunchtime and disappeared off to their families, cottages and gardens and so that is what they will continue to do. Or they might be engaging in the latest pastime of going in their hordes to the new out-of-town shopping centres.

A visit to Trocnov

2010-11-29T23:34:00.001Z

I was taking the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society on their tour around the historic sites of South Bohemia, when we drove past the turning to Trocnov in the coach. I informed the coach that Trocnov was the birthplace of the one-eyed (and later blind) general of the Hussites - Jan Zizka. I happened to mention in passing that we could have visited the site and the small museum there. I added that I could have taken the group on a dedicated Hussite tour. This caused a ripple of excitement on the coach and sure enough a note was passed to me expressing interest in such a tour. I am going to be leading a tour for the Hussites for the Society and I have another tour set up for the general public next September.

The Museum at Trocnov is a very Czech affair. When I arrived the Museum was closed, but a note said I could get the key from the cafe/pub. I walked past a couple drinking beer at a trestle table and up to the counter. A nice young lady, who seemed to double as barmaid and museum caretaker, picked up the key and opened the door for me. The museum was divided into three rooms - one about Zizka's family and family home, the second about Zizka's campaigns and the third about the cult of Zizka. Unfortunately for British visitors the bulk of the exhibition text is in Czech, but it still is interesting to see just how small Zizka's familial home was - a simple tower house, but nevertheless made of stone, which probably made it stand out among the wooden structures that surrounded it. Zizka's father is described as a member of the gentry, but it clearly a not very wealthy one.

I found room 3 particularly interesting, showing as it did the role of Zizka as a hero first of Czech nationalism and then of communism. The displays are full of posters and prints of Zizka. I was joined in the museum by a woman and her young daughter. Every few minutes the child would let out a cry "Zizka, Zizka!" when she saw yet another picture of the man. Zizka, it would appear, still has a strong hold on Czech imagination!

I left the museum and walked around the site. The archaeological remains were disappointing, a few low walls revealed a remarkably small footprint. I walked along a path and into a small wood. Several groups of Czechs were walking there in the afternoon sunshine, carrying baskets and collecting mushrooms. At the end of an avenue in a grove I found the stone memorial to the site of Zizka's birth. The feature that dominates the site is a giant sculpture of Zizka. A young couple were photographing each other in front of the great man's feet. Seeing me they invited me to take over and so I did. Then they left and I was alone looking up at the craggy stone features. Was this what Zizka looked like? Probably not, the look was a creation of the cult of Zizka. But as a historian I have always been interested both in getting to the historical truth and in how history is used through the ages, which is of course also true.

Lost in Translation

2010-11-26T09:51:00.000Z

I thought I might share with you more about what was discussed at the Lost in Translation exhibition opening, which featured the work of Czech artists and writers who live in the UK and the work of British artists and writers who live in the Czech Republic.

The picture above is by Katia Lom who said;

I have found refuge and my own way to come to terms with this industrious city through its pockets of nature. I have come to realise that there is peace to be found amongst this bustling city and that, even within its urbanised landscape, heavens of trees and animals can be found, from an animal farm in Hackney, to the great leafy neighbourhoods of North London. These discoveries have enabled me to start feeling more settled as I have found a common ground in nature and animals.

It struck me that this attachment especially to trees is very Czech. The forest is very powerful in the Czech psyche, equivalent perhaps in its significance as the sea is to the Brits.

A number of the pictures referenced another profound influence on the Czech psyche - fairytales. In Hana Vojackova's artwork (above) the Little Red Riding Hood's forest becomes London's East End. She writes:

One feels that Little Red Riding Hood is fascinated and worried by wandering around in a scary and dangerous place; for her the scary place was the woods, for me it was the inner city at night. Both situations engender a tension between irrational fascination and the rational fear of what is new or undiscovered to us. It is a tension familiar to everybody, and one that is immortalized in the childrens story.

More pictures from the exhibition together with the artists' thoughts can currently be found in a Facebook web album.

I have always admired the way the Czechs are able to accept the truth of fairytales. Many Brits would be embarrassed to talk about such "childish" things, we have put them away. But they are still there, hidden and hiding inside us and they still are "true". The reason Czech art is so strong is that it can see the world through them. We Brits have a lot to learn.

Swans

2010-11-23T23:19:00.001Z

A pair of swans have taken up residence on our local swimming pond. As swans are birds of habit and mate for life, they are probably the same pair that I watched this time last year. The pond, which in the summer was full of local families swimming and laughing, now only has my two swans floating serenely across its surface, breaking the reflections of the trees. But Winter is coming, the first snow has fallen, the pond will soon ice over and they will be gone again. I do not know where and would welcome thoughts on the matter.

I do so adore watching them. They bring back a very early memory from my childhood, of when we lived in the mill flat beside a pond. In the morning I would eat my toast, but leave the crusts, so that my mother and I could feed them to the two swans that lived on the millpond. I would have been aged about two at the time. There is something about my village and South Bohemia more generally that has the effect of triggering old memories, nearly always good ones. When I first came here to look at the house, it was not the house that resonated so strongly with me but the children's den in the trees and the hopscotch squares chalked on the tarmac outside the gate. It was like stepping back fifty years.

Who is Reading This?

2010-11-16T14:57:00.000Z

Over the years that I have been writing this blog I have come to know some of my readers, through the comments they leave, emails they send me or from the profiles of those that follow the blog. They come from all over the world. Some, such as fellow blogger Karen of Empty Nest Blog, I now consider friends.

When I started this blog I had no idea really who would read it. As I say in my profile (right) I hope it introduces the Czechs to the British and vice versa. But I presumed my primary audience would, if only for language reasons, be British. I recently was interested to see in my Blogger stats that Britain only comes third in the list of countries sending me readers, the US is second and top of the list is the Czech Republic, which given the language barrier is remarkable. I am so pleased.

I attended the launch event for the Lost in Translation exhibition on Sunday (yes, I know the exhibition is almost over) and found myself chatting to some delightful young Czech expats and comparing notes. It was fascinating to hear from them about the things they like and dislike about living in the UK. Consistently they spoke about being straight-talking in a country where people hide what they mean. I gave them the reference for Kate Fox's excellent book Watching the English. They confessed to having secret stores of piskoty (a type of biscuit) and kofola (the Czech cola and infinitely superior), I confessed to carrying over to Czecho supplies of teabags and marmite. I was intrigued to hear their feelings and experiences and comparing them with my own. It helped me understand why so many Czechs are reading this.

A Knowledge of Czech History

2010-11-08T08:44:00.001Z

The other day I was browsing in a local antikvariat (second-hand bookshop) and working my way through a pile of mostly uninspiring old prints. I was about to abandon my hunt (I did not know what I was looking for anyway), when I came across some prints by a local artist, who worked in Ceske Budejovice about 40 years ago. The prints were from a larger series about a dramatic and traumatic period in Czech history – the time of the Hussite rebellions in the 15th century.

Now, as some of you will know who have visited the website for my new business, I a) love history b) am beginning to offer holidays and tours to historic South Bohemia and c) offer a Hussite tour, following a request from members of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society. The prints were very much of their time (probably 1950s/60s), when the Communists adopted the Hussites as heroic members of the Czech proletariat taking on a German aristocracy, conveniently forgetting that the Hussites were motivated by religion (a.k.a. the opiate of the people). At 50 kc each (under £2) how could I resist? I chose six of the best prints and wandered over to the shop's owner.

I asked about the artist (Karel Stech by the way) and whether the owner had any prints which showed the one-eyed general of the Hussites - Jan Zizka. The owner looked at me with surprise: “You are English?”

I nodded.

“And yet you know about Czech history!” he said in amazement.

I explained that the English were indeed interested in the Hussites (well the historians of the Archaeological Society certainly were), because they like military history and there was the English link with the Lollards.

“Of course, John Wycliff,” he said and nodded.

I walked out of the shop with a package under my arm, feeling slightly guilty. I couldn't quite bring myself to say that most English know nothing about the history of this country (which is partly why I started the business), but then I consoled myself that most English don't know who John Wycliff and the Lollards were either.

Comparisons

2010-11-04T14:53:00.001Z

Above is a notice advertising the museum in Jindrichuv Hradec. Come and see “the biggest mechanical creche in the world.”*

One of the things that has struck us as we wander around the Czech Republic is this obsession with comparisons. “Cesky Krumlov is the second largest castle complex in the Czech Republic”, “Jindrichuv Hradec Castle is the second largest castle in South Bohemia” (after Krumlov of course), Vyssi Brod Abbey has the “third largest library in the Czech Republic” and so on. Once you start looking, you'll see such comparisons all over the place. It's not something we see very much in England. Why is that?

A friend once said to me that it was probably to do with the Czechs needing to assert themselves and their legacy in the face of wider apathy, which may be true to some extent, whereas we have a confidence born of several centuries of being a major world player. But I suspect it is more to do with our English sensibilities. After all the Czechs are just promoting what they have to offer. The Hungarian emigre and humourist George Mikes wrote that “All advertisements... are utterly and hopelessly unEnglish. They are too outspoken, too definite, too boastful.” My wincing at Czech claims is therefore my problem, not theirs.

* BTW By creche they mean a carved nativity scene. Not only do you get the stable, but a huge automated tableau of life in the surrounding countryside and towns, which takes up three sides of a room. Some guy spent a lifetime making this - you can imagine what his wife had to say on the subject!

Update to Harvesting The Forest

2010-11-02T14:52:00.002Z

Radio Prague has just reported:

Sumava National Park director resigns

The director of the Sumava National Park, Frantisek Krejci, has tendered his resignation to the Minister of the Environment, Pavel Drobil. A ministry spokesperson told the press that Mr Krejci had
resigned in order to facilitate the new conception for the park promoted by the ministry. Frantisek Krejci was appointed by the Green Party in 2007 when it controlled the environment ministry in order to fulfil a policy of non-intervention against the bark beetle infestation that has devastated parts of the forest. Environmental organisations say the resignation was forced by the new ministry, which want to take a head on approach to the problem.

As I said in the previous post a lot of people are very cynical about the Government, suggesting that it is using the bark beetle as an excuse to justify wholesale removal of trees in the forest. This news seems to confirm this.

Lost in Translation

2010-10-31T12:43:00.001Z

A few months ago a reader of this blog (Eva) emailed me to say I should think about submitting Adventures in the Czech Republic for inclusion in an exhibition which will be opening at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, London tomorrow. I thought about and decided I would and lo and behold Adventures in the Czech Republic was accepted!

To quote the publicity:

LOST IN TRANSLATION is an exhibition exploring what it is like to live in another country through the works of British and Czech artists with experience of living in the opposite countries. Each works tell a different story about coping with the change of the environment, but what unites them is that it’s impossible for an artist not to be influenced by it in their work. It doesn’t seem to matter where you are from until you move elsewhere, because that’s when you really start to see who you are; to the point of surprising yourself with unexpected yearning for the national identity. The language barrier especially is something that even those resumed to visual communication can find staggering. Settling into another culture is an emotional and adventurous process. The wonderment of things being different - cars on the other side of the road, learning to talk at great length about the weather and the tube announcements in an alien language. You take it all in with all your heightened senses, initially feeling displaced and uprooted, but gradually beginning to grasp your environment and redefining your identify. You are never going to be the same. Curated by UK-based Czech curator, Michaela Freeman.

And there is a special event on the 14th November at 4.15, with the screening of a documentary Czechin London and a moderated open discussion. If you come, you'll meet Potok in person.

For more info visit http://www.czechcentres.cz/london/novinky.asp?ID=14319

Harvesting the Forest

2010-10-29T16:31:00.000Z

I am spending a lot of my leisure time up in the forest at the moment. There are still mushrooms for the collecting. My love of mushrooming has always been accompanied by a love of being in nature. The Czechs have both of these loves – but for me there is the added attraction of novelty.

It is for these reasons I am hurt by what I see on my silvan jaunts – the wholesale destruction of tracts of my beloved Mytsky Les. These Czech forests are not natural, but the legacy of generations of foresters, who have carefully harvested and restocked the forest. Trees were cut down when their time came and not before, treecover was maintained to ensure that the forest floor did not become scrubland and suited to the flora and fungi, that also supplied the contents of their wives' store cupboards. No longer – instead I arrive at some of my favourite mushroom collecting sites to find devastation, whole areas stripped bare, unwanted branches and stumps strewn over the ground, my paths are rucked up by the monster machines used by the tree harvesters. After a year or two the open space thus created is covered by impenetrable brambles.

Why is this? The forests have survived communism only to fall foul of capitalism and privatisation. These new "tree harvesters" are interested only in short term profit, they harvest but they do not farm. The large machinery is easier and quicker. If all this wood was for domestic consumption I might be less annoyed, but I regularly nearly get run off the road by large timber lorries taking the best of the Czech forest to Germany and Austria. I am not alone in my alarm at developments. They are a regular topic of conversation with my Czech friends - one said recently that the Sumava Forest will be destroyed in ten years. Most are of the opinion that the excuse that some of the clearance is needed to fight the bark beetle is simply a ploy to justify the pillaging of the forests, indeed that the beetle scurge is a consequence of profit-driven monoculture.

The news from the UK that the British Government is proposing to sell off half our national forests fills me with horror. I have seen at first hand what that means and I urge British readers of this blog to sign the following online petition http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/save-our-forests#petition/url
or better still write to your mp, for details on how to do this see http://www.parliament.uk/about/contacting/mp/

Carp Harvest at Olsina

2010-10-26T09:09:00.005Z

Two years ago my husband and I watched the carp harvest at Lake Olsina near our house. This time I came with Salamander and stayed at her house by the lake, this meant we could be up before dawn.

For three weeks the lake has been slowly draining, until yesterday evening I was able to walk almost to its middle. There the carp were bunched in a channel of low water, running the gauntlet of hungry gulls, herons and egrets. I woke at 6 and just had time for a cup of tea, before hunting horns announced that the harvest was about to take place.

We climbed up on to the lake dam wall just in time to see the men start dragging their flat-bottomed metal boats out along the channel. The water had fallen even lower and the carp were now restricted to the area near the sluice. A net was dropped and then the men in the boats began banging on their boats and hitting the water to herd the fish towards the shore.

The sun started to rise and the wet mud glistened. The nets tightened and the water started to boil with fish. On the shore a line of men hoisted the fish out of the water and into plastic barrels. When these were full, their flapping contents were emptied into scales and weighed. Most carp were then sent up a conveyor belt and into vast tanks on the back of a lorry. These will then be transported to holding places, from whence they will make their way to the large barrels one sees in the middle of Czech towns in the run-up to Christmas. Quite a few however did not make it that far, but went straight to the stall on the side of the road. Locals arrived in their droves (not to see the harvest as we did) but to buy carp so fresh and recently caught that it was fighting to get out of their carrier bags.

One could not help but feel sorry for these lovely creatures with their bright scales and their mouths opening and closing in the alien air-filled environment. Only a few months ago I swam with them in the warm waters of the lake. But my sorrow for them was not so great that I did not buy two bits of freshly fried carp, which I ate with my fingers from a paper plate. They were delicious. As I commented to Salamander it reminded me of eating fish and chips on a British summer holiday - it was even raining.

Salamander has been doing some interesting posts on her blog about the history of the Czech fishponds

Wood

2010-10-22T13:13:00.000Z

Winter will soon be upon us. Already the first sharp frosts have turned the grass in the orchard white. The Czech winter can be long and white – with snow lasting from early December into March. The Czechs have been getting ready for it all summer. Even as I was picking redcurrants in the garden I could hear the sound of chainsaws in the village. Whatever the carol (about the Czechs' saintly king) says the Czechs like to get their firewood well before the snow is deep and thick and even.

All around me whole walls of logs have been assembled in the gardens, ready for when the logs will be split and sawn to length, then they are stocked high against the house walls, where they are protected from the weather be the overhanging eaves. Still the chopping and sawing continues. The family across the way from us have been disappearing off on an old tractor, only to reappear with a trailer piled high with old wood. As I write the head of the family and his brother are using a remarkable machine to split four foot long logs. My other neighbours came back from their weekly visit to the supermarket yesterday with a new chainsaw.

I too have my store of wood piled against the wall near to the front door. Believe me when the snow comes I would not want to have to transport it any further. I hope it is enough. Last year winter was longer than is usual, with snow first appearing (and disappearing) in October, and it caught some of my neighbours out. They have no intention of it doing so this year. I am using up my supply from last year, when we cut down some trees in the orchard and cut up some old rotten beams. But if the worst comes to the worst I have my plans – the remnants of the floor downstairs may be for the chop.

I really should be stocking up on wood for the 2011-2012 Winter, laying down cheaper unseasoned wood for the future. I know some of my neighbours are doing just that. But somehow I can't just bring myself to look at more than one cold Czech winter at a time.

Late Autumn

2010-10-18T15:22:00.000Z

Okay, so I often blog about my walk home up the hill from Horice na Sumave, but there is always something new and lovely to see. And I just thought you would like to see some photos of the leaves and rosehips in the bright autumn sunshine. There was, as you can see, not a cloud in the sky.

Empties (Vratne Lahve)

2010-10-14T12:06:00.000Z

As a follow-up to my previous post about recycling beer bottles in the Czech Republic, I thought I might share with you a video clip from one of my favourite Czech films - Vratne Lahve. Its English title is Empties and is a story of a 65 year old man, who having given up a job teaching literature to annoying school children, ends up in a supermarket recycling beer bottles. It is set at a time when automatic bottle machines were just appearing in Czech supermarkets, instead you handed your bottles to a man on the other side of the hatch, who would give you a receipt.

The film comes the father and son team, Zdenek and Jan Sverak, which also gave us the Oscar-winning Kolya. Zdenek wrote and starred in the film, whilst son Jan directed. The film is a gentle comedy about a man, who has problems facing the approach of old age. It is full of wonderful characters including the man's long suffering wife and the many denizens of the supermarket. In the hands of Hollywood this film and this subject matter could be mawkish and certainly would be quicker paced, but instead it is lovely and forgiving (Zdenek's character is no angel), funny and sad, and ultimately life-affirming.

Bottles

2010-10-07T21:37:00.000Z

One of the things that surprised the members of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society on their visit to the Budweiser Budvar Brewery was the spectacle of old beer bottles being cleaned and recycled.

When I was a child in 1960's Britain we used to pay a deposit on lemonade bottles. I remember the delight of handing the empty bottle over to Mrs Evans in our local cornershop and getting back a nice coin, which if allowed I used to buy some sweets. We Brits stopped recycling bottles sometime in my childhood - a mistake I think.

But the Czechs sensibly have retained the system of paying a deposit on beer bottles. You save your empty bottles and crate (if you paid a deposit on that too) until you decide to return them to the supermarket. There you will find a machine - with a hole into which you feed individual bottles and another for crates. The machine weighs the bottle (checking you're not trying to fiddle the system) and then a converyor takes the bottle and drops it with a clink somewhere on the other side. When you have finished, you press a button and the machine gives you a receipt, which you hand in to the checkout. It is amazing (and pleasant) how much money you get back. You certainly are motivated to recycle every beer bottle.

When the Circus Came to Town.

2010-10-01T19:52:00.000Z

A week ago my husband and I were walking into Cesky Krumlov, when we found ourselves behind two men who were wearing strange multi-coloured wigs and riding on kiddies scooters.

"What is that all about?" asked my husband.

Later we got our answer when I pulled a flyer advertising the arrival of a circus from under our windscreen wiper. The day after we were passed by a van announcing the circus' arrival through a tannoy and towing a trailer on which was a life-size model of a crocodile.

Going to the circus seems to be a common activity in the Czech Republic, more so than in England. The circus has been to Cesky Krumlov at least twice this year already. It is set up on a piece of ground in front of the blocks of flats near to the Lidl supermarket. This is a traditional circus with animals - there are stalls for the various animals - zebras, etc. which the locals can wander round. And there are the traditional caravans, such as the one shown here.

Traditional circuses in England have been in decline, hit by popular opposition to exploiting wild animals and increasingly replaced by non-animal based circus. Although there's a ban in the Czech Republic on the use of certain wild animals, or maybe because of it, the circus seems to be going strong here. The circus website shows performing elephants, camels, bears and zebras. As you can see we didn't go to the circus, despite the publicity.

Silver Anniversary

2010-09-29T15:39:00.000Z

The reason why my blogging has been so intermittent recently is that for the last three weeks my husband and I have been celebrating our silver wedding anniversary by making a long-planned trip across Northern Europe and back. We've had a lovely time in various German and Belgian cities, but chose to spend the big day itself in the Czech Republic - well, I can't think of anywhere more romantic.

After a lazy morning we drove to the lake district around Trebon via the lovely countryside around Novy Hrady. At Trebon we sat at a table in front of a fish restaurant on the town square and enjoyed a meal of fried carp. Carp has such a bad reputation with the Brits, who consider it at best tasteless and at worst muddy, but the Czechs love it. And cooked well, by a restaurant which knows what it is doing, it is delicious. We then walked away from the square and around the corner to a cafe, which serves some of the best Czech cakes I have ever tasted. I had discovered the place on a research expedition for my historic tours business, but hubby had never been before. I am glad to say the cafe lived up to my billing.

After lunch we decided to walk off some of the calories with a visit to the nature reserve at Cerveny Blato. A wooden boardwalk takes you for four kilometres through a forested peat bog. The place is just incredible - it's like stepping back in time to an age before Man cleared the forests and drained the swamps. You half expect to see giant dragonflies and dinosaurs appear out of the bog pine forest. You certainly get to see some rare plants, fungi, butterflies and birds. A black woodpecker twice shot up from bushes as we passed, its red head standing out against the rest of its dark plummage. We were stopping so much to ooh and ahh and take photos, that the four kilometres took two hours to complete.

After our work we returned home, where we finished our special day eating chanterelle mushrooms and Czech chocolates, washed down by Czech bubbly. Just the two of us, plus our lovely old house, and the crickets serenading us in the garden.

Butterflies

2010-09-23T17:06:00.000Z

The last butterflies are enjoying the warm sun of late September. As I was scything the grass and weeds in the orchard, peacock and tortoiseshell were flying over the orchard weeds. As always I left patches of nettles, which are a favourite foodstuff for caterpillars. Of course this has nothing to do with how hard scything is. In the woods when I was mushrooming, there were brimstones and dappled brown butterflies flittering in the strands of light descending through the leaves. But the nights are getting cold, soon the butterflies will be arriving in the cellar and barn looking for a place to overwinter.

My favourite is the little blue (above), which in the summer collected in huge shimmering crowds on the sand by the swimming pond. It is very special for all my family, in that when a beloved aunt died over ten years ago we noticed the little blue everywhere. It was and is forever her butterfly. Strangely enough when we moved into her house, we found that it clearly was a favourite of hers before she died, because there were pictures of it around the house.

More on Wayside Advertising

2010-09-17T10:19:00.000Z

In my last post I wrote about the political posters on the sides of our roads. As two comments have pointed out, there are local and senate elections coming up that in some way account for this. But nevertheless there do seem to be a number of posters that have remained unchanged from the general election. Why is this? Are they being recycled for some reason? Or is it that nothing has replaced them?

I wrote my last post in haste - I was feeling guilty that I had not put anything for over a week. Since then I have had more time to consider my feelings on the subject and I am surprised by how strong they are. Something in my British sensibilities is reacting adversely to Czech roadside advertising. For starters I am shocked by the amount, location and size of it all – from huge posters to poles chocked full of fingerposts pointing the way to different banks, supermarkets and hotels. Signs hanging off roadbridges tell the driver that s/he is only x kilometres from their nearest Tescos/Obi/etc. Scantily clad young women advertise everything from non-stop clubs to machinery. On every side the marketing clamour presses in, even in towns as spectacularly beautiful as Cesky Krumlov. I know from my previous career in England, that in the UK this simply would not be allowed. The planning process regulates the amount and position of advertising. The local civic societies are keen to prevent visual clutter from damaging the appearance of towns and the Police and Highways Authorities will oppose signage which could confuse or distract the driver.

I think my dislike of the Czech roadside adverts is rather deeper than that. I feel the current adverts let the side down. As you will have realised from reading this blog, I have a great love and regard for the Czech graphics tradition and this extends to advertising and indeed signs. When I first visited this country I spent quite a lot of time photographing Czech signs, which I considered delightful and infinitely superior to those of my British home. I certainly wouldn’t do that now. These current signs are typical of those we see all over Europe, part of a lowest denominator mass communication.

These political posters are some of the worst culprits. There is one which for some time really disturbed me and I could not think why – it was just some man talking to an audience. And then today I realised – it was the hand gesture. To be precise it was the Tony Blair hand gesture, which is no doubt taught in "politician school" the world over. The hand is open with palm revealed and thumb up, as if he is about to shake your hand. Don't make a fist he has been told, an open palm is non-threatening, consider you body language. Only somehow it doesn't work, he looks false.

Politicians' body language, advertising signs, - all part of a homogenization of communication across the world in which true communication is lost.

The Journey & Arrival

2010-09-15T11:09:00.000Z

My apologies for the slight break in postings, this is because I have been travelling. Yesterday was our 25th wedding anniversary and my husband and I decided we had to do something to celebrate. We have long planned a trip across northern Europe, but my husband is self employed and so we never could quite find the time - it was always a case that he either had work or needed to be by the phone in case work came up. But at last, with our silver wedding as the spur, we have done it.

We left England on my birthday and made our way slowly across Germany, taking in various historic towns along the way - Trier, Worms and Regensburg. We at last arrived at our home in the Czech Republic with a car filled with books, various English foodstuffs (cheddar, biscuits, marmalade and marmite) and several paintings we were bringing over for a friend. We are now relaxing and playing at being tourists here. In about a week's time we will spend six days making the return journey, stopping in Belgium as well as Germany. This time the car will be filled with a crate of Czech dark beer (for our son) and other Czech goodies. After a fortnight I will be flying back - I have work to do on the new Czech tours business and I am trying not to do any on this "holiday".

One thing that struck me on our return was that the election posters still line roadsides. The elections were nearly four months ago and yet there are the politicians still gurning at the public at every turn. It's bad enough having to look at them during the run up to the elections, but now.... At least the British politicians have had the decency to remove their election posters, apart from the occasional errant banner hung in some Tory farmer's field alongside a tattered poster in support of foxhunting. It strikes me that this is a rather alarming indication of the state of the Czech economy, which like the British is bouncing a long at the bottom with only slight growth. Obviously marketing expenditure has been slashed, otherwise the advertising slots which the politicians occupy would have been taken.

Posts on Czech Culture and Customs

2010-09-05T18:51:00.000Z

As the blog gets larger I thought I might help readers interested in certain topics by creating some pages which list the blog's content by theme. I promise to update the pages as new posts are added.

The themes are: Czech Nature, Czech Customs & Culture, Places to visit in South Bohemia, Buying and Restoring a Czech House, Czech History and Politics, Day to Day Life in the Czech Republic. This post covers Czech Customs and Culture, click on the links above for the others.

CZECH CUSTOMS AND CULTURE

Revised 22 August 2010

Zumberk

2010-09-05T15:43:00.006Z

Zumberk is one of those well kept Czech secret places, so well kept that my Czech friend had not heard of it. She even corrected my pronunciation, thinking I was talking about somewhere else. And yet Zumberk was only forty minutes drive away.

I found a short reference to it in a guidebook and as I was passing I dropped in. I couldn't believe my eyes. There it was - a perfect fortified village with fairytale towers, standing above a still small lake. And there was more - in the manor house the South Bohemian Museum displayed a wonderful collection of South Bohemian painted furniture.

I have always coveted the examples of Czech painted furniture I have seen, but here was a treasure trove: the finest examples of the local styles. The exhibition highlighted the subtle and not so subtle differences between the folk art from different areas of South Bohemia. And the building was fascinating too.

Unfortunately Zumberk is not geared to the British visitor: it is where I was asked to translate by the guide, but then my archaeology tour was, we were told, the first English speaking group to visit. And they did have a folder of English translation they can give you as you walk round, which allows us to spend as much time as we want to gaze at the exhibits.

My New Venture

2010-08-31T18:19:00.003Z

Well, I've done it! I have launched my new business - Czech Tours. Those of you who follow this blog will know that by accident earlier this summer I found myself organising and leading a tour of historic South Bohemia. I also found that I enjoyed it. So over the last few months I have working on the business idea and have today launched the website http://www.czechtours.co.uk. It's still a bit rough round the edges and I need to add the dates and prices for next year's tours, but I could have delayed going public for ever - I am very good at that!

I think there is a real hole in the market for the English-speaking visitors who do not want the run-of-the-mill trip to Prague (with at most a day excursion to Cesky Krumlov). The business will be focussed on South Bohemia, as that is an area I know really well and am confident will interest other visitors. It really is all about my sharing my love, enthusiasm and knowledge of the area with my clients (much as this blog does). Therefore I want to keep it relatively small, so as not to lose the personal touch. The business will offer guided tours and tailor-made holidays to the punters. So wish me luck with my new venture; all being well I will make some money for myself and South Bohemia and meet some interesting people by doing so.

Vietnamese Shops

2010-08-26T19:50:00.003Z

A few weeks ago I needed to buy some sandals - my old ones were rubbing. I went to my favourite Czech shoe shop - Bata - but I have wide feet and obviously Czech women don't. With a concert that evening, which merited dressing up (that for me means wearing a skirt rather than jeans), I needed to buy new sandals there and then. And so it was that I found myself in one of Cesky Krumlov's Vietnamese shops.

Everywhere in the Czech Republic you will find Vietnamese shops selling all sorts of cheap goods. If you want cheap clothes, shoes, pashminas, sunglasses, or handbags, these shops are where to go. Don't expect what you buy to be long-lasting. But these shops can be a god-send, when you are on holiday in the Czech Republic and you realise you left your raincoat in the overhead locker. The shops' owners are inclined to be over-zealous (to my British sensibilities) trying to sell you something, anything in the shop in fact. They call out to you if you walk too close in the street and if you do go in, be prepared to say "Ne, ne," very firmly.

The Czech Vietnamese community is the equivalent of Indian shopkeepers in the UK. They work long hours in family businesses and provide a useful service. They are very enterprising, which is surprising. Why? Because they first came to the country when it was communist, from their homeland of communist North Vietnam. The Iron Curtain fell and these North Vietnamese immigrants stayed and embraced capitalism bigtime. Undoubtedly their link to the East gives them some advantages - cheap Chinese imports for example. My observation is that the Vietnamese are not well integrated into the wider Czech community; they keep themselves to themselves and probably do not have time for anything but work and family. Conversations with Czechs reveal some resentment towards them, probably partly due to jealousy but also to the communist past.

I managed to find some sandals that fitted my feet and matched my clothes. But I had to endure the shopkeeper shoving pair after pair of sandals in to my hands. "Gut, gut, sehr billig," he said, on the basis that as he couldn't speak English, German would do. Normally this behaviour would have me running for the door, but I was desperate. Looking at them now, I am glad I didn't run: the shoes cost me about £8.50 and are remarkably comfortable.

Some Thoughts

2010-08-22T14:52:00.005Z

I have been rereading this blog. It is quite fascinating to revisit my early posts from over three years ago. Sometimes my feelings and views regarding the Czech Republic, my second country, have remained constant and indeed grown, and sometimes those early impressions have proved wrong or in some cases circumstances in the Czech Republic have changed and made my posts out-of-date. But then a blog is basically a journal that you broadcast on the internet and as with all diaries the changes are part of the interest. But I hope and believe that the one thing that has not changed is my love of this country and its people. Maybe I see things better now, understand more, but that has not reduced my affection.

I have always felt strangely at home in the Czech Republic. I think that is partly because, unlike many other expats I have chosen to live in the countryside rather than in the big cities of Brno and Prague. I am by nature and birth a country girl and the Czech countryside (as various posts attest) reminds me of the English countryside of my childhood. And in living here, I return to my childhood and some of that childish wonder, which I lost as I grew older.

What I didn't expect with creating a new home in Czecho was how it would impact on my feelings about England. I love England for all sorts of reasons and of course I am at home there too. But there is now a part of me that is, dare I say it, Czech. Not properly Czech of course, that would never happen, but part certainly. I am at home in both countries (in different ways perhaps), but it is also the case that I am not at home. When I am in England, after a while I find myself longing to get back to the Czech Republic. I long for the mists rising from the Czech forests, for the smell of mushrooms in firwoods, for the night-time silence surrounding my Czech home, for Czech sunlight, for being able to write again and for a thousand other wonders. And of course when I am in Czecho I miss England. I miss understanding the language, the banter, I miss the subtle pastel shades of the English landscape and of course the wind. Perhaps this means I appreciate both my countries more; I hope so. And whilst I can afford to retain a foot in both countries there is no problem and every advantage in my situation. I just dread the day when that is no longer the case, when I must choose.

Czech

2010-08-22T11:55:00.001Z

Hiking

2010-08-18T22:20:00.008Z

I spoke a few posts ago about the kids clubs one sees on the little train, but there is another group which one can also observe on the train at this time of year - the hikers.

These are not the typical British hikers out for a nice walk in the country. These are seriously outdoor adventurers. They are young people of both sexes in their late teens and early twenties arriving with rucksacks for a few days in the country. The idea is to get back to nature, camp under the stars or the forest canopy, sing traditional songs (which their parents would have sung before them) around a campfire, eat sausages and drink beer, before climbing back on the train to travel back to modern life.

However these are considered wimps and diletantes by the serious Czech hiker. He (and it usually is a he) often sits on his own in the corner of the train carriage ignoring the others. He is dressed in ex-army camouflage, army boots, and a bandana round his neck. Around his waist is a large leather belt together with knife in a sheath and a kharki water bottle. He may not have even a rucksack and almost certainly won't have a tent or sleeping bag - he will be sleeping on the hard ground under the stars. You can almost hear him say "Rain, what's a little rain? That's nothing; when I did my military service..." He's off to the obscurer and wilder parts of the Sumava. But like the others, one suspects, he will be back to his ordinary life and job come Monday, having fed something important in his Czech soul.

Kvinterna Again

2010-08-14T12:30:00.006Z

Back in May fellow blogger Karen of the Empty Nest Blog (see Related Czech Links) came to stay and was much taken with the music of local group Kvinterna. She asked me to post about them again and so here it is. In July this year I enjoyed a concert by Kvinterna at the Minorite Monastery on Latran. I was sorry that Karen could not join me, she would have loved it.

The video above is my own creation of local frescos and the music is a song called Planka from Kvinterna's album Landscape of Sweet Sorrow - an album of Sephardi songs and Moravian folksongs (click on the arrow to play the video). The juxtaposition of the two music types works brilliantly and is typical of Kvinterna's style. In their own words they "have created the instrumental element in a highly individual way derived from the technique of Gothic painting". For more on this, visit their website . This has inspired my choice of images for the video. By the way Planka is a Moravian song about a crab apple tree.

List of posts in Czech History and Politics

2010-08-11T05:27:00.001Z

As the blog gets larger I thought I might help readers interested in certain topics by creating some pages which list the blog's content by theme. I promise to update the pages as new posts are added.

The themes are: Czech Nature, Czech Customs & Culture, Places to visit in South Bohemia, Buying and Restoring a Czech House, Czech History and Politics, Day to Day Life in the Czech Republic. This post covers Czech History and Politics, click on the links above for the others.

CZECH HISTORY AND POLITICS

Kids Clubs

2010-08-07T10:55:00.004Z

Quite often at the moment I will be happily sitting in a relatively empty carriage on the the little train, when the train pulls into the station and lo I am surrounded by children and young people. The noise levels will rise dramatically as maybe twenty excited kids will occupy the carriage.

This is because many Czech children are sent on kids clubs by their parents. After the shock of their arrival, I spend the rest of my journey, or until the children disembark, observing the group, the behaviour and hierarchies. I have observed that girls are usually outnumbered in these clubs, as you can see in the photo above. There can be quite an age range in the group from quite young children to young teenagers, who often look rather embarrassed by being in the company of the little ones. There are often the cool ones (see the sunglass-wearing dude above), who ignore the others and keep to the hip set. The rest whoop and run around, flick bits of paper at each other and share sweets.

One thing that surprises me when I meet these groups, particularly ones which are obviously off to go camping in the Sumava, is the age and number of adults who are "in charge" of the groups. The leaders often seem to me hardly out of their teens, and there are far fewer than one would get in health and safety conscious Britain. But then Czech kids seem to have the sort of childhood that I remembered from my childhood, in which adults allowed us to take risks, and we ran relatively free in the countryside. Lucky them!

List of posts about Czech Nature

2010-08-05T12:38:00.000Z

As the blog gets larger I thought I might help readers interested in certain topics by creating some pages which list the blog's content by theme. I promise to update the pages as new posts are added.
The themes are: Czech Nature, Czech Customs & Culture, Places to visit in South Bohemia, Buying and Restoring a Czech House, Czech History and Politics, Day to Day Life in the Czech Republic. This post covers Czech Nature, click on the links above for the others.

Czech Nature

Blog Themes Updated - Places to Visit

2010-07-25T18:38:00.002Z

As the blog gets larger I thought I might help readers interested in certain topics by creating some pages which list the blog's content by theme. I promise to update the pages as new posts are added.

The themes are: Czech Nature, Czech Customs & Culture, Places to visit in South Bohemia, Buying and Restoring a Czech House, Czech History and Politics, Day to Day Life in the Czech Republic. This post covers Places to Visit in South Bohemia, more posts for other themes will follow.

PLACES TO VISIT IN SOUTH BOHEMIA

Page updated 28 July 2010

Blog themes - Day to Day Updated

2010-07-25T10:48:00.002Z

As the blog gets larger I thought I might help readers interested in certain topics by creating some pages which list the blog's content by theme. I promise to update the pages as new posts are added.
The themes are: Czech Nature, Czech Customs & Culture, Places to visit in South Bohemia, Buying and Restoring a Czech House, Czech History and Politics, Day to Day Life in the Czech Republic. This post covers Day to Day Life, click on the links above for the others.

DAY TO DAY LIFE IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

List updated July 26th 2010.

Basket of Forest Fruits

2010-07-24T13:14:00.003Z

I mentioned in my recent post on the Celebrations of the Five-petalled Rose that my husband bought me a small basket for picking forest fruits. I thought you might like to know that I very quickly made good use of it.

One day I arranged to meet Salamander at Olsina for supper and an evening swim in the lake, but I decided I would walk there. I left the house when the afternoon was still sweltering and headed up the hill and into the woods. I took with me two baskets - one for chanterelle mushrooms and one (this one) for wild strawberries and bilberries.

There's a good bank for strawberries along the path and I soon was picking. Further into the woods on the other side of the hill the bilberries were now ripe. The wild bilberry harvest this year has been patchy - there are whole areas which show no berries at all and others where berries are ripe and ready for picking. Picking these fruits (without one of those wood and wire berrypickers) takes forever, but they are worth it. They taste heavenly and only a few of the little fruits is enough to produce a lot of flavour, so unlike the watery cultivated varieties. My favourite recipe is simply to microwave them with some sugar for a minute or so and eat with either cream or yoghurt. Another recipe is to make some babovka mixture (the commercial babovka dry mix does nicely), pour into a baking tray, sprinkle with bilberries and cook in the oven 160 degrees for an hour or so.

It was hot work and took a couple of hours to pick this lot (and a load of chanterelles), so boy did I need that swim. But it was worth it - there were maybe five meals in this basket.

World-class Concert Hall for Ceske Budejovice

2010-07-21T17:32:00.009Z

It looks as though Ceske Budejovice is going to get a world-class concert hall. The hall, nicknamed the manta ray (reynok in Czech) because of its shape, was designed by the Czech architect Jan Kaplicky, who died in January. Kaplicky, who had lived in London for forty years, will be known to British readers for his media centre at Lords Cricket Ground and for the curvaceous Selfridges building in Birmingham. However in his home country Kaplicky had been less honoured. His remarkable plans for an octopus-shaped National Library, to be built in Prague, won an international architectural competition, but foundered on the prejudice of Czech politicians and, one suspects, the envy of other architects.

It is perhaps an indication of Ceske Budejovice's aspirations and forward-looking nature that the architect Prague rejected Budejovice welcomed. It is also an indication of the city's aspirations to be a major cultural centre. The Manta Ray will be the home of the South Bohemian Philharmonic Orchestra, which currently has to make do with a converted church as its home. The Ray actually will be called the Antonin Dvorak Centre, but I prefer the Ray and so no doubt will my fellow South Bohemians. There will be two concert halls - one with 1000 seats and another with 400. A major feature of the design is the inclusion (unique as far as I know in concert halls) of a large window at the rear of the hall looking out onto the park in which the Ray will be built.

Ceske Budejovice deserves the Ray. Jan Kaplicky deserves at last, albeit too late, to receive proper recognition in his homeland. And I can't wait to step inside this weird and wonderful building and better still to sit in one of its auditoria and listen to a concert.

Dream Language

2010-07-17T15:15:00.005Z

People regularly ask me, "So do you speak Czech, then?"

The answer is no, but it could increasingly be: "No, but sometimes I understand it." My attempts at learning the language have in many ways failed, but somehow (in a way I don't quite understand) it is creeping into my subconscious.

I now know this for a fact rather than a fancy, because a week ago I actually had a dream some of which was in Czech. Am I certain it was Czech? No, as I didn't entirely understand what was said in my dream, but I understood bits of it. Nevertheless I rather think that my brain has been processing Czech without me realising it.

I certainly can understand sometimes when a) it doesn't matter, b) the person speaks slowly and c) there are enough words that I do know and the context is such that I can probably guess a significant number of the rest.

But speaking Czech - that is another matter. However even here I am beginning to detect signs of progress. I had to speak Czech a bit for the tour I organised and I was even complemented on my pronunciation of the famous Czech soft r - which apparently I pronounced perfectly. There is a downside to this: in the museum at Zumberk, as I had asked for the tickets etc in Czech, I was expected to translate for the guide. And did I manage it - do I hear you ask? Yes, some of it anyway.

Yesterday I drove to England from the Czech Republic and I got linguistically extremely confused. Although German is officially my second language (I have an A level in it), I kept speaking in Czech both in Germany and France. Then on the ferry I actually managed to apologize to a Brit in Czech!

Ah well, all these signs seem to indicate that I am getting somewhere with this infernal language at last.

Poppyseed

2010-07-14T09:22:00.006Z

One of the delights of Czech cuisine are the many recipes made using poppyseeds. To feed the Czech appetite for "mak" you will find the Czech countryside covered with fields filled with poppies. They make a stunning show too, but alas a time-limited one. Unlike the sometimes equally remarkable display of wild poppies we have in England which can turn a field bright red, the Czech version is a pale lilac colour.

The reason is that these are opium poppies. In the old days Czechs would harvest some of the green poppy heads and set them aside for medicinal uses. I heard on Prague radio the other day that even eating too many Czech poppyseed cakes for breakfast can result in your blood testing positive for the narcotic. But don't let that stop you trying them, you have to eat at least six before it does so, and six is too much for even the most avid cake eater.

Swimming with the Fishes.

2010-07-10T14:19:00.005Z

With the temperatures in the 90s the Czechs are taking to the rivers and lakes. Cesky Krumlov and the Vltava River, that flows through it, are thronged with people making the journey downriver by canoe or raft. It is very much a communal thing - with the river looking like a motorway on a bank holiday. As the rafters sail past they shout ahoy to the onlookers lining the bridges.

But I prefer the more solitary pleasure of swimming in a local lake. This is a pleasure I have only recently discovered, having been invited by fellow blogger Salamander to swim in Lake Olsina (above). At Olsina (a shallow carp lake) the water is warm but pleasantly cooler than the air temperature. There is usually no one there but us and the occasional fisherman or a passing cyclist (or even once four nuns) . I am no great swimmer but you don't need to be, the water is shallow. So I just lie back in the water, float and look up at the mountains. You are at one with nature. Crested grebes call to one another and large carp rise to the surface. Complete bliss - and I can walk there from my house.

Celebration 2 - Golden Path

2010-07-07T12:16:00.004Z

A week after Cesky Krumlov had its Five-Petaled Rose festival , I went to a similar festival in Prachatice. This was a celebration of 1000 years of the old salt way - the Golden Path.

The Golden Path was one of those old trade routes which have crossed Europe for centuries. Along it salt was brought from the mines in the Alps (via Passau), over the Sumava to Bohemia. Salt, as the historians among you will know, was extremely valuable * - allowing people to preserve meat when there were no fridges and hence the path came to be known as the Golden Path. Prachatice grew up rich on this trade and the Golden Path.

The festival bore several similarities to the Five-Petaled Rose Celebration - historical processions, performances on the square and in the Parkan gardens, and a large (larger than in Krumlov) market. Prachatice clearly has ambitions as a tourist town, something it is very suited to. However this was above all a local community celebration, everyone was out enjoying themselves, including the local gypsy population which seemed to have set up camp in the middle of the square and were holding a celebration all of their own.

One of the highlights of the day was the arrival of a packhorse caravan, which I believe had traveled all the way from Passau. Another procession featured parties from other salt route towns, including ones in Austria and Germany, and other local Czech towns, which showed a certain generosity on the part of Prachatice.

I like Prachatice. The Tourist Information Centre was very helpful to me when I was organising the recent tour. Unlike the Cesky Krumlov TIC the Prachatice one is full of leaflets from attractions in the surrounding area and even further afield. I like the way Prachatice centre still feels like a real town, rather than a centre devoted to visitors, with the locals pushed out to the edge. I like the town's dynamism. And Prachatice is set in divine countryside - on the edge of the Sumava Forest. So, yes, it should be much better known as tourist destination. Cesky Krumlov watch out, there's a new kid on the block!

* The english word salary is derived from the latin from salt.

Celebration 1 - The 5 Petaled Rose

2010-06-30T15:08:00.004Z

I devoted several posts last year to Cesky Krumlov's annual jolly The Celebrations of the Five-Petaled Rose, but this year it will have to do with one. For three days the town is full of people wandering round in historical dress (you do get in free if you are in costume) and everywhere you turn, there is entertainment. Last year I was wowed by it, this year, I think because of a combination of less fortunate weather and the beginning of a migraine, less so. People's jollity all seemed a little bit forced, not surprising in the rain. Nevertheless my husband, who was seeing for the first time, enjoyed it.

One of the fun things about the event was watching for anachronisms - renaissance children with modern knapsacks as above. Men in doublet and hose answering their mobile phones - you get the idea.

My favourite site for entertainment is always the castle courtyard - this is where you get small local community groups performing as well as more professional entertainers. It was here that I caught the local gypsy dance group. A fat little man, whom I have seen regularly strutting around the streets of the town, fiddled with a large tape deck and a group of girls of all ages, dressed in their traditional costumes, danced on the grass in front of an appreciative audience.

Around the courtyard was set the market selling crafts and some food. The festival provides three red-letter days in the calendar of local craftspeople, a time when they get to sell to an audience of many thousands. But this year the rain took its toll, last year by the third day the stalls were beginning to look bare, but this year they were almost as full as on the first. My husband did his bit, by buying me a little basket in which to collect wild strawberries from the woods (I have used it already). But I fear that at this time of recession the town's weather conspired against a good harvest for the craftspeople of Krumlov.

Englishman Swimming the Vltava River

2010-06-26T14:50:00.006Z

Paul Whitaker is a keen sportsman, but (he says) by no means an elite athlete. Nevertheless, in October 2009 he set himself the daunting challenge of swimming from České Budějovice (leaves 28 June) to Prague (arrives 17 July). That's 175 kilometres, which is about 174.90 more kilometres more than I could manage. He plans to swim three hours a day, followed by back-up boat containing two Czechs and hopefully a barrel of beer.

Apart from the usual British "because it's there" motive, Paul is doing this to raise money for a Czech charity, Asistence, which supports people with disabilities. And I reckon we expats should be supporting his efforts. So come on dear reader put your hand in your pocket for Paul.

Donations from within the Czech Republic the bank details are bank account 235376432, bank sortcode 0300, from outside it is IBAN: CZ3103000000000235376432, BIC: CEKOCZPP, Bank: Československá obchodní banka, a.s., Radlická 333/150, 150 57 Praha 5, Czech Republic.

Paul has a website on http://www.vltava2010.cz/en/ if you want to know more, and includes a blog for Paul's diary.

What My Visitors Liked - Budweiser Budvar

2010-06-23T09:33:00.005Z

A number of my friends have asked what the members of the tour I organised liked most. The answer is that everyone seemed to like different things. I had designed the tour to offer something for everyone and to ensure that each day had variety, combining stunning Renaissance buildings with Gothic and Baroque, industrial history with fine and folk art. Feedback suggested that people were surprised by what they saw - we Brits have so little knowledge of this country outside Prague. They were surprised too by the quality of the food and hospitality.

One woman said that the surprise for her was the tour of Budweiser Budvar Brewery. She had expected not to enjoy it - it being a "man's thing". The brewery tour was included by special request of the (male) Chairman, quite rightly as how can you visit this home of beer and not go to a brewery. What made it a joy for her was the guide - a delightful middle-aged Czech lady (see picture on previous post) who just loved her subject. She would make comments about Czech men ("our men") and their love of beer and beam at us. Her grin would fill her face, so much so that her eyes disappeared.

And what she had to tell us was also fascinating. The water used to make the beer comes from huge artesian wells under Ceske Budejovice. The heat generated by the brewery is piped to local homes to provide heating - an advantage of having had a planned economy. The hops come to the brewery on their own trains and railway line. At the end we saw the huge bottling plant, including bottles being recycled (more of that in a future post). Of course we had a visit to the cellars and a chance to taste the amber nectar.

However a cloud hangs over Budweiser Budvar. It is still state owned and there are moves in the current climate of costcutting and savings to privatize the brewery. The workers are worried, as are many Czechs, that the company will be sold to a large international conglomerate. How long would Budvar's traditions last, not just in its approach to brewing (which takes more time than that of its competitors) but in its wider place in the community? Would our lovely lady guide still be beaming in her pride at working for a national institution?

The Tour

2010-06-16T08:48:00.005Z

Well, my first guided tour of South Bohemia is over. My guests departed on Sunday. Since then I have slept a lot, scythed part of the orchard, gone shopping, cleaned the house, washed a week's worth of clothes etc and generally re-emerged into real life.

"And how did it go?" I hear you ask.

The answer is really well. After weeks of rain and cold the sun shone, the temperature shot up to 30+ degrees and South Bohemia put on its best clothes for my visitors. Before their arrival I had worried that they would not like it, that my plans would go astray, that we would arrive somewhere and they would have forgotten that we were coming. Now looking back I ask myself why I put myself through so much angst. Of course my visitors loved South Bohemia - it is a wonderful country. The sites we were visiting were the best I could find. The days were carefully balanced so that there was something of interest for everyone. Hadn't I always said that the educated Brits would love this part of the world if they only found it? And I was right.

What I hadn't really expected was the welcome my visitors would receive from the Czechs. At nearly every site we were warmly welcomed and told that this was the first group of Brits they had had and how much they wanted more Brits to come. In the hotel (Hotel Budweis, Ceske Budejovice) the receptionist would search the web for information for the British guests. It was interesting to see that the warmth was reciprocated - the coach driver commented on how lovely my guests were and a number of other Czechs also spoke with admiration of the British guests, in particular their genuine interest in what they were seeing.

I have always thought that there was some common bond between our two peoples and this visit seems to confirm it. I suppose my previous fears were not just about failure on my part, but about being wrong about this. Well, I needn't have worried.

Chicken of the Woods

2010-06-06T08:58:00.005Z

For the first week of my return to the Czech Republic it hardly stopped raining (or it felt like it anyway). Now at last the sun is shining and I hope it stays that way, as the long planned tour of South Bohemia by the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society starts on Monday.

But being British I managed to find a silver lining to the clouds: for the first time I have been picking one of my favourite fungi here, chicken of the woods. I was driving along and there it was growing on one of the oak trees that line the man-made lakes near Trebon. I stopped the car, quarter filled a carrier bag in a few minutes and went my way. One night I ate it schnitzel style with lemon juice and the night before I used my favourite chicken of the woods recipe – risotto. The rest is in the freezer, as this fungi freezes without loss of texture and flavour.

I was telling a Czech friend about it and she sighed. “We Czechs do not eat it,” she said. “You British are much more adventurous.” She couldn't be further from the truth – most Brits wouldn't dare pick any wild fungus, let alone eat it. I am an exception from that rule. But then I suppose having broken the British "don't eat any wild mushrooms" taboo, I don't have any of the Czech prejudices either, including the one against fungi that grow on trees. All the more for me then!