Czech Egg Tourism

Easter has a very special place in the Czech heart and part of Czech Easter is the traditional painting of eggs. But EU legislation has let a fox into the henhouse. Egg prices have risen as a result of EU legislation against factory farming. What are the Czechs to do?

According to Bavarian newspaper, the Suddeutsche Zeitung, the Czechs are crossing the border and buying up cheaper German eggs, creating a possible egg shortage there too!

Czech Customs Museum - Easter

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.

Easter in the Czech Republic

My first visit to the Czech Republic was just before Easter 1990 and I have enjoyed a fair few Czech Easters since. In fact I try to ensure that I am there for Easter, it is such a special time in the Republic.

Many visitors to Czecho return home with a box or two of brightly decorated easter eggs (above) - they make a lovely and light momento of your visit. On my first visit I too brought back some eggs, but I had little idea what their significance was. Nor did I know that of the switches of woven willow wands and decorated with ribbons, which I saw on sale in Wenceslas Square.

Over the years I have learnt more about these Easter traditions, but then a few years ago I was let into some of the secrets. I was invited into a small kitchen on Easter Monday where the lady of the house was preparing the eggs. She was going to show us the local tradition of egg decoration. She had blown several dozen of them - the family was going to be eating a lot of omelettes over the next few days! She needed a lot as the matriarch of a large family and as a brilliant egg decorator her eggs were going to be in great demand.

Now there are different forms of decoration I believe in different parts of the country and different traditions are passed down from mother to daughter, so the traditional decoration I was shown would not be found every where. It involved dyes, beeswax melted on the stove and a pin stuck into the end of a pencil. The process was a sort of batik on egg, with the pin used to apply the wax on the egg in a pattern. Our hostess made it look easy, it wasn't - the wax would stick to the pin or come off in a blob and my attempt looked very primitive when set against hers. Once the wax is set the egg is dyed, the wax is then removed with a warm cloth to reveal the colour beneath. This process can be repeated to create patterns in different colours. The pattern that I was shown was a traditional one of various fertility symbols - the ear of corn, a woman in traditional dress etc.

We had hardly finished dying the eggs, when in through the door burst some male friends of the family carrying the willow switches. They set about playfully belabouring the legs of all the women present with the switches. In return for being "beaten" we gave the men some eggs. Then the matriarch produced some cake and plum brandy, which were consumed by her visitors with gusto. Afterwards they all disappeared in search of other female prey, eggs, cake and alcohol. The tradition is obviously a pagan fertility rite - which is very clear when one discovers that the name for the switch is pomlazka (from pomladit "to make younger") . Of course the tradition has been upbraided by American feminists to Czech bemusement.

Later we sat in the garden and listened to the gaggles of men, now quite drunk after visiting various houses, caroling along the street below. When the doorbell rang we hid, we had no more eggs to give!

Good Friday at Rimov

Easter is a special time in the Czech Republic and it means a lot to me personally. As I said the first time I visited the country was around Easter and somehow since then I have often been in the country for the Easter celebrations.

A special place to visit at Easter is Rimov a few miles from Cesky Krumlov. The village has been a place of pilgrimage since the 17th century. The Baroque Loretto Chapel there is beautiful but my preference is to walk around the short trail (about 5 kilometres), which takes you past 25 small stations of the cross - the Rimov Passion. The stations are all very different - some are simple hand painted paintings in small wayside chapels, some are tableaux, some are more complex. My favourite is the one shown in the photo above - the statues in the Garden of Gethsemane, all life size and set naturally in the landscape. You are walking through a wood along a small stream set about with coltsfoot and early spring flowers and then on a brow of a low hill you see the first of the statues. Statues of the sleeping disciples lie prostrate, Jesus is in urgent prayer, he leans forward, his eyes fixed on an angel at the top of the slope who proffers the cross.

The trail combines gentle exercise with prayer - at Easter you will find families, couples and friends walking, talking or meditating. And if you aren't religious you can always raid the willows along the river for withies - now why would you need them?