Kvinterna Again

Back in May fellow blogger Karen of the Empty Nest Blog (see Related Czech Links) came to stay and was much taken with the music of local group Kvinterna. She asked me to post about them again and so here it is. In July this year I enjoyed a concert by Kvinterna at the Minorite Monastery on Latran. I was sorry that Karen could not join me, she would have loved it.

The video above is my own creation of local frescos and the music is a song called Planka from Kvinterna's album Landscape of Sweet Sorrow - an album of Sephardi songs and Moravian folksongs (click on the arrow to play the video). The juxtaposition of the two music types works brilliantly and is typical of Kvinterna's style. In their own words they "have created the instrumental element in a highly individual way derived from the technique of Gothic painting". For more on this, visit their website . This has inspired my choice of images for the video. By the way Planka is a Moravian song about a crab apple tree.

List of posts in Czech History and Politics

As the blog gets larger I thought I might help readers interested in certain topics by creating some pages which list the blog's content by theme. I promise to update the pages as new posts are added.

The themes are: Czech Nature, Czech Customs & Culture, Places to visit in South Bohemia, Buying and Restoring a Czech House, Czech History and Politics, Day to Day Life in the Czech Republic. This post covers Czech History and Politics, click on the links above for the others.

CZECH HISTORY AND POLITICS

• Golden Path Celebrations
• Budweiser Budvar
  
• Elections
  
• More on Riverworks
  
• Jindrichuv Hradec
  
• Farming and the Landscape
  
• Czech Church Art
  
• Egon Schiele
  
• Art Nouveau in Ceske Budejovice
• Prachatice
• Kratochvile
• Exchange Rate
• Airport Security
• Ducks Fight Back in Cesky Krumlov
• Town Planning and Cesky Krumlov
• More on Town Planning and Cesky Krumlov
• Flood Control and Willows
• Does UNESCO Know
• Beachcombing on the Vltava
• Update on Flood Measures
• Message to Krumlov Town Hall
• UNESCO Acts
• Update on Riverworks
• Vyssi Brod Walk
• Vyssi Brod
• Finsterau Museum of Sumava Architecture
• Boletice Church
• The Czech Roma
• Bohemian Baroque
• Rococo Treasures of Kvitkuv Dvur
• Ales Gallery Of Gothic Art
• Lady at the Window (fresco)
• And the Monkey
• 1968 Russian Invasion
• Schwarzenberg Canal
• Rotating Theatre
• More on the Castle Gardens
• Mystery Car
• Centre of Europe
• Centre of Europe 2
• Follow up on Centre of Europe
• Compare and Contrast
• Olsina
• Against the Radar
• Plague Column
• Carp Farming - Jakub Krcin
  
• Visit to Ceske Budejovice
• Whitewashing
• Svejk or Kafka
• Sad Story of the Alchemist's House
• UNESCO Or Not
• Crosses and Shrines
• Sudetenland
• Good Friday at Rimov
• Prague First Impressions
• Something About the Celts

Kids Clubs

Quite often at the moment I will be happily sitting in a relatively empty carriage on the the little train, when the train pulls into the station and lo I am surrounded by children and young people. The noise levels will rise dramatically as maybe twenty excited kids will occupy the carriage.

This is because many Czech children are sent on kids clubs by their parents. After the shock of their arrival, I spend the rest of my journey, or until the children disembark, observing the group, the behaviour and hierarchies. I have observed that girls are usually outnumbered in these clubs, as you can see in the photo above. There can be quite an age range in the group from quite young children to young teenagers, who often look rather embarrassed by being in the company of the little ones. There are often the cool ones (see the sunglass-wearing dude above), who ignore the others and keep to the hip set. The rest whoop and run around, flick bits of paper at each other and share sweets.

One thing that surprises me when I meet these groups, particularly ones which are obviously off to go camping in the Sumava, is the age and number of adults who are "in charge" of the groups. The leaders often seem to me hardly out of their teens, and there are far fewer than one would get in health and safety conscious Britain. But then Czech kids seem to have the sort of childhood that I remembered from my childhood, in which adults allowed us to take risks, and we ran relatively free in the countryside. Lucky them!

List of posts about Czech Nature

As the blog gets larger I thought I might help readers interested in certain topics by creating some pages which list the blog's content by theme. I promise to update the pages as new posts are added.
The themes are: Czech Nature, Czech Customs & Culture, Places to visit in South Bohemia, Buying and Restoring a Czech House, Czech History and Politics, Day to Day Life in the Czech Republic. This post covers Czech Nature, click on the links above for the others.

Czech Nature

• Basket of Forestfruits
  
• Poppyseed
  
• Swimming with the Fishes
  
• Chicken of the Woods
  
• Moldavite
  
• Yummy Snails
  
• Cherries
  
• Czech Moles
  
• Spring
  
• Farming and the Landscape
  
• Birdwatching in Winter
  
• More on Frost and Snow
  
• Small Furry Housemate
  
• Snow at Both Ends
  
• An Enterprising Woodpecker
• God I Love This Country
• Ants in the Wood
• Fox
• Bark Beetles
• Dawn in the Woods
• The Early Bird Catches the Mushroom
• How Little Things Grow (Swallows)
• More Swallows
• Goodbyes (Fireflies and Martagon Lilies)
  
• Stork
• Devil's Wall Walk
  
• Woodland Flowers
• Wild Berries
• Miracle After the Storm
• An Encounter with White-tailed Eagles
• Spring Flowers 2009
• Arrival of Summer Birds
• Gold, the Colour of the Czech Landscape
• A Different Palette
• Tracks in the Snow
• Diamonds in the Snow
• Carp
• Strange Wading Birds (Egrets)
  
• More Czech Birds
• How to Hunt Mushrooms
• Czech Butterflies
• Meetings with Foxes
• Old Lady and the Caterpillar
• Sound of Evening (crickets)
• Yet More Czech Flowers
• Enforced Rest (Lizard)
• Czech Weather
• The Arrival of Summer
  
• Chanterelles
• Squirrels
• More May Flowers
• May Flowers
• Some Czech Wild Animals
• Mys
• Sun and Snow
• Czech Weather
• Czech Winter Sunshine
• Bears in the Moat
• Carping
• Encounter with a Wild Boar
• Remnants of Autumn
• The Walk from the Station
• Birds in the Czech Republic
• The Walk Home
• Spring

Basket of Forest Fruits

I mentioned in my recent post on the Celebrations of the Five-petalled Rose that my husband bought me a small basket for picking forest fruits. I thought you might like to know that I very quickly made good use of it.

One day I arranged to meet Salamander at Olsina for supper and an evening swim in the lake, but I decided I would walk there. I left the house when the afternoon was still sweltering and headed up the hill and into the woods. I took with me two baskets - one for chanterelle mushrooms and one (this one) for wild strawberries and bilberries.

There's a good bank for strawberries along the path and I soon was picking. Further into the woods on the other side of the hill the bilberries were now ripe. The wild bilberry harvest this year has been patchy - there are whole areas which show no berries at all and others where berries are ripe and ready for picking. Picking these fruits (without one of those wood and wire berrypickers) takes forever, but they are worth it. They taste heavenly and only a few of the little fruits is enough to produce a lot of flavour, so unlike the watery cultivated varieties. My favourite recipe is simply to microwave them with some sugar for a minute or so and eat with either cream or yoghurt. Another recipe is to make some babovka mixture (the commercial babovka dry mix does nicely), pour into a baking tray, sprinkle with bilberries and cook in the oven 160 degrees for an hour or so.

It was hot work and took a couple of hours to pick this lot (and a load of chanterelles), so boy did I need that swim. But it was worth it - there were maybe five meals in this basket.

World-class Concert Hall for Ceske Budejovice

It looks as though Ceske Budejovice is going to get a world-class concert hall. The hall, nicknamed the manta ray (reynok in Czech) because of its shape, was designed by the Czech architect Jan Kaplicky, who died in January. Kaplicky, who had lived in London for forty years, will be known to British readers for his media centre at Lords Cricket Ground and for the curvaceous Selfridges building in Birmingham. However in his home country Kaplicky had been less honoured. His remarkable plans for an octopus-shaped National Library, to be built in Prague, won an international architectural competition, but foundered on the prejudice of Czech politicians and, one suspects, the envy of other architects.


It is perhaps an indication of Ceske Budejovice's aspirations and forward-looking nature that the architect Prague rejected Budejovice welcomed. It is also an indication of the city's aspirations to be a major cultural centre. The Manta Ray will be the home of the South Bohemian Philharmonic Orchestra, which currently has to make do with a converted church as its home. The Ray actually will be called the Antonin Dvorak Centre, but I prefer the Ray and so no doubt will my fellow South Bohemians. There will be two concert halls - one with 1000 seats and another with 400. A major feature of the design is the inclusion (unique as far as I know in concert halls) of a large window at the rear of the hall looking out onto the park in which the Ray will be built.

Ceske Budejovice deserves the Ray. Jan Kaplicky deserves at last, albeit too late, to receive proper recognition in his homeland. And I can't wait to step inside this weird and wonderful building and better still to sit in one of its auditoria and listen to a concert.

Dream Language

People regularly ask me, "So do you speak Czech, then?"

The answer is no, but it could increasingly be: "No, but sometimes I understand it." My attempts at learning the language have in many ways failed, but somehow (in a way I don't quite understand) it is creeping into my subconscious.

I now know this for a fact rather than a fancy, because a week ago I actually had a dream some of which was in Czech. Am I certain it was Czech? No, as I didn't entirely understand what was said in my dream, but I understood bits of it. Nevertheless I rather think that my brain has been processing Czech without me realising it.

I certainly can understand sometimes when a) it doesn't matter, b) the person speaks slowly and c) there are enough words that I do know and the context is such that I can probably guess a significant number of the rest.

But speaking Czech - that is another matter. However even here I am beginning to detect signs of progress. I was recently complemented on my pronunciation of the famous Czech soft r - which apparently I pronounced perfectly. There is a downside to this: in the museum at Zumberk, as I had asked for the tickets etc in Czech, I was expected to translate for the guide. And did I manage it - do I hear you ask? Yes, some of it anyway.

Yesterday I drove to England from the Czech Republic and I got linguistically extremely confused. Although German is officially my second language (I have an A level in it), I kept speaking in Czech both in Germany and France. Then on the ferry I actually managed to apologize to a Brit in Czech!

Ah well, all these signs seem to indicate that I am getting somewhere with this infernal language at last.