Czech Train Journey

In previous posts I have talked about my pleasure at taking train journeys in the Czech Republic. But here is a post about another such journey and a fellow passenger.

Czech trains (well certainly the ones that run from Ceske Budejovice to Prague) tend to be somewhat old compared to British ones. This is no bad thing, as I rather feel that the Pendolino's aren't as good as the old trains - not enough luggage space and smelly loos. The Czech ones still have compartments, which caused my delighted two nieces to say it was a Harry Potter train, even if their journey began on a very unmagical platform in Budejovice. It is the nature of compartments is that you have a different relationship with your fellow passengers. This can be good and bad. If you are unlucky you will have difficulty escaping them without obviously moving away and so offending. For example recently I spent a three-hour journey in the confines of an overheated compartment with a woman with a bad cold, who didn't appear to know how to use a handkerchief. My fellow passengers and I looked on in horror, but said nothing - the Brits aren't the only ones to have a problem with challenging anti-social behaviour. In some cases your fellow travellers can be a joy, such as an elderly American doctor I met who, when her husband died, had set up a medical centre in Odessa much to the dismay of her children. If your fellow travellers are Czech, then the language barrier need not prevent your enjoyment - you can study Czech behaviour close up, you may find yourself answering questions about the UK or even sharing one of the picnics the Czechs usually bring on a journey (there are no buffet cars on our train).

But to my recent journey: I had settled into a compartment when an elderly man looked through the door at me and the empty compartment and asked if it was okay to join me. I waved at the empty seats and said "Ano, prosim". As a point of note, this is normal practice on Czech trains. To ask, without knowing Czech, it is sufficient to look in, catch the eyes of the other passengers, look round the compartment and say "Prosim?" The old man shuffled unsteadily to his seat, took off his coat, put it and his walking stick on a hook and loaded his luggage on to the rack. He sat down next to the window and opposite me, closed his eyes and went to sleep. This allowed me to study my travelling companion, he was a tall man, with grey hair receding at the temples, his hands were large and covered with liver spots, his grey jumper was hand-knitted but clean, his coat a good quality one. My first impressions of the usual poor Czech pensioner had been perhaps mistaken. I was now struck by what a remarkable bone structure he had, his face did not look Czech to my eyes, in fact he reminded me of a British aristocrat. He had been incredibly handsome when young and still looked pretty impressive.

After a nap he woke up and started to look out of the window. His gaze was an intense one and he was clearly thinking, my presence was not just ignored but didn't seem to register with him. After a while he opened his leather briefcase and took out three tattered notebooks held together by a rubberband and removed one which still had blank pages. He started to write and despite a shaking hand his writing was firm and clear. Ever so often he would stop, look out of the window with his steel-grey eyes, think about what to write next and then return to his notebook. He filled two pages and altered only one word. He was writing poetry!

At Prague he put away the book, put on his coat and shakily started to leave. As is customary he wished me "Na shledanou" and I returned it. I very much regretted not being able to speak to him properly, but then I wonder whether he would have written so openly in front of me if he hadn't noticed the English language novel I had been reading.

Czech House Pixies

The other day I was carrying some rubbish out to the bin, when I slipped on an icy step and fell badly. Fortunately I had my walking boots on which protected my ankle against serious damage, but I am limping and yesterday spent the day resting my leg. This is the third time I have hurt my leg here as regular readers of my blog will know. My friend commented that the house must have a malicious spirit which is tripping me up, not a particularly powerful one, a pixie perhaps. This response may seem strange to my British readers but to a Czech it is a perfectly natural one. The Czechs may be according to surveys the most atheist nation in Europe, but when it comes to pixies, water sprites and fairies they are believers. Let me give you some examples:

A fellow Krumlov Brit was restoring a ruined small cottage as a holiday home when a series of unexplained accidents took place, nothing serious things falling over and the like. The builder looked at him and suggested that they put a saucer of milk for the fairies under the threshold to appease them. My friend Salamander had a cleaner who was constantly talking about the house gnomes, who were playing tricks on her. You know the ones – they are the ones that magic up balls of old hair and fluff and leave them under your bed, that hide your nail scissors in the last place you would look, and turn the milk sour when the shop has just closed. We Brits have forgotten them, but we once had them too. What can I say? Other than Puck is alive and well and living somewhere near Cesky Krumlov.

It strikes me that my house pixie has a clear purpose in what he is doing. He is not trying to force me from the house, not at all. My injuries are just enough to ensure that I cannot walk very from it. Tomorrow I will be leaving my lovely Czech home and taking the early train to Prague, I don't think he wants me to go.

Diamonds in the Snow

Yesterday I went for a walk with my friend Salamander. We took the path up to the woods above my house, the weather was perfect – sun, snow, a clear blue sky, a deep blue I have never seen in England. We are having extremely low temperatures at present -20 degrees last night. It is as they say too cold to snow, the water vapour stays in the air and forms snow-like crystals over everything. On Saturday morning you could even see the ice hanging in the air where the sunlight shafted down, minute crystals would flash in shimmering clouds, a glimpse of the spirits of the Czech winter working their magic. Now we reaped the benefit of their work, we walked through ankle-deep virgin snow, broken only by occasional animal tracks. On the snow's surface flowers of ice crystal bloomed and shone in the sunlight. The branches of the dark firs at the forest edge were picked out by white.


We walked through woods, now bereft of the birdsong which had accompanied my mushrooming forays in the summer and autumn, the only sound being the crunch of the snow and occasional branch crack. Ducking under an electric fence we followed the edge of the forest down a steep slope – in the distance the Klet was bathed in sun, but with a scarf of low cloud around its shoulders. Crossing a frozen stream we regained the path and returned to the house and warm mugs of tea.

As dusk fell Salamander departed and I settled down with a book whilst the woodstove chugged in the corner. Then the phone rang – it was Salamander. “If you can, take a look at the moon.” I walked into the yard at the end of the orchard the moon full hung just above the old apple trees – large and orange. The light was so bright, the orchard was lit up as if in daylight. This morning I left the house at 8am to walk to Horice na Sumave to catch the bus into town. The sun was rising and the sky was coloured. As I walked I watched the sun turn the white snow yellow and the ice on the trees a peach colour. My house stood glowing in the light on the other side of the village. And just to finish off the enchantment across the fields as bold as brass ran my fox. I had not seen him since my return from England at New Year. He looked across the field at me, sniffed the morning air and darted into the cover of the woods. The dawn sun had turned his coat a dark auburn. By the time I got to Horice the world was white again.

Czech winter

Over the last week the area around our home has been transformed. We have had snow followed by a cold several degrees below freezing. As a consequence we have a wonderful winter landscape of bright white together with beautiful blue skies. It has been so cold and still that the water vapour has been unable to form into snow. Instead it crystallises on the branches and the plants and is nothing so like those magnetised iron filings one played with as a child, only white of course. On the ground through a process of slight thaw and then severe freeze the surface of the snow is covered by white feathers of ice, which catch the sunlight and dazzle like diamonds. There is such a magic in these Czech winter days, that it makes your heart leap with joy.

PS I don't usually put up large images on this blog, but have made an exception this time - click the photo to see enlarged version, a view towards Horice na Sumave from the hill above our Czech home.

Following the Star

Today is Twelfth Night or Three Kings Eve in the Czech Republic. There will be a ceremony in Cesky Krumlov Town Square to mark the end of the Christmas celebrations, when children will dress up as the kings, sing and collect money for the Catholic Charity. On Friday afternoon we caught a taster of the ceremony when we came across three (rather young) kings standing on the wooden bridge at Latran holding a cardboard star on a stick and a collection box. The star reminded me of the shooting star which is the emblem of the Cowley Road Carnival back in Oxford, which I was involved in setting up.

Later that evening we were walking up the hill from Horice Na Sumave towards our home. The sky above our heads formed a huge starlit dome. The moon was in its crescent form and a planet shone brightly a little way from its tip. Suddenly across the sky, almost parallel with the horizon but arcing slightly down came a meteor. I have spoken before of the displays of falling stars we get sometimes on our night walks to our Czech home, but this was different. This must have been extremely close, as it was a large ball of light rather than a faint speck, and instead of falling straight, it sped like a jet fighter from north to south. The other amazing thing about it was the long tail of light that trailed behind it. I saw Halley's comet when it came close a few years ago and which it has been suggested was the star of Bethlehem, but this was more spectacular. Had I been a magi, I would have followed it, but I would have needed something faster than a camel to do so. It certainly unnerved me, I have never seen anything like it and its size and low downward projection meant that for a while I listened for an explosion when the thing hit earth, but none came. My Czech esoteric friends would see it as a portent of some forthcoming event. They are all saying that 2012 will be see end of the world, for a few minutes I thought they might have got it wrong by a couple of years.

New Year 2009

In my blogs for previous years I told you about the New Year celebrations in Cesky Krumlov, this year we saw the new year in in our little village. The Krumlov New Year is a big event with the sky above the town erupting with fireworks, drunken celebrations in the Town Square and a concert. Our expectations of this year were omuch lower, a simple quiet affair. Not a bit of it.

Our village sits at the end of a valley circling the middle tier of a natural amphitheatre. Our Czech home is near the end of the semicircle of village buildings and sited above most. Thus from the windows of our main rooms we get a view across most of the village to another farm perched on the slopes opposite, plus a view down the valley to the hills above Horice na Sumave. The house faces south east, which means we get some spectacular sunrises and then full morning sun, in the evening the view is no less lovely with the opposite farm glowing in the pink light of sunset. I remember clearly my first morning in the house, when the snow may have been four foot deep in the yard but the low winter sun fairly blasted into the room in the morning.

At midnight the villagers set off fireworks and whilst not as abundant as the Cesky Krumlov ones, they were many and loud. For over half an hour rockets ascended into a night sky unpolluted by Krumlov's many lights. The villagers seemed to be taking it in turns to light the touchpaper. Standing at the window of our darkened room I watched the glow as a householder in the centre of the village lit rocket after rocket. It must have cost him a fortune to put on such a show. At about 12.30 I saw an unfamilar light appear, first one and then two glowing spheres. They were small paper hot air balloons, which set free drifted up into the freezing night air. I watched their ascent to many feet about the village until the flames were extinguished and unseen they fell. Of all the displays these balloons were the most magical.

Carp - Czech Christmas Food

Happy Christmas! I photographed this rather chirpy looking sheep decoration in Ceske Budejovice last Christmas.

I am now in England until just after Christmas and was looking in our local large town Cheltenham for some Czech alcohol yesterday. There are at least four shops in Cheltenham selling Eastern European food and all feature in their windows a prominent notice announcing the arrival of carp for Christmas. The British may not consider the carp a great fish for eating, dismissing it as muddy in flavour, but in Central Europe it is prized. Indeed carp is a central feature of the Christmas celebrations.



Around our Czech home in South Bohemia there are to be found large man-made fishponds, where carp has been farmed for centuries. Back in late autumn we visited the nearest of these - Lake Olsina - to watch the bi-annual carp harvest. The Lake had slowly been drained of water over the preceding days, forcing the fish into a pool at one end. A large net further restrained them and by the time we arrived they were confined to a small area, where they thrashed and gasped for air.


Above on the embankment a crowd of Czechs had gathered, some brought in coaches on trips to see the fish haul, others in the distinctive green outfits of the local fisherman's guild. Sausages were available for purchase, together with beer to wash it down with. The atmosphere was one of great festivity. Down below the fish were caught and thrown large plastic tubs, which were then loaded onto a conveyor and hoisted up to huge fish tanks on one of a fleet of lorries.


The destination of these fish will be the many barrels which appear in the market places of Czech towns at this time of year. When I first saw them I was quite amazed to see live fish for sale in the centre of town. I was amazed to see too the Czechs taking the still live fish home with them. There the poor fish are often kept in the bath until the time comes for the preparation for the Christmas feast and their demise.


Carp has a very important place in Czech affections, so much so that exiles in the UK feel the need to import them specially at this time of year. I have eaten carp once in the Czech Republic and not been able to see the great attraction of the fish. But then Christmas traditions are like that aren't they - turkey isn't the most flavourful meat I've ever eaten, and yet where would a British Christmas be without it?