I am due my annual post about the wonders of Czech spring and so here it is. As always Spring has exploded here. One minute there is a pile of snow in my yard and the grass is brown and apparently dead, the next I am getting a suntan and watching the grass grow (nearly a centimetre in one day in fact) and contemplating when I will have to get the mower out.
The local birdlife is skittish with lovemaking - the male redstarts are busy chasing each other and the peregrine falcons that nest on the cliff of Cesky Krumlov Castle are mating in the trees under the walls. The spring flowers are appearing overnight - the primroses, the purple buttercup, violets, butterburr flowers on their stalks - and now I have just noticed even some blossom on a bush.
As I walk up the hill to the village I find the Czech Spring has put a spring in my foot ;-)
I have been meaning to blog about this topic for some time, but a recent event has finally prompted me into writing. I am NOT talking about the Czechs ripping off me, tourists or indeed other Czechs, but rather the way that they are mistreated by the international companies that are now operating in this growing market.
It shocks me, and I know it shocks other ex-pats, to see how the Czechs are regularly sold substandard goods and services. The attitude appears to be – “Oh they won't notice the difference” or indeed "they should be grateful”. Once one might have justified it perhaps (I doubt it actually but I am trying to be British and fair) with the fact Czech prices tended to be lower but that is no more the case, far from it. So we have cooking foil that is so thin that it tears and is useless, fruit and vegetables that are bruised, from companies that would not dream of selling them to their British customers.
Here is what has triggered this post:
I do not have internet access here – it's a long story and one I won't go into, put it down to meanness on my part and technical limitations. While in Britain I bought a pay-as-you mobile phone, which has the ability to access the web, as so many do these days. Great, I thought, just what I need in Czecho. The sim card was from Vodaphone. And so I thought I would get a Czech one from Vodaphone.cz as it is one of the two networks that works in this house. That way I can use the phone in both countries without paying for international calls. Not an unreasonable idea surely?
I arrive back in South Bohemia, I turn on the phone to check it works – yes it does, the internet access is fine, I even get a text from Vodaphone.cz welcoming me and telling me the tariff for my English sim. The next day I buy my Czech Vodaphone simcard and it doesn't access the internet! I check a Vodaphone leaflet – no pay-as-you-go internet. Honestly!
So come on Vodaphone and all those other big companies (yes, you too Tesco) and play fair with the Czechs.
For the historical trip to South Bohemia, that I am organising, I need to produce a handbook for the attendees. What a nightmare! You might have thought it simple - just download stuff off the web, after all Cesky Krumlov's official website is packed full of pages in English about the town and its surroundings. You might have thought that, but you would be wrong. When you come to read what is on the web, it just doesn't always make sense in English or sort of makes sense but I wouldn't swear by it.
"Late gothic reconstruction and monasteries area enlargements in the last quarter of 15th century and development of settlement of Nové Město (New Town - including area of todays brewery compeled up improved protection of this part of growing Český Krumlov. Forwarded city walls, built along Vltava river as far as Lažebnický bridge, fortificated entire New Town with gardens and convents. The city walls were probably built in 90's of 15th century and was borne up reconstruction of monasterial area, nowadays extended with regular house of beguines. Consecrating of chapter house of minorite monastery in 1491 was an important milestone in history of fortification."
Now, don't get me wrong, I think the amount of information on the Cesky Krumlov website is wonderful. And some Czech has toiled long and hard to translate it into English, for which I am grateful. But there's the rub - a Czech has translated this, there are too few native English speakers who can translate from Czech. Even when you do have that rare person who is bi-lingual it is not easy. A bi-lingual friend of mine is sometimes asked to translate pieces for the website and when she does is to be found in front of her laptop chainsmoking and pulling her hair out in clumps.
It is not simply a matter of translating the words correctly, having done that there still can be a problem. The difference between the languages is, I now realise, cultural. It became clear to me when I was working with some local people about a planning issue. In a meeting I tried and failed to explain that letters to an English official should be clearly argued point by point and ideally short. But no. For my Czech listener the longer and fuller the letter the better and repetition is good. And he probably is right, if the letter's recipient is a Czech official.
Nowhere is this cultural difference more apparent than in the Czech love of the poetic. Where the English would be writing solid information, the Czechs are wont to disappear into metaphor. Hence the programme of the Five Petalled Rose started a piece on the history of Cesky Krumlov with a paragraph on primeval mud! What can the poor translator do in such a situation but translate what is there?
Radio Prague has just run this article: 'Regarding finds, the Vltava River, as it flows through the South Bohemian gem that of Český Krumlov, has begun giving up objects lost for centuries in its waters. The finds were made while locals were implementing anti-flood measures and include coins, keys, decorative items, and jewellery. On the shores of the Vltava, archaeologists found Baroque lockets once used to hold images of saints, which women wore around their necks and men attached to their belts. One researcher said that the items most typically lost were heavy keys, which only goes to show some things never change: invisible key- gnomes had their work cut out for them even then!'
Well, we watched the archaeologist with his metal detector, but how much more was lost by the destructive nature of the works - organic matter such as timbers in the riverbed (see above), stones and pottery?
I have featured the work of Czech animators - Jiri Trnka and Jan Svankmajer - in previous posts. I am, as my regular readers already know, a fan of both animation (especially stop-frame animation) and the Czechs who excel in it. A recent discovery for me has been the work of Jiri Barta, thanks to my son John for introducing me. Barta, to the relief of all who think that there is more to animation than computer generation, last year produced his first full-length film since The Pied Piper of Hamelin in 1985. Barta belongs to that dark surreal adult school of animation which includes Svankmajer and the Brothers Quay, and the Pied Piper certainly was dark.
But times have changed - dark artistic films aren't the type that get funded any more. For years Barta sought funding for a film about the Golem. In the end all he managed to produce was a trailer, which you can see on youtube or here
The new film called Na Pude (In the Attic) is geared to the children's market, however this isn't by Disney, thank goodness. Yes, in the film the discarded toys who live in a typical Czech attic set out to save their kidnapped friend (a doll) from the diabolical Head and his deformed followers, so there are some superficial similarities to Toy Story. But in this film there is a real sense of threat, the Head could easily be out of a Svankmajer film and his insect and monster sidekicks can be creepy in every sense of the word. Being stop-motion puppets you have a sense of the characters being tactile. There is even a roughness about them which appeals; these are after all the discarded toys of a childhood before Playstation and they have been broken and discarded and it shows.
The films has delightful moments of invention such as the snowstorm caused by old pillows and duvets hanging as they usually do in Czech attics to air or dry. Having some knowledge of Czech customs and culture does help in my appreciation of the film, for example there is a wonderful example of how product placement can work in the hands of a creative genius - Koh-I-Noor pencils, wax crayons and eraser appear in all sorts of guises. But you don't have to be a Czechophile to love this film, it is delightful and refreshing. Don't take my word for it, you can see the trailer on the film's website - http://www.napude.com
I was browsing in a second-hand bookshop in England (as is my wont) when I came across a wonderful little book on Czechoslovakian folk dance. Not only does it contain some lovely colour plates of dancers (such as those shown here) in local folk costume, but also musical and dance notation. This was a book published "under the auspices of the Royal Academy of Dancing and the Ling Physical Education Association" and its aim therefore was to get the reader dancing.
The author - Mila Lubinova - also talks about the context and origin of the dances and their regional variations. The Kalamajka (shown directly above) comes from our part of the Bohemia with another form present in Slovakia. Also from our neck of the woods is the traditional sword dance , in which the dancers are linked by the swords held at hilt and point and never let go throughout the dance's complicated windings. Unlike in neighbouring Germany and Austria the dance kept its village roots in Czecho, together with its attendants dressed as fools or in animal masks. This dance is particularly performed with the arrival of spring (sometimes at the Czech carnival - Masopust). As for the music to the sword dance, a few melodies from the 15th century survive in manuscripts from the Zlata Koruna monastery, only a few kilometres from our home.
My husband has always been embarrassed by the way I watch strangers. I can't help myself, I love people watching. "Stop eavesdropping," he will say. "Stop staring!" Here in the Czech Republic I can't eavesdrop, other than to the tone of voice, but I can still watch. And one of the advantages of not speaking Czech is that I find myself watching body language more closely. And very revealing it is too.
I was doing just that recently on our local train to Cesky Krumlov from Volary. The train wends its way through the Sumava National Park on its way to our local station at Horice na Sumave. As it was the weekend and late afternoon, the train was full of people who were on their way back from a daytrip to the Sumava. The luggage racks were filled with skis and skipoles, thick jackets hung steaming from hooks and the passengers were dosing themselves on slivovice (home-brewed plum spirit) and vodka. In true Czech hospitality even I was offered the opportunity to partake of the clear but potent liquid, but I declined, wanting all my wits and balance to walk on the icy road home.
I soon came to the conclusion that our carriage was filled by one large party of skiers, such was the camaraderie in the carriage. In one corner a group was singing popular Czech songs. In the seats alongside mine an animated discussion was taking place, punctuated with bouts of silence as the bottle was passed round. Further down the carriage a man was holding forth to a woman and another man sat opposite him. I focussed on him, his face was hugely expressive - now solemn, now urgent, now breaking into a laugh. And, as if that was not enough, there were his hand gestures or should I say arm gestures as neither stayed still for a minute all through the journey.
In the UK I am very aware that I use hand gestures more than most other Brits, so much so that it was commented on when I did media training for my work. But here I would be considered undemonstrative. The Czechs are so much more expressive than the Brits. They are more emotional too. They wear their emotions on the faces and in their gestures. It makes for great people watching. But it can be deceiving - when we got to Cesky Krumlov the "great friends" all went their separate ways, some getting off, some staying on the train. I daresay that if I had partaken of the slivovice I too would have been a "great friend."
