Horice Na Sumave - Masopust 2018

Yesterday we celebrated Masopust (Czech Carnival). It was the first time my husband had been at our Czech home for the festival. I am not sure why but he normally has returned to England and left me to celebrate alone. 

The Masopusters arrive here on their procession around the villages in the mid-afternoon, after a several hours of dancing and singing. Our neighbours Jitka and Eliska had joined with us to offer the Masopusters food and drink. The table had Czech delicacies of stuffed hard-boiled eggs, pastries, small open sandwiches and strudel, to which we added Scottish shortbread. We could hear the Masopusters approach through the village, stopping at various houses to sing and dance, thus blessing the homes with prosperity for the coming year. 

At last they arrived in our little cul de sac. We slotted our donations into the Masopust charity box and were swept into a dance. After the dance and the songs we offered our food and the Masopusters already replete after their travels very nobly ate some of the food and drank some of the cherry brandy. They left inviting us to attend the traditional Masopust ball that evening.

When my husband and I turned up at Horice Na Sumava Cultural Hall things were in full swing. The beer was flowing and everyone was feeling very mellow. We arrived just in time for the highlight of the night. The Masopusters processed into the hall together with an old man dressed up as a priest and two women comperes. The traditional dance resumed, with the Masopusters ending up encircling a man in a costume of multi-coloured rags who personified Masopust. Masopust made some lewd gestures at the dancers and was shot by the others.

He was lifted on to a stretcher and blessed by the priest. A fake funeral ensued - the priest's words causing hilarity in the audience. How we wished we could understand Czech! The stretcher was lifted onto the men's shoulders and led by the priest they processed twice around the hall. All the time the priest was sprinkling "holy" water from a chamber pot using a lavatory brush, making sure we all got a dose of water. The funeral done, the band struck up a Czech song which we recognized as Roll Out the Barrel and the Masopusters took partners from the audience and started to dance.

Celebration 2 - Golden Path

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.

Celebrations of the Five-Petalled Rose - Markets

In the first courtyard of Cesky Krumlov Castle throughout the Celebrations of the Five-petalled Rose you would have found a wonderful market offering the very best of local crafts. These included a wide range of pottery, jewelry, clothing, wickerwork, toys and woodwork.

I went twice to the market on Saturday and on Sunday. In the first case I went to get a present for a niece with an 18th birthday, but there was so much that I liked and was very reasonably priced that I went back the day after and bought several Christmas presents. Yes I know, I confess I am one of those annoying people who buy Christmas presents whenever I see them. Though I am not as bad as my Granny who bought her presents in the January sales! I won't describe the presents here, as I know this blog is read by people who will be receiving them.


Also on sale in the market were a variety of foodstuffs - cheese, herbs, wine, mead (medovina), jam, nougat. I bought a large bottle of medovina for half the price in the shops.

For a blog on last year's festival visit our sister blog "Krumlov Expats"

Celebrations of the Five-Petalled Rose

Every year at the end of June Cesky Krumlov celebrates its history with a three-day festival, but as 2009 was the town's 700th anniversary, this year's event was special. Some 2000 people were dressed in period costumes, some were participants in the celebrations (in the processions, performances, markets, and other activities) and some were simply part of the audience; you get in free if you dress up. I, being British, and therefore reserved, chose instead to pay for an armband that gave me access to the town centre.

The event and the celebrations were so large that it was quite impossible to see everything. Everywhere I turned there was something happening (either in the programme or spontaneously). One surreal pleasure was the feeling of timewarp; as people from the past supped beer from plastic cups and chatted to friends in 21st century clothes. I even saw one renaissance lady remove a ringing mobile phone from her cleavage!

The event was so large in fact that I cannot do justice to it in one blog, so I propose writing a whole series of posts over the next few days on different aspects of the event. Watch this space!

Czech Folk Dance

The sisters and I decided to go to Ceske Budejovice yesterday. The main purpose of the visit was to look for presents for my nieces, brother-in-law and parents, and as I have said in a previous post I prefer Ceske Budejovice for shopping to its more touristy neighbour Cesky Krumlov. Another purpose was to share with my sisters some of the architectural discoveries I have made in Budejovice. This is a town that bears exploration, it can offer everything from medieval to art deco and nearly everything in between - more perhaps of that in another blog.


Towards the end of our visit I took my guests to the Church of the Sacrifice of Our Lady. Outside on the square all was activity - market stalls were being erected, people scurried around with boxes of craft goods for sale. In front of the church a large stage was in the process of rising, whilst in front of it men were setting up trestle tables and benches. Interested to see what was going on, we sat down at a table of the pizzeria on the Square and watched, whilst very slowly eating our lunch and drinking several drinks. After a short while the square started to fill with children dressed in traditional dress, doting mothers taking snapshots and dance teachers also in costume. It was becoming apparent that we had stumbled into a folk dance festival.


More and more dancers arrived. Some were adult teams, and as would be the case with any British morris side they set about buying beers from the Budwar tent. There were men in black, with black boots and ornately worked leather belts and older women in their thick gathered skirts. Musicians arrived with a range of traditional instruments, some beautifully carved. Eventually after much faffing around with the sound system and the children becoming bored and disappearing off, the dance teachers gathered their teams and processed in to the square. A master of ceremonies announced the first troupe from his clipboard - a group of small children sidled on to the stage - and the festival began in earnest.

I was interested to see the different dance forms - most of which seemed pretty tame to me after my interest in the pagan roots of English morris (for more on this do visit the Independent's excellent article on the subject ) But equally this was not the rather embarrassing folkdance that I learnt at school - the guy with the Mohican haircut showed no self consciousness - there was a degree of national pride in it. There seemed to be several influences at play in the dance and music. One I assumed to be a more lyrical Czech one, and another more in the German Austrian oompah style, (it even had calf slapping.) But then what was this? Here was something I recognised - a hobby horse was working its way through the crowds. This was part of the English tradition or is it that Celtic tradition that both the Czechs and Brits lay claim to?

We spent most of the afternoon watching the dance and browsing the craft stalls for unusual presents. We seemed to be the only foreigners there - this festival was for the locals and not sited where tourists would find it. The benches were full of beer-drinking Czechs clapping enthusiastically, children ran around in the sunshine and proud grandparents beamed.