The Czech Roma

Recent news has been very depressing. There was a march by 500 far-right demonstrators through the predominantly Roma (gypsy) area of Prirov early this month, followed by others in other towns. Then a Roma family had their house firebombed, both mother and father were badly burnt but the worst injuries were incurred by their daughter of 22 months who has 80% wounds.

These incidents reveal a dark side to the country that I love. The racism against the Roma minority (they make up less than 3% of the population) is widespread. It came as a great shock to hear middle-class educated Czechs talk about the Roma in a way that would be unacceptable among similar people in multi-cultural Britain. Indeed the comments and anti-Roma jokes were similar to those that I heard in my youth in the 1970s Britain and even then were considered dodgy. Then there is the presence of the far-right, something I realised when a local proudly showed me a fascist tattoo on his arm. It is the acceptance of racism at all levels of society that allows such attitudes to thrive.

Amnesty International has just released a report on the plight of European Roma and highlighted the educational discrimination against Roma children, who despite it being unconstitutional are sometimes sent to special schools for children with mental difficulties. This really goes to the heart of the problem. While Roma children are segregated and educationally deprived, then there is little hope of improving the situation .

The well in the cellar

Our house has three cellars, two are on the ground floor at the back built into the hillside on which the house sits. The other cellar is underneath the house and it is probably older than the house itself. When first we bought the house, we couldn't get into it. The former owners had treated it as a rubbish tip and the steps were covered with piles of empty beer bottles and other detritus. We paid a couple of guys to remove the rubbish to see what was down there. What a job! What we found was a low rectangular room with a concrete floor, granite walls and barrel ceiling.

The next job was to remove the concrete floor - underneath it was a floor made of granite cobbles and a spring, which soon started flowing into the cellar. The concrete had blocked the spring, but the water had had to go somewhere and so had risen up our walls to create rising damp problems in the ground floor walls. A pool formed in the cellar, it was an improvement but not an answer, particularly as it soon became a breeding pond for mosquitoes. On the upside this attracted bats – I opened the door one day and nearly got a bat in the face. So we had our builders dig a well and fix up a pump to keep the well from overflowing. The granite cobbles were relaid and everything was looking good.

Or it did until we had this year's cold winter, which froze the water in the pipe as it fed into the septic tank. The spring flaw and several kettles of hot water and the water can flow again but the pump still isn't pumping . Oh well! Why does that not surprise me?

We have had the water tested and it is pure spring water. So now we are rethinking what we do with our personalised spring water. Our water currently comes from a spring at the farm above the house. We have no control over it and a few months ago the farmer decided to turn off the supply (to us and the rest of the village) for four days. When it came back on, it blasted the pipe supplying our central heating boiler off the wall and flooded the ground floor cellars. So now we are looking at creating tanks in the basement, which may not replace the farm water but would provide a useful backup. I will keep you informed of progress.

We have had the house for over three years. When I started on its restoration, I thought I would be finished by now. Now I just don't believe that day will ever come. I read Salamander's posts on the Krumlov ExPats blogsite about her latest purchase (she has two properties on the go at the same time) and I am in awe.

Planting an Aronia

On Easter Monday I planted an aronia plant in the garden. In the UK aronia is barely known as a garden plant. If it is known, it is known as a shrub which has lovely white spring flowers, bright autumn foliage and decorative black berries. In the Czech Republic you will find aronia bushes in many gardens and it is grown less for its appearance as for the benefits of its edible berries.

Aronia is a plant native to the Eastern and Northern forests of America. Its therapeutic qualities were valued by the Native Americans, but its use went into decline and the berries were primarily used for dying fabrics. Meanwhile behind the Iron Curtain Aronia was being presented as a super berry, created through the scientific advances of socialism. Now we Brits are discovering aronia's qualities. Marks and Spencers announced last year that it was going to be stocking aronia berries and at the same time launched something of an awareness campaign in the British press. The coverage also indicated that one reason for M&S's decision was demand from Britain's growing Polish community.

So why am I planting it? Well, it is relatively easy to grow, although it likes acid to neutral soil, and is small enough to grow in a medium sized garden. Any plant in my garden has to earn its place visually, ideally (as with aronia) in a number of seasons. But perhaps most importantly the more I read about the medical benefits, the more I realise its potential value. It has the highest level of antioxidants of any fruit, as well as anti-inflammatories and chemicals that help cardiovascular problems. Oh and the Native Americans believed that aronia is an aphrodisiac! All I need now is to keep the pigeons off the berries.

What to buy when visiting the Czech Republic

I just had to show you these - they are some oven gloves I bought in the little supermarket opposite Cesky Krumlov castle. They are just so Czech! For starters they are dressed in national costume, but it is more the quirky humour that strikes me as Czech.

Visitors to the Czech Republic and Cesky Krumlov so often go home with standard tourist gifts - painted Easter eggs (very appropriate today), wooden toys, amber jewelry, puppets, Bohemian glass. All are good things to buy to take home with you. But if you want something different as a memento of your trip, do check out the shops for the locals. In local supermarkets or haberdashers you might find something like this. In ironmongers you might find mushroom knives or scoops for forest berries. In florists you might find straw wreaths decorated with mushrooms, or squirrels made of straw. And the great thing about these type of presents is that you can be certain as you board the plane home you will be the only person with those gifts and that they are genuinely Czech.

Does UNESCO know?

The big question is does UNESCO know about what is happening in Cesky Krumlov.

For those of you who have not been following my posts about the destruction which is happening in the name of flood reduction. Here is a brief summary of what has happened so far:

• 21 mature trees have been cut down from the banks of the River Vltava and the island just downstream of the Lazebnicky Bridge.
• The island itself (a natural feature which can be seen in historic pictures of Krumlov) is under threat of removal.
• The natural banks will be replaced with concrete ones under the proposed "flood prevention" measures.
• The river weir at the foot of the castle will be replaced by a modern metal one.

All the above will have a major impact on the historic aesthetic of the town, particularly as the river falls considerably in the summer from its winter levels which will mean that the concrete will be particularly visible at the time when the town is most full of visitors.

The local community has reacted with horror.

• A recent open letter to the Town Council collected over 800 signatures in a matter of a fortnight and the number continues to rise.
• All the residents in Parkan Street, the street the Town Council claims to be protecting have all expressed their unhappiness.
• Proper consultation clearly has not taken place - no one knew about the proposals until the bulldozers arrived.
  

So where does UNESCO stand on this? Were they consulted? They should have been and it seems impossible to believe that they agreed the changes. The townsfolk could do with their help.

For my previous posts on the subject visit:

Ducks Fight Back 17th March
Flood Control and Willows 30th March

On a previous campaign:

UNESCO or No 22nd May 2007
The Alchemist's House 24th May 2007
News from UNESCO 7th September 2007

Bohemian Baroque

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has a big exhibition on Baroque opening on Saturday, which gives me an excuse to blog about the Bohemian Baroque.

In my post about the Ales Gallery I wrote of my love of Bohemian Gothic religious art; I am afraid this does not extend to Bohemian Baroque. I think it must be my English background that makes me so ill at ease with the baroque style of religious decoration. Czech churches are sometimes full of it and give me the creeps - those tortured or ecstatic saints looking upwards with elaborate hand gestures, those doves of the Holy Spirit like gilded guided missiles. In fact all together too much gold, marble, wealth and power. It's the in-your-face Counter-Reformation intolerance that the Catholic Baroque symbolises, that gets to me. For that matter I am not very keen on English church baroque either.

Now, I love a good carved medieval pieta or Last Judgement wallpainting, but then they are part of my English upbringing, something that would surprise many Czechs. On my first visit to the Czech Republic I was taken to a church service in Prague. “You probably won't like it, being a protestant,” I was told. Actually there was nothing in the service that I had not seen in Anglican church services – in fact there were if anything less “bells and smells” than in the High Anglican church in which I then had an office and where you had to open all the windows to get rid of the clouds of incense after the service. I was struck by how similar the Anglican Book of Common Prayer was to the Czech Catholic service I was listening to. Indeed my host would have been shocked to hear that on Sundays all over England “protestants” were giving witness in the Credo to a belief “in the one catholic church”.

But that is the point I think – the Anglican Church is catholic (with a small c), it is designed to be open and tolerant to all sorts of beliefs. When I tried to explain that the English Church was designed as a compromise to allow Catholics and Protestants to worship together, my Czech hosts laughed. It was another example in their eyes, I fear, of a lack of principle on the part of the English. I beg to differ. Looking at the religious fundamentalism of those Baroque churches and the Counter Reformation, it seems to me that pragmatic tolerance is actually a principle worth standing up for, now as much as ever.

Flood Control and Willows

The Town Council is arguing that the way to control floods in Cesky Krumlov is to cut down the willows and to remove the natural banks on which they stand with concrete walls. There are several arguments against their plans - a) the aesthetic one, most of the time the river is low and the concrete will look awful, especially in this UNESCO heritage site, b) the heritage one, they are destroying an island which has been around for centuries, c) wildlife - the island is home to nesting birds and even occasionally plays host to otters. But I for one am not convinced that what they are proposing is the best way to control flooding either.

The key thing to note is that flooding is not common in Cesky Krumlov - in fact they are planning for a 100 year flood event. How can such a rare event justify such vandalism? Now as it happens flooding is common in Gloucestershire (my English home), indeed it is pretty common in Britain fullstop. In the UK we have rather moved away from constantly resorting to concrete walls, preferring to "focus on ways that work with nature, not against it" (in the words of the UK Government). Part of that strategy is the use of willows and other riverside trees to bind the river banks. There has been some fascinating approaches which create riverwalls from living woven willow (example shown above).

Equally important is to address the cause of the flooding rather than the flood. Locally the general view is that the last big flood was caused by someone opening the sluices on Lake Lipno and releasing a huge amount of water into the River Vltava, which swept down and flooded the towns, such as Cesky Krumlov, along its banks. The simple answer would then appear to be, don't open the sluice gates like that!

For an account of the open meeting of the Krumlov Town Council, visit http://krumlovbrit.blogspot.com/2009/03/protest-update.html.

If you want to help the protest you can do two things - 1/email the Town Hall (addressed to the Mayor, Ing. Luboš Jedlička) c/o Bozena.Kaliskova@mu.ckrumlov.cz adding your name in support of the petition of March 2009 that asks for the retaining of the small island under Lazebnicky bridge
2/ write to UNESCO and ask whether they are aware of this situation, the citizens' protests, and the extent of damage the projected works may cause. The name and contact details are:wh-info@unesco.org