Music

On Witches' Night we experienced Czech music in all its infinite variety. First we attended the maypole erection in the Eggenberg Brewery Gardens (Cesky Krumlov). There we were treated to traditional folk music - with bagpipes, horns and violins, pleasant enough but rather oompahish (the German influence showing methinks) - and then to a rock band called sandvic (sandwich) , made up of some very serious local secondary school kids. The band was too much noise for my taste and so we fled.

Later we made our way to the Gypsy Tavern (Cikanska Jizba) where the local gypsy band was playing. The video above is of the same band in the same tavern - sadly not my creation it is from youtube, thanks to pashkapushka for uploading. Just click on the arrow to play the video. Here was wonderful music with rhythm and soul, so much so that it was hardly possible to stay still in one's seat. The Friday night gig at the Tavern is undoubtedly the best in town. I recommend it.

Sadly we had the late night bus to catch and so had to leave before the end of the set. In Horice Na Sumave the villagers were celebrating the night around the bonfire, having erected a maypole at least twice the size of Krumlov's. Music was playing - more oompah. Then as we walked up the unlit hill the music got totally surreal, as the local oompah band took on first the Birdy Song and then Zorba's Dance.

Mayday

Although May 1st is the official bank holiday, the real day for celebrations in the Czech Republic is Witches Night the day before. This is the night when all over the Czech Republic villages raise their maypoles, when bonfires are lit, witches burnt (well images anyway) and women jump over the flames to improve their fertility. This is the celtic festival of Beltane in fact and so much more preferable to Mayday itself with all its communist connotations.

Here in Cesky Krumlov the maypole was erected in the Eggenberg Brewery Gardens. The maypole was a tall fir tree stripped of all but its topmost branches and decorated by paper streamers - added by local maidens in traditional clothes assisted by many small children. The final touch was, in true Czech style, a bottle of slivovice. This was very much a Czech and local occasion, hardly any tourists made their way to the site. The gardens were full of Czech families, enjoying local bands on the main stage, drinking beer, cooking sausages on the bonfire, and looking at the stalls set up by local community groups.

As I took the late bus home to Horice Na Sumave surrounded by happy Czechs, I could not help thinking what a good idea it was to have a state bank holiday on the day after Witches Night, we were all going to need a lie-in to recover from the festivities.

Cherries

I have been watching the fruit trees in the orchard as if watching them would somehow encourage them to blossom. Then yesterday or last night or this morning, anyway some time when I wasn't looking, the cherry trees went from bud to full flower in what can only have been hours.

I have a fellow blogger from Prague staying with me at the moment and so have been showing off the fecundity of my garden, with last year's cherries out of the freezer - an exquisite taste of summer! And will this year's harvest be as good? The loud humming sound coming from the cherry trees suggests the bees are busy already, so fingers crossed.

Hot Potatoes

The other day I was walking home when I was invited into a neighbour's garden for a cup of coffee. The grandmother of the family (translated by her granddaughter who was learning English at school) said that she couldn't speak English. To speak English, she said, you needed a hot potato. Her granddaughter and I looked at each other both of us non-plussed by this remark. The grandmother then did an impression of someone talking with a hot potato in their mouth. It was very funny. And we all laughed.

But it also made me wonder do we really sound like that? It looked and sounded like someone with a plum in their mouth, as we say in the UK (posh for any reader that doesn't know the phrase). Then I suppose there is also the English phrase when something is a hot potato (ie so controversial no one wants to handle it), but I gather that has another (American?) meaning. Ah well! Who says language is a form of communication?

Czech Moles

I have blogged in the past about the little mole cartoon character that is so beloved by the Czechs. Well this post is about the real three-dimensional version.

With the arrival of Spring trails of brown soil heaps have exploded in people's lawns like spots on a teenager's chin. Everywhere I go, people are moaning about them. Plastic bottles have been shoved upside down into the burrows to scare away the little gentlemen in velvet.

The other day I was walking down the lane when I found two dead velvet gentlemen. They lay in the middle of the tarmac on their backs with their large paddle-shaped front paws held up as if surrendering to the sky. I don't know what has caused this. Maybe the moles were making a dash for the field on the other side, unable to dig their way across, they decided to go over the top into no-man's land only to be mown down. Perhaps some animal - a fox perhaps - was collecting them. Then in my garden I found another, already far gone - the black and orange graveyard beetles were crawling over it. So what is catching them and not eating them, I wonder? And did the rest of the mole platoon make it to the field on the other side?

The Czech langauge

Over the past week I have been trying to finalise the details of the visit by some friends. I have been driving round and visiting the sites, booking tours, arranging translations and organising meals. And it looks like I may have managed it, with a few exceptions everything is booked.

In order to do this I have had to take a deep breath and walk in to offices of the various sites. I am not by nature an extrovert, even if I sometimes put on a good show. I have always found talking on the telephone to people I don't know agonizing. And since my last famous career went bung, I have become even less confident to the point of shyness.

You see there is another problem. When I started grammar school, due to a stay in hospital, I missed the first few weeks of French lessons. After that things got worse - the French teacher, for reasons I still don't understood, took a dislike to me. French lessons were agony, she would ask me questions or ask me to read a passage and then humiliate me, of course that made things worse and I became tongue-tied and stuttering. Before the lessons (which were every day but Friday - you see I remember it to this day) you would find me in the toilets trying not to be sick. Such is the power of malevolent teachers that I still find impossible to speak any foreign language, I turn into that stuttering 11 year old. I can sit in the Student Agency bus and understand maybe 30/40% of the Czech subtitles to the film they are showing, but open my mouth and answer the simplest question, forget it.

So how did I get on? Firstly I found that I knew most of the words I needed, and with a little help from a friend with what declension goes with "pro" was able to come up with a bit of a script. Secondly of course I didn't always need it when I went in to the office, I was talked to in English as soon as they heard my accent. And thirdly everyone was charming and keen to put me at ease, apologising for not speaking English or speaking English badly, which often they weren't. I suppose one could say it was because they were grateful for the business. I prefer to think that it was because the Czechs are lovely.

Spring

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 ;-)