Lady at the Window

Some of my favourite frescos in Cesky Krumlov are those to be found on the facades of 54 La Nouzi Street. This lovely renaissance house was reputed to have been the home of the agent of the Rosenbergs. The frescos I am referring to are those jokingly showing the 16th century inhabitants at their windows, including one of a pet monkey sitting on the window ledge. One is of a woman looking straight at you. It is as if she is watching the world go by without any reason other than being nosey. She has been doing it for nearly four centuries.

On the square where my friend lives there is a block of flats. An old lady lives in one of them and I often see her looking out of her first floor window as I come and go. She can be there for hours, the passing world offers such fascination. I have got into the habit of smiling at her and nodding as I go past and she smiles back. Her face is lined and broad and when she smiles her eyes disappear.

Road Accidents

I was walking the road from Kajov to Chvalsiny, taking advantage of a cold brisk day with a gloriously bright sun, when I took this photo. The road is a not atypical one for these parts, lined on both sides by parades of trees and on an embankment that slopes steeply away into the river or the water meadows. This layout has its perils, the road is too narrow, barely wide enough (if at all) in places for two cars to meet each other and certainly not with a pedestrian in the road too. The road deceives the drivers into going too fast – something most Czechs do anyway – and on occasion into overtaking when one cannot see far enough ahead – again something Czech drivers do regularly. If one is unfortunate to meet such stupidity coming towards you, the closely planted trees and the embankment mean there is nowhere for your car to go to avoid an accident.

In all I counted three wayside memorials to lives lost on the four kilometre stretch I walked and numerous trees where the scarred bark told of other (hopefully less fatal) accidents. The memorials were marked with plaques and flowers. All spoke, as in this one shown here, of young lives cut short. And yet as I walked the cars still went too fast, several times I had to jump on to the verge. I do not doubt that there will be more memorials added to the road's deadly tally over the years. There are some calls for the trees to be cleared from the sides of these roads, but they are not fault, the drivers are. The trees have been there long before the speeding cars. And would removing them actually stop the accidents or might it even encourage more speeding?

What Every Tourist Needs!

I was walking down a street in Ceske Budejovice, when I passed this notice. A few yards on I stopped and looked back, unable to believe what I had read in passing. I then walked back to the notice and took this photo to share with you. I even went into the shop to check and yes you can buy books, maps, cards and.... altar wine. What every tourist needs indeed!

Edith Pargeter - Czechophile

Many people will know the English writer Edith Pargeter by her pseudonym Ellis Peters, under which she wrote the very successful Brother Cadfael books. What then is she doing in a blog about the Czechs? Well, she was a great Czechophile, who almost single-handedly was responsible for bringing Czech literature to the attention of people in the UK.

Pargeter had first got to meet and enjoy the company of Czechs during the Second World War, afterwards she took advantage of an International Summer School in Czechoslovakia to visit the country she had come to love through meeting its people. The visit took place in that brief time before the Communist takeover of the country and inspired Edith into increased admiration for Czech culture. She taught herself Czech and began to translate Czech literature into English. This activity allowed her the opportunity to continue visiting Czechoslovakia on an almost annual basis, she worked with the state-owned publishing house Artia and even kept her earnings in the Communist country to fund her trips. It is apparent from her writings that she had to walk a very fine line – she was very much against the oppression that she saw, but needed for her Czech friends' sake and for the sake of her work not to upset the communist authorities - “I was continually walking a tightrope in order to avoid harming people I wanted only to serve.”

A bibliography of her Czech translations shows huge breadth, including modern classics (as yet unheard of in the “West”), more established writers and even Czech legends. Indeed it reads like a who's who of Czech literature – Neruda, Toman, Styblova, Nemcova, Bor, Seifert, Klima, In total she translated sixteen books. It is a tribute to her skill, that some of her translations are still in print. In 1968 Edith Pargeter was awarded the Czechoslovak Society for International Relations Gold Medal for her services to Czech Literature.

The more I have read of Edith Pargeter's relationship with this lovely country and its people, the more I find myself at one with her. Much of what she loves and recognises here, I love and recognise too. I will therefore leave the last word to her, here is her description of Neruda's Tales of the Little Quarter, she could have been talking about the wider nation: “He made a book the image of himself, high-spirited, amusing, compassionate, occasionally startling us by a flavour of astonishing bitterness, but having at its heart and ground an uncompromising affirmation that life, bitter and sweet together, is to be accepted with ardour, and humanity, in all its folly and imperfection, to be loved without reserve.”

Czech Cafe Culture

The Czechs have a strong cafe culture, a legacy of their time under the rule of Vienna. In summer you sit outside under awnings watching the world go by, in winter you sit inside supping warming drinks before braving the snow and ice. This picture shows one of my favourite cafes "Two Widows" in Cesky Krumlov - an ideal place for both winter and summer cafe culture.

I have spent many a pleasant hour sitting in Czech cafes, drinking coffee and watching others doing the same. Life comes and goes there. Old friends greet each other, women arrive with bags of shopping and chatter. The Czechs have a particular line in elegant women over a certain age, who sit upright at their table and hold their cups with little finger extended. At other tables business is being done over the coffee cups, men produce laptops from briefcases and discuss spreadsheets, shake hands and go their way. Backpackers compare notes on hostels and restaurants, talk of the next stop on their tour of Europe or discuss the news from home loudly.

A middle-aged man pulls up in a vintage sportscar of which he is clearly very proud, he combs his hair in the rear-view mirror and then takes his seat at a prominent table. He is waiting for someone. Sure enough he is joined by a rather beautiful young man. At one table sits a small boy, his father is talking to a friend at another table. The boy's father has given him a gameboy to play with and a milkshake. The boy rests his head on the table and bends over the game – pointedly displaying both concentration and boredom at the same time. Then my husband and son join me and I must stop my game of people-gazing.

Czech Maps

I have always been fascinated by maps and so I recently enjoyed an exhibition of historic maps of the Sumava (which included my own village) at the South Bohemia Museum in Ceske Budejovice. The website www.mapy.cz offers a wonderful service – allowing you not only to see maps of locations in the Czech Republic, and to pick out waymarked trails, cycle routes, tourist sites, but also to see the locations as satellite images and on a historic map (1836 -1852). These historic maps are fascinating – for starters the place names round here are in German as this was a German-speaking area up to the end of the Second World War. Moreover even the most cursory examination of the area around our home reveals a whole series of small hamlets which have completely disappeared – I do not know why this is, perhaps it was a consequence of the forced removal of the German population after the War, perhaps it was a result of changes in the economy.

But somehow there is nothing like spreading out a paper map and gazing at it. I have a pile of local maps. The Czech maps don't seem to have the equivalent authority of the British Ordnance Survey maps. The maps I tend to have are maps for walkers and cyclists, with the tourist paths and cycle routes marked as colour-coded lines. It is interesting to contrast what different maps choose to highlight. For example I have one map which has marked on it mystical sites – so appropriate for all those Czechs who believe in leylines, crystals and standing stones.

I have spent many a happy hour looking at my Czech maps. One of the things I love about them is the fact that Czechs mark important trees – so you will see dub (oak) marked on them and other trees. You don't see that on British Ordnance Survey maps. This map-gazing has also helped me increase my Czech vocabulary. I know of two words for hill – vrch and kopec, whilst hora means mountain, dvur means courtyard but also seems to mean a large courtyard farm, then there are words for castle and chateau – hrad and zamek, forest – les, prales, stone and rock – kamen and skala. I have yet to really get to grips with the differences between say a vrch and a kopec, but at least I know what they mean generally. And then of course all over the Czech maps you will find the word potok.

Hutkin

I have blogged about the Czech chata or hutkins in the past. Many are set in the countryside, in woodland clearings and beside lakes and streams. But others are to be found like English allotments in the most unpromising of places, besides railway lines or on city wastelands. One of the joys of a trip on both an English and a Czech train is these flashes of human creativity and love of nature amid the ruin and bleakness of our cities, they give one hope for mankind these little Edens set in a sea of grey.

In Cesky Krumlov the other day I was walking by the river. On one side was the back of the Eggenberg Brewery, which away from the tourists' eyes was looking run-down, with blind and broken windows and trees growing from its gutters, on the other side cliffs of granite rose from the river up to the orbital road along which could be heard the growl of traffic making its way south. But here too was an Eden - a hutkin perched on a cliff, and a woman tending a garden carved into the granite. A few yards away was the road's tarmac and beyond that a factory tower, but she was with nature on her cliff.

I was reminded of a favourite track by the queen of English folk music June Tabor – A Place Called England. You can see it performed by June herself on Youtube . It strikes me that the English and the Czechs share a love of and a relationship with the soil and gardening, which is quite profound.