Metamorphosis

I always have a wry smile to myself when I walk past Hotel Metamorphosis on my way through Prague's Old Town. 

Why? I have this image of guests waking up to discover that, like Kafka's hero Gregor Samsa, they have "turned into a monstrous bug".  I can see the breakfast room with large bugs sitting at dining tables in front of plates piled high with refuse and glasses filled with curdling milk, waving their antennae at each other, and making hissing noises. 

If you don't have any idea what I am talking about, then I suggest you read Kafka's magic realist masterpiece. 

The Golem

Everywhere I look in Prague I see cutesy golems – on mugs, tea-towels, cards. It's as if the golem has been adopted as the mascot for a Prague Olympic bid. Do you remember those horrid blobs we trolled out for London 2012, meant to be something every six year old girl wanted to cuddle? Think more cultured and you have the Prague 2013 golem.

Now don't get me wrong, the Czechs have a lovely line in taking something threatening (like devils) and producing something less threatening for children. One of the things I have always loved about them is their strength in graphic design. But somehow, for me at least, it doesn't quite work for the Golem. You will note the shift from lower case to upper there.

The Golem is something deeply rooted in Prague, born of the mud of the Vltava River in fact. What is it/he? And what does he mean? Golems (with a lower case), and there were more than one in Jewish folklore and legend, are beings which are brought life to by magical incantation from inanimate matter, often from mud , as is the case of the Prague Golem. Only the most holy of men can create a golem, the means can be found in the close study of the holy scripts.

A golem has no mind of his own; he exists to obey his creator and master. One might say he is a pre-Industrial Revolution robot (and “robot” of course is a creation of a Czech writer). Most importantly he is dumb. He does not have that most human of attributes the skill to use language. He is in some ways a puppet, another quintessentially Czech creation. You see where I'm going here?

This is turning into a long post, so I will explore the Golem further (including telling the tale of the Golem in Prague) in another post. But let me just leave you with one last thought. The first golem, the first creation from mud, was Adam. We are therefore all golems.

New Book

I am planning a new novel, set in Prague, and drawing on my experience as an ex-pat. It will be a psychological paranormal mystery, so totally appropriate for Prague, that home of the esoteric, the Golem, alchemy and Jungian theory.

I am very excited by it. Having published five ebooks now, I reckon I can do something unexpected with the medium. This blog will play an important part in that, I hope.

Autumn Crocus in Czech Paradise

On our September visit to Czech Paradise (Cesky Raj) my husband and I visited Frýdštejn rock castle near Malá Skála. The road to the castle was being dug up, so parked our car and started to walk. Suddenly in front of us was a field covered with hundreds of purple flowers. I climbed over the gate and took some photographs. Here's the best of them.

Going into hospital in the Czech Republic

I had sometimes wondered what the healthcare would be like in my adopted homeland. Would it be as good as the NHS in the UK? As an EU citizen I carry a health insurance card which means that the British Government picks up the tab for emergency healthcare I receive in the Czech Republic, but how easy would it be and would there be lots of extra costs?

In April I was taken badly ill in the Czech Republic with what turned out to be a strangulated umbilical hernia blocking my gut. A friend dialled 112 for an ambulance, which arrived promptly and, watched by concerned neighbours, I was whisked off to Cesky Krumlov hospital. There I was seen immediately by a consultant in A&E, who ordered several tests - CT scan, xrays and the like, again these happened immediately. Within three hours I was being prepped for surgery.

In total I spent twenty-one days in Cesky Krumlov hospital, eleven in the intensive care ward and ten on a general surgery ward, and not once did I find anything that I would complain about. Whilst the hospital is obviously an old one from the communist era and so was not the highest spec, it was spotlessly clean and functional and the medical equipment was modern. My concerns about the Health card proved unfounded. I simply had to show the card and my passport to the ambulance man and the hospital administrator on arrival.

I was struck by the levels of care shown to me and other patients, especially on the intensive care ward. Staffing levels per patient are higher than those in the UK and so the nurses weren't running around the way they do in Britain and had time to care for you. On one occasion, when I was in pain and distressed, a nurse sat with me and stroked my face. It's hard to imagine British nurses having the time to do that.

The Czech nurses seemed to have been trained to speak softly, but authoritatively to the patients, which I found extremely calming, even though most of the nurses did not speak English and what Czech I could speak and understand disappeared in a cloud of pain and pain relief drugs. But then the language problem didn't seem to matter - care doesn't need translation. After a few days a sister discovered she could use Google Translate on her phone and so soon we were communicating with ease. Most of the doctors did speak at least some English and the consultant spoke it well. The one Czech phrase you need to know is "Boli me..." which means "I have pain...", then finish the phrase with pointing at the place that it is hurting.

As I said to my husband the place felt like a British hospital used to, before the administrators started walking round with clipboards and stopwatches, when patient care came first ahead of cost-cutting. This sense that I had slipped back to my childhood, when I had several stays in hospital, was reinforced when one of the nurses brought in a small radio tuned to a programme that played English-language pop music from the 1960's. The first time this happened I was so out of it, that the music merged into my hallucinations, but the second time I was amused to find myself to Billy J Kramer's song "Little Children", which I had loved as a child, and grateful to the nurse for thinking of me lying in my bed surrounded by the Czech language.

Breakfast was bread rolls with jam and fruit and sometimes cake, supper was similarly simple and monotonous: soup, bread rolls with cheese or pate. But lunch was usually superb. It was cooked on-site and consisted of a soup, and main course of typical Czech food, such as goulash, svickova, beef in pepper sauce. In the general surgery ward we ate together in a dining room, which allowed me to chat to fellow patients. I paid a grand total of 100 crowns (£3.30) a day for board and lodging. I could easily pay twice that for a lunch of a similar standard in a restaurant.

Thanks to the staff of Cesky Krumlov hospital I am now fully recovered and feeling better than I have done for years. I am now totally confident of Czech healthcare, so much so that I think I was probably lucky to be taken ill in the Czech Republic rather than the UK.  

Cesky Krumlov Floods 2013

Did they say the flood reduction works would stop a once in a century sized flood?  This argument was used to justify the destruction of Cesky Krumlov's historic riverside and island, the grubbing out of a channel creating a speeding river where once had been a slow one, and the replacement of soft river banks with man-made concrete and granite walls. Well on Sunday the reduction works experienced their first test and failed.

In 2002 Cesky Krumlov and Prague suffered devastating floods as waters released from Lake Lipno rushed up the Vltava. This time the cause was different - we have had unseasonably wet weather last month which meant the ground was saturated when on Saturday the heavens opened for a massive downpour which lasted over 36 hours.

The water having nowhere to go ran off the fields into the streams turning them into torrrents and from there the waters poured downhill into the waiting River Vltava.
Residents in Cesky Krumlov's riverside properties were woken around midnight to sirens and the warning that the flood was on its way. The floods not only hit the area along the Vltava, but also along the little rivers and streams. As we drove into Cesky Krumlov the following morning along the Chvalsinska Road, we could see that a small stream had turned into a monster and swept across the road, flooding properties and car parks. A white car lay crushed against a fence. 

By the time we arrived in Krumlov historic centre the flood levels had already dropped 1.5 metres, but the sight was still impressive. We went to Laibon Restaurant on Parkan, which was open despite having been under 10 cms water earlier that morning. Life goes on, as it has done after countless floods over the centuries.

The truth is that no flood reduction work could ever be fully successful in Cesky Krumlov. Floods have been a way of life in this town and without raising the town by several metres they will remain so. The reduction measures have even had a disastrous consequence, which was foreseen by the former civic engineer Mr Pesek, namely the walls of the houses in Parkan are showing large cracks, due to the drying out of their foundations. Let's hope the Town Council doesn't see this as an opportunity to throw more money at failing to address the floods and so ruin this lovely town.

Apologies

I am sorry I have not been posting to this blog recently. I was rushed into Cesky Krumlov hospital in April and following emergency surgery am now recovering.

One good thing to come out of the incident is that when I do start blogging again, I will have lots to tell you about my treatment at the hands of the Czech health service.

The Alchemy of Prague

Alchemy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have just discovered that Prague has not one but two museums of alchemy. There used to be an alchemy museum in Kutna Hora run by an acquaintance of my friend Hannah, but that is now closed and I believe been replaced by a less erudite interpretation of  the alchemical arts. Hannah's dream of an alchemy museum in the Alchemist's house in Cesky Krumlov came to naught. I am not sure whether to visit the Prague museums or not, because they will inevitably not live up to the vision Hannah had. Maybe alchemy cannot be confined in a museum.

To my mind Prague is a place of alchemy. By which I mean it is a place where the soul is drawn away from the base and corruptible towards the spiritual. I cannot put my finger upon it, but my first impressions of the city remain true that one can sense angels weeping and rejoicing in this city. I admit it is harder with each visit to escape the intrusions into one's senses of the noise, smell and sights of Mammon: international fast-food chains, the glaring come-buy-me shop windows, the over-the-top advertising boards, and yet if I go down an old street at night, when the shutters are down, walk in the woods of Petrin or enter the stillness of a church and the alchemy begins to work.

Pin For A Butterfly - Czech film

It is almost two years now since the death of my friend, Hannah Kodicek. As regular readers of this blog will know Hannah was the reason I first came to this wonderful country and then to the area around South Bohemia.

Hannah was a screenwriter and film-maker. Her major work was Pin for a Butterfly - a magic realist film about the life of a young girl in communist Czechoslovakia, which she wrote and directed. The film starred Hugh Laurie, Imogen Stubbs, Alex Kingston and Joan Plowright. But the star is undoubtedly young Florence Hoath, who as the young Marushka steals the show. The film is now on Youtube and you can watch it here:

The Oldest Puppet Ever Discovered

I have just come back from the wonderful exhibition  Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind   
which is currently on at the British Museum. This once-in-a-lifetime exhibition brings together some of the finest paleolithic works of art, including some superb pieces from the Czech Republic. 

I already written a post about the first ceramic representation of the human figure - the Dolni Vestonice Venus. But the sculpture that attracted my son's attention was the first example of a puppet in the world. The Czechs love puppets and clearly this love goes back to the very beginnings of human habitation in their country. This marionette or stick puppet was discovered in the grave of a man in Brno in 1891 and it is thought to have belonged to a shaman. 

The British Museum captions states: 
The time and skill required to shape and articulate potentially movable limbs on an ivory figure make this a remarkable piece of craftsmanship.

Its spectral appearance and the shadows it could perhaps have made on the walls of a tent if suspended in firelight add a sense of theatre to the way it might have been seen 26,000 years ago.

One of the most remarkable theatrical experiences I have ever had was a production of Gilamesh by an Italian shadow puppet company called Gioca Vita. By moving the puppets between the light source and the screen the puppets grew and diminished on the screen. The impact was extraordinary even when I knew what was happening, it is hard to imagine the impact this puppet would have had on its original audience.

It doesn't surprise me that puppets date back so far. The animation of inanimate objects is something that is innate to human nature. It is something the Czechs understand very well. So if ever you find yourself watching a puppet performance in Prague, don't be surprised by how skilled the performers are, the people of this country have been practising for 26,000 years.

The exhibition is on until the 26th May.  

Masopust Re-post

A couple of years ago I put up this video I made of the Masopust celebrations in our local town, Horice Na Sumave. After celebrating in Horice they split up and visit the surrounding villages including ours. They dance and are rewarded with drinks, how they make it back to Horice is a miracle.

As Masopust has just past, I thought I'd share the video again, for those of you who missed it the first time.

Cesky Krumlov - Film Set

Cesky Krumlov is a favourite film location. We regularly have to skirt around film crews as we go about our daily life. 

Unlike the Hostel movies, the new Guinness advertisement (shown here) makes a wonderful advertisement for the timeless qualities of the town. Although an Irish stout doesn't seem suited to this country of Czech beer.

Jan Palach

On Wednesday the Czechs recognized a new national day - Jan Palach Day. With it they remember the sacrifice of Jan Palach, who on 16th January 1969  set fire to himself in Wenceslas Square. Palach died of his injuries on 19th January. 

In an interview with Prague Radio Jaroslava Moserova, the burns expert who tended Jan Palach when he was admitted to hospital, Palach was keen to ensure that the true reason for his self immolation:
"It was not so much in opposition to the Soviet occupation, but the demoralization which was setting in, that people were not only giving up, but giving in. And he wanted to stop that demoralization. I think the people in the street, the multitude of people in the street, silent, with sad eyes, serious faces, which when you looked at those people you understood that everyone understands, all the decent people who were on the verge of making compromises."

The outpouring of national grief at his funeral seemed to indicate that Jan Palach had succeeded at least for a time, however it was not to last at least not publicly. As communism tightened its grip on the country and set out to erase Palach's name from the nation's memory, few people were willing or able to openly defy the authorities. Palach's gravestone was removed from Olsany cemetery, but still people left candles and flowers. In 1973 the body was exhumed and cremated.  

Despite all the authorities' efforts Palach remained a symbol in people's hearts. In 1989 on the twentieth anniversary of his death a Jan Palach Week was called by a number of opposition groups including Charter 77. The series of demonstrations that followed between 15th and 20th January were suppressed, but can be said to be the beginning of the Velvet Revolution. Jan Palach's sacrifice at last was having the effect he desired. 

Kafka's Prague

English: 3:4 Portrait crop of Franz Kafka (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The author Franz Kafka was born in Stare Mesto (The Old Town) in Prague, was educated there, lived and worked there. His grave, together with those of his parents, is in the New Jewish Cemetery. His world was almost entirely limited to a few square miles of the city.

Kafka wrote of his native city "this loving mother has claws; he who would liberate himself, would have to set her on fire at both Vysehrad", so the author had at best a love/hate relationship with town. Maybe one might say that it was precisely this sense of entrapment and alienation that informs his books. As a Jew in 19th century Prague he would not have felt accepted by the Germans, whose language he spoke and wrote in, nor by the Czechs, who were experiencing a resurgence sense of Slavic nationalism. Nevertheless when I read Metamorphosis for my magic realism blog   I was struck by how Czech Kafka's surreal dark humour seemed. 

Franz Kafka monument (Photo credit: John McNickname)

If you are visiting Prague and are interested in Kafka I suggest you visit the Franz Kafka Bookshop, near the Old Town Square, and buy yourself The Guide to Franz Kafka's Prague (only 20 kc), and take a walk through the old town to discover Kafka's Prague for yourself. Forty nine sites are identified, including Kafka's homes, schools and workplaces.  

Christmas Shopping in Prague

I came back to the UK in time for a family Christmas and New Year, but stopped off in Prague on the way home to do a bit of last minute shopping. The Old Town Square was the site of a large market made up of little wooden huts, selling for the most part the same touristy goods one sees everywhere in the city.

Instead of buying presents there, I went to the Kafka Bookshop and picked up a guide to Kafka's Prague and a set of Kafka bookmarks. I have another blog, in which I read and review magic realism books and on which I reviewed I recently reviewed Kafka's masterpiece Metamorphosis (http://magic-realism-books.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/metamorphosis-by-franz-kafka.html).  The bookmarks will make great prizes for that blog.

Next to the shop I visited the Stone Bell House, which is a space for temporary exhibitions of the City Gallery. It is always worth visiting the city's many public galleries and museums for their shops, which often have unusual and reasonably priced gifts, books and cards. The Museum of Decorative Arts on the riverside near the Rudolfinum is particularly good.

Another haunt of mine is the antikvariat opposite the Narodni Trida tube station. I have found many treasures there - a wonderful old calendar, lots of beautifully illustrated children's books, prints and posters. This time was no exception: I found some lovely acetates of Czech fairytale illustrations and a bookler with lovely line drawings.

Update

Thanks to everyone who voted for the blog. It came fourth which is remarkable given it was up against blogs based in Prague, which of course have a bigger audience. I was really touched by your comments.

Please Vote For This Blog

Adventures in the Czech Republic is in the running for an Expats Blog Award. If you enjoy this blog and would like it to win in the Czech Republic category. Please vote for it on  http://www.expatsblog.com/blogs/480/adventures-in-the-czech-republic.

You do so by going to the bottom of the page and making a comment and leaving a star rating.

Thanks.

Zoe 

Winter arrives

Winter has well and truly arrived here. The snow is several inches thick and last night ice flowers formed on my bedroom window. The sky was that brilliant Czech winter blue today and the sun was warm - so warm that I was glad I took this photograph of the window ice when I did, because it soon melted.

I apologise for this brief post - I have hurt the muscles in my right wrist, so typing is both painful and a problem. Let's hope normal service can resume quickly.

Conservation

Here I am in my Czech home trying to write a novel and procrastinating, so I'm writing a blog post instead. The weather outside is grey - November is a naff month here, by which I mean English weather, grey, foggy, cloudy with occasional rain. Winter hasn't really arrived yet, with that wonderful white crisp snow with skies so blue and clear you could furnish an entire navy with trousers. The village is alive with people getting ready - draping their garden plants with conifer branches and cutting firewood. But one preparation is already completed - the preparation of conserves.

All through the summer and autumn the Czechs have been making jams and marmalade, bottling fruit and vegetables and of course drying mushrooms. I too caught the bug for the latter - mushrooms were sliced and dried on trays or hung on string over the stove. And the result: I have a large kilner jar full of sliced mushrooms the consistency of foam rubber. As for fruit, well I have no need to lift a finger. My Czech friends will always bring me jars when they come to tea. And not just one jar either, a carrier bag will open and at least four jars will be produced. I am very grateful during these winter months - there is somehow nothing so warming as toast and jam.

It seems to me watching my Czech friends that they cannot bear the sight of food going to waste. What we would discard, they harvest. Baskets of bruised windfalls are gathered and every tiny bit of good saved and turned into delicious food. Perhaps it dates back to those years when food was not abundant. I am sufficiently old enough to have been brought up by parents who knew rationing and know the impact it had on their attitudes. I still feel guilty when I do not finish my food. But the Czechs do seem to take it to extremes - in Czech cellars and pantries there are jars and jars of the stuff.

When my lovely friend Hannah died she left shelves full of jars and several freezers full of mushrooms and vegetables (mostly runner beans). Knowing that they would otherwise go to waste, I took a basket of jars home with me. After all those saucepans she ruined making the stuff, it was the least I could do.

Street Art - Litomysl

 I found this wonderful sequence of street art literally painted on to a street in Litomysl. So Czech!

Slavonice - The Lutheran Prayer Room

Slavonice is a small quiet town in the area of Czech Canada on the Austrian border. The town isn't on most tourists' itinerary, which is a shame for the tourists but good for those of us in the know. The town is decorated with spectacular Renaissance sgraffito, but for me the gems in the town are to be found inside the buildings which crowd round the town's two adjoined squares. Step through any number of archways and you will find yourself in entrance halls with wonderful ornately ribbed ceilings.

I recommend visiting the tourist information centre, if for no other reason than to admire the wall decorations. But best of all is a house where one of the rooms was used as a Lutheran chapel in the very early days of Protestantism. Three of the four walls are decorated with scenes of the end of the Last Judgement. The iconography is fascinating with the pope clearly depicted as the anti-Christ. It is not hard to see that to the worshipers who sat in that room four and a half centuries ago the day of Judgement was nigh.

The house is now a small museum and bed and breakfast. It was very strange spending the night in a museum, although I am pleased to say that you do not sleep in a room with demons dragging souls off to hell on the walls. Now that really would be spooky.

The museum is only open in the peak summer months, but can be visited by prior appointment on other months via the website http://www.evagiordanova.cz/en/modlitebna. You can also book accommodation there too.

Karel Jaromir Erben

An English edition of Karel Jaromir Erben's A Bouquet of National Legends, is being published on the 1st December.

Influenced by the Brothers Grimm and the growth in studies of European folk literature, Karel Jaromir Erben collected more than 2000 Slavic fairy tales, folk songs, and legends. In 1853 he published his most famous book A Bouquet of National Legends (Kytice z pověstí národních). He also produced Písně národní v Čechách (Folk Songs of Bohemia) which contains 500 songs and Prostonárodní české písně a říkadla (Czech Folk Songs and Nursery Rhymes), a five-part book that brings together much of the Czech folklore.  

His works reflected a wider rise of interest in Czech heritage and Czech nationalism. A Bouquet of National Legends  “is one of the three foundational texts of Czech literature, and it remains the only one of the three that has not yet been published in English.” according to Marcela Sulak, the translator of the new edition.

The new book is  published by Twisted Spoon Press, a Prague-based publishing company, which publishes English-language translations of Czech works.

A 32 page excerpt is online on http://issuu.com/twistedspoon/docs/bouquet_excerpt?mode=window&viewMode=doublePage

Poem about the Czech farmhouse

I have just posted a poem about my Czech farmhouse here http://zoebrooks.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/friday-poem-whisper.html

Some Useful Links

I thought I would share with you some useful internet websites, through which you can learn more about Czech life and culture.

1) Radio Praha - http://www.radio.cz/en Don't be fooled by the name Radio Prague's website english language version is probably the best way to find out what's happening across the whole of the Czech Republic. And it is not just restricted to news - the site has excellent history, cultural and sports coverage. Search the archive for a topic of interest. You can even subscribe to a daily email update There is a Radio Prague Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/radioprague

2) Czech Literature Portal http://www.czechlit.cz/ A multi-language site promoting Czech Literature abroad - "The aim of the Portal is to provide information on contemporary Czech authors and their works (novelists, poets, playwrights, essayists including authors of literature for children)". To keep up to date sign up for a newsletter or follow on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/CzechLiteraturePortal 

3) The Czech Centres You will find Czech centres in several major cities including London http://london.czechcentres.cz/ and New York http://new-york.czechcentres.cz/ Their websites include details of cultural programmes, educational programmes especially Czech language courses and Czech related news. The centres also have Facebook pages.

4) Czech Holiday  My own site about visiting the Czech Republic is on http://www.czechholiday.co.uk

Oh and this blog of course!

Crossing the Iron Curtain

My Czech house is only a few miles from where the Iron Curtain used to be. After the collapse of communism the Czechs tore down this symbol and means of their oppression. The minefields were cleared, the watchtowers and the multiple barbed wire fences were torn down. So there is very little left for the interested visitor to see. 

Of course if you're looking, you will occasionally come across remnants: rusty iron hedgehogs from which barbwire would have been hung, concrete anti-tank barriers and the ruins of houses which were cleared to create the no-go zone several kilometres deep which ran the length of the frontier. Having understandably wanted to clear away these painful memories, the Czechs now find that a new generation has grown up, which has no memory of the past and to whom the story of a dark time in the nation's history needs to be told. Visitors also ask to visit the historical remains of the Cold War. 

One of the best places to visit is Bucina in the Sumava. It's a strange haunted place on the German border. You cannot access it by car as the area is still protected. Instead you approach by one of the minibuses from nearby Kvilda or on foot or bike. If you want to come by coach you have to arrange to pick up a permit. Even the process of doing that reminds you of a scene in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy. Clutching a numerical code on a piece of paper, you search a derelict building before finding a hidden wallsafe. You tap in the code, the safe door opens and you take the pass within. 

There is virtually nothing left of Bucina, the village houses and church were torn down to remove hiding places for those trying to cross the curtain. In among the grass and wildflowers low ruined walls and farmhouse floors are just visible. In the grounds of the one building there (a newly built hotel looking across the Sumava towards the Alps) you will find a reconstructed segment of the Iron Curtain together with information panels. 

A track takes you past the ruins of Bucina and over a small stream via a small wooden bridge. A board announces that you have just entered Germany. In a matter of minutes you have done what hundreds of Czechs died attempting to do.

Czech beehives

One of the guests on my Hussite tour was a fan of beehives. As Czech beehives are a common sight on the edges of woods, I promised to point them out to her, whereupon all the beehives in the Czech Republic decided to hide! Once I had left the group at the airport ready for their flight home, of course Czech beehives seemed to be everywhere.

Unlike in the UK, Czech beehives are usually come in groups or should I say in swarms. They are sometimes in a bee equivalent of pigeonloft several hives high. These are often brightly coloured, each hive in the beeloft a different colour creating a rainbow against the background of dark pine trees. Sometimes they sit on old lorries and are presumably driven to good pollen sites.

Czech honey is wonderfully tasteful. You can and should buy it from stalls set outside cottages or on the side of the road, because this artisan honey has the best flavours, full of the flavour of the local pine woods or flower meadows.

At the Wallachian Open Air Museum we came across these wonderful examples of hives. They created in  hollow trunks (reproducing where bees might naturally nest) with a convenient access door at the back for the beekeeper. The entrance to the hives are via the mouths of the carvings on the front.     

Review of The Puppet Maker's Bones

An angel of Death in the City of Angels: A psychopath kills a young boy, a quiet teen, then an entire family before setting his murderous desires on Mr. Trusnik, an elderly shut-in from across the street. But Mr. Trusnik is not like other people. Although very old, he is far from helpless. He is an angel of Death...and he is waiting.

I enjoyed this psychological thriller/fantasy cross. After all it had so much that I love - puppets, a Czech setting, history and a large chunk of fantasy. The author Alisa Tangredi has really researched her puppet and Czech history backgrounds to create a totally authentic feel to her descriptions. The book is beautifully and intelligently written.

The book might disappoint those people who read it expecting violence and gore, but if you like intelligent books which do not conform to the expectations of genre then you will find much to enjoy. I really enjoyed the cross-genre nature of the book - the mix of historical fantasy and modern day thriller.


The only reason I would give this book four stars rather than five is that I have a problem with the role of the other main character the young psychopath Kevin (what is it about that name  in fiction?) and the set up of the final showdown. As can be seen from the book blurb above, we know that Kevin is not going to kill Pavel, that the showdown will be very one-sided. We have also seen enough to work out what might happen.

Kevin is also much less well-drawn than Pavel, who is wonderfully drawn - complex, flawed and hurt. In some ways this is a study of loneliness - not only has Pavel Trusnik been confined to his house for decades, but he has been denied the comfort of human touch for his entire life, something which drives him to the verge of madness and possibly over it. Alisa Tangredi is a very intelligent writer and I am sure could have done more to develop the parallels and contrasts between these two angels of death - one unwilling and one willing - and to create more suspense for the reader.  But regardless of this quibble The Puppet Maker's Bones is wonderful book and I recommend it to you.

It's available on Amazon as a paperback and as a kindle (click the image above to go to the site).

I was given this book as a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Venus of Dolni Vestonice

The most remarkable Czech archaeological site is at Dolni Vestonice and the Palava Hills, where archaeologists discovered the camps of Paleolithic mammoth hunters protected by a layer of dust blown over the site by glacial winds.

My husband and I visited the small museum in Dolni Vestonice. From the outside it seemed that there will be little to see, but the museum was like the tardis. This is no local museum, but one dedicated to one of the most important paleolithic sites in the world. Archeaologists have been excavating the sites around the town and neighbouring Pavlov since 1925 and thousands of objects have been discovered, including stone tools, animal bones and several burials.

Traditionally it was believed that "advanced" technologies - firing ceramics, polishing stones and weaving - didn't appear until 20,000 years later with the Neolithic revolution. That was until finds at Dolni Vestonice proved otherwise. Impressions of woven fabric on clay revealed that the mammoth hunters were already weaving (probably nettle fibres used by the Czechs for some traditional fabrics).

Archaeologists discovered approximately 2,300 clay figurines which had been fired in the hunters' fire. The animals are recognizably lions, mammoths, bears, and wild horses. The most famous figurine is of a woman - the Dolni Vestonice Venus. Dated to 29,000 to 25,000 BC and discovered in 1925, the figure is the oldest ceramic representation of the human figure discovered. In 2004 a scan of the figure discovered a finger print of a child in the clay. Suddenly you are transported back to a hut made of mammoth bones, branches and hides where a child picks up a still damp figure that one of the adults has just sculpted. Perhaps the child is told off, the figure is probably an offering to the gods. Later as night falls the hunters gather around the hearth and place the venus into the fire and the fingerprint is preserved.

Kutna Hora - Silver Mine Museum

Kutna Hora was quite literally built on silver, the hill on which the old town stands is riddled with mine shafts and galleries, where men toiled to in the darkness to dig out by hand the precious silver ore. You can read about how hard their work was and think you understand, but it takes a visit to the mines to really bring it home to you. By the time you finish you will understand why their life expectancy was 35.

You are kitted out in a white coat (similar to those worn by the miners), lamp and protective helmet (which the miners did not have) and then you walk a few hundred metres uphill to where you enter the shaft. The first part of your visit consists of climbing down several flights of stairs to the first level of the mine. The miners would have had to climb or slide down thin ladders. It is a long way down to the first level, there are four more below you.

A medieval miner was a lot shorter than a modern man – only 1.5 metres high – and so you are warned to watch your head as you walk along. You soon are grateful for your helmet. You are also grateful for your lamp. At one point the guide asks you to switch off your lamps and you are plunged into darkness, s/he then lights a torch and placing her hand over the light tells you that that is the total amount of light available to our medieval forebears. For that reason touch and feel were used to identify the ore deposits. Once a vein was found it was followed into the rock, some of the tunnels being so low that even a medieval man would have to crawl.

Having hacked the silver from the rock it was then carried or dragged back to where it was raised to the surface (via the horse-powered winch you saw in the museum or by a man-powered one). Human beings had no such luxury, the only way back to the surface was a long climb in the dark. Fortunately for wimpy modern visitors the exit to the mine is via a door lower down the hillside.

This is not a tour for people with claustrophobia (the mine-shaft gets so narrow at points that I feared I would get wedged like Winnie The Pooh in Rabbit’s hole) nor is it for people with mobility, heart or breathing problems. But if you can, it is well worth doing - an extraordinary experience.

Guest Post - How I Put a Goddess in The Maidens’ War

In my new career as a writer, I have met some fascinating writers on the web, a number of whom share my love of all things Czech. I therefore plan to introduce you to some of them over the next few months. In today's post I welcome writer,  Lynne Cantwell, whose book The Maidens War is inspired by the Czech legend of the same name. I asked her to write about this post for you about how she came to write her book...

I am a third generation Czech-American.  My mother’s parents emigrated from Czechoslovakia with their parents around the turn of the 20th century, then met and married here.  My mother was the third of their six children.  Of course, they spoke Czech at home.  As a child, I would hear words and phrases in Czech when we visited my mother’s side of the family, and I always intended to learn the language.

Decades passed.  Eventually, I found a reasonably-priced language program offered by a Czech-Slovak heritage association and began taking classes.  At about the same time, I came across an English translation of Alois Jirásek’s retelling of “The Women’s War” from his book, Legends of Old Bohemia.  I learned later that I was not the first person to be entranced by the story.  But Šarka’s tale struck me.  I remembered how Disney had changed the story of Pocahontas for its animated movie, morphing the real child into a nubile young woman who dove off waterfalls in a primeval forest (I lived in Tidewater Virginia for many years, and I am here to tell you that neither grand waterfalls nor primeval forests exist there), and I wondered whether Jirásek hadn’t done a similar disservice to Šarka.  What if she hadn’t been a man-hating vixen?  What if she had been coerced into trapping Ctirad?  And what lessons would she be mulling over while trapped for centuries inside her mountain?

It was clear to me that Šarka deserved to be freed from that mountain; she deserved to pass on her hard-won wisdom to someone.  So rewrote her story, and then I invented the character of Maggie, an abused girl just starting college, who could benefit from Šarka’s advice.  I titled my novel The Maidens’ War.

To write the book, I did a fair amount of research into early Czech civilization, including some on the pagan Slavic pantheon.  I settled enthusiastically on the figure of Mokoš, an earth mother goddess who, I thought, was a prime candidate for leading Šarka into her mountain, and wrote her into the story.

I was nearly done writing The Maidens’ War when I decided to look up the Slavic pantheon in Czech on Wikipedia, just to be sure I had the names spelled correctly.  I noticed the Czech entry for Mokoš was a lot shorter than the one in English, so I read it as best I could. Then, in dismay, I printed it out and did a better translation.  Alas, the result was the same both times: the article said there was no evidence that Mokoš had ever been worshipped in the Czech lands.

But the good news was that I was writing fiction.  So in my book, Šarka has a Ukrainian mother who brought her worship of Mokoš with her to the Czech lands, and the nascent worship of the goddess among Czech women is crushed when Děvín falls.  Problem solved.

************************************

Lynne's book is available on: http://www.calderwoodbooks.com/#/the-maidens-war/4540053928 and on Amazon.

Kutna Hora St Barbara Cathedral

I've now visited this cathedral three times. No doubt I will visit it again and will rejoice to do so, because this building must be one of the great medieval ecclesiastical buildings of Europe.

Many people visit Kutna Hora as a daytrip from Prague. Some take one of the many minibus tours that speed between Prague and Kutna Hora and the more canny take the train and save themselves money. The best way to approach St Barbara's is to walk up the hill from the train station and turn left to go past the Vlassky Dvur and St Jakub church and so come on a viewing platform, from which you will get the best view of the cathedral with its extraordinary roof line (above). Then follow the lane up to the Hradek and approach the cathedral along a walk lined on one side by statues and beyond them vines and on the other by the Jesuit Seminary now an important art gallery. 

Inside the cathedral lives up to the expectations raised by its spectacular exterior. The vaulting is utterly unlike any you will have seen in the west, a pure example of the style known as Bohemian gothic, with the ribs flowing from the columns. Along the gallery huge wooden sculptures look down on the nave. If you get a chance pay the small fee and go up to the gallery to see the statues and ribbing up close. 

That this is a cathedral for the silver workers of medieval Kutna Hora is evident throughout the building. Miners in their regulation white coats appear as statues and in frescos, minters sit striking coins and others are counting. In fact the cathedral's frescos merit repeated inspection: I was still finding new elements on my third visit. The frescos are remarkably realistic and human. But then the building is human too, as large in footprint as a large church, which makes its wonders all the more impactful.

Gingerbread workshop & a song

Last summer I took some Australian friends to an old mill near to Cesky Krumlov, where we were given a wonderful workshop in painting traditional Czech Easter eggs and making gingerbread. But the highlight was something I hadn't planned. Here's a video of what happened.

Traffic Light Artist

On Saturday David Hons, better known as the artist Roman Tyc, was released from Prague's Pankrac prison in Prague. The artist spent 30 days in jail after refusing to pay a 60,000 crown fine for defacing public property.

In 2007 he "amended" 48 road crossing lights in the Czech capital city, to show the normal red and green figures in a number of unusual positions, including walking the dog, urinating, drinking etc. The above video shows the man in action.

In protest at Tyc's imprisonent Czechs started to behead figures on traffic lights by placing black stickers over the heads, while others baked cakes for him. Many people were shocked by the severity of his punishment, especially when President Klaus refused to grant a pardon to the artist, even though the President has over the years pardoned a number of people found guilty of serious corruption and fraud. But then what did they expect from a president that steals pens?

Why I'm here. Part 2

I had two reasons when I bought my lovely derelict Czech farmhouse. The first as I said in my post of the 9th March was my friend Hannah Kodicek, the second was to create somewhere I could write.

The two reasons were not unconnected. Hannah always encouraged me to write. I think we really became close friends when she read a long poem I had written. She had known me as a manager, something that she respected but didn't love. At the time of the house purchase I was managing an inner-city regeneration programme working with the most disadvantaged. It was worthwhile work and I would have argued then that it allowed me to be creative in other ways than producing poetry that no one read. But Hannah begged to differ, she saw better than I did how one side of my personality was dominating the other, driving the poet and mystic underground. But when I came to visit her in the Czech Republic I found that side of me welling up in response to the landscape and history of Bohemia.

So I bit the bullet and bought the house. I said I wanted a hut in the forest, something that didn't need too much work, but my subconscious saboutaged that and I bought a huge farmhouse needing lots of work. I spent the next few years working hard at my job and pouring the money I earned into restoring the house, but still I did not write.

Things came to a head when one day I found myself crying in Hannah's study. It was soon apparent that I could not continue working in my wonderful but high pressured job. I said goodbye to my old career and came over to the Czech Republic and started to write. Not poetry but a children's novel. I loved the process. Even if my first book is now in a drawer in my desk never to see the light of day. The second one's there too. I am now on my fifth book. All of my books have been written in my Czech house.

Czech Egg Tourism

Easter has a very special place in the Czech heart and part of Czech Easter is the traditional painting of eggs. But EU legislation has let a fox into the henhouse. Egg prices have risen as a result of EU legislation against factory farming. What are the Czechs to do?

According to Bavarian newspaper, the Suddeutsche Zeitung, the Czechs are crossing the border and buying up cheaper German eggs, creating a possible egg shortage there too!

Why I'm Here

"Why am I here?"

I don't mean in the philosophical sense, but why here in a half-restored old farmhouse on the edge of a small Czech village. I have talked about this in the past and regular readers of this blog will know the various answers I could proffer, but I suspect that there are new readers who might not know and also, more importantly, I have had reason to ask that question again over the last twelve months.

One reason has gone. The only reason I am in the Czech Republic is/was the fact that a dear friend, Hannah Kodicek, moved back here and then more importantly moved to Cesky Krumlov. If she had stayed in Prague I have no doubt that I would not have bought a house here. As you may know we are approaching the anniversary of her all-too-early death and sitting here in my living room I am surrounded by memories of her. A photo of her is above my desk, it's of her looking back at me as we walked on the hills above Cesky Krumlov. She's saying something to me. I remember the walk because we had been delighted to see carpets of purple buttercups in the woods presaging the arrival of spring. But I do not remember what she was saying.

I checked the date when I chose the picture for this blog: it says 30th March 2005. In September 2005 I found the farmhouse and two months later I was legally a temporary resident of the Czech Republic. On the 2nd April 2011 I was walking in the woods on Petrin Hill, Prague and enjoying the flowers. Hannah had taken me there too. I rang her in the hospice and told her about them. At the end of the call we said goodbye.

Ma Vlast

Bedrich Smetana's Ma Vlast (My Country) is a powerful musical evocation of the landscape and history of the Czech Republic. A cycle of six symphonic poems the music was composed by Smetana over a period of five years and first performed as a complete piece in 1882. The music expresses the Czech nationalism which has always been bound up with a love of the landscape and myths of nationhood. It is a heady, beautiful piece of music even to this non-Czech.

There are several wonderful CDs of Ma Vlast available but for me the most powerful is of a performance conducted by Vaclav Talich on 5th June 1939 in the National Theatre. The sound quality is limited by the equipment of the time, but this is a recording like no other. There is a fierce urgency in the music verging on violence, but then this is no ordinary performance. This is a performance in a country which has just been sold down the river to the Nazis. It is a brave statement of national pride and the audience knows it. At the end of the different movements there is applause and at the end the audience spontaneously begins to sing the national anthem, itself a brave act. When I heard it I was moved to tears.

The performance was broadcast by Czech Radio and would have been lost had not Norwegian Radio picked it up and recorded it.

You can sample this extraordinary recording on http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Supraphon/SU40652 It is available to buy for £13.99

Masopust

Today is Masopust - the Czech Carnival.

I am not in the Czech Republic this year to enjoy it. So I am sharing with you again the video of the last year's event.

Banks!

A recent Facebook post by an ex-pat friend of mine reminded me that I have been intending to write a post about Czech banks for some time. He was complaining that his bank asked him to pay 65kc (over £3) to pay 200kc into his girlfriend's account. Yes, you read that correctly, the charge was about a third of the sum being paid!

How do Czech banks get away with such extortionate charges? If they were in the UK - there would be general outrage and tv and radio programmes on the subject. I suppose the Czechs don't know that in other countries such as the UK free current accounts are the norm.

I have a Czech bank account (essential for paying my electricity bill). Most months the only transaction that takes place is a standing order to EON, or rather it's the only transaction other than a list of bank charges.

When I try to go to my local branch I am often caught out by the fact that the bank is closed for lunch and on Tuesday afternoon. And when I do manage to arrive when the door is open, I am always surprised by the fact that there is only one cashdesk and one lone cashier, all the rest are devoted to other activities. So heaven help you if you are standing behind some local trader with a carrier bag full of small change. Another difference in Czech banking is that they don't use cheques, instead you either go into the bank and fill in a transfer form, stamp it and drop it into a slot or you sign up for electronic banking, for which of course you will be charged extra.

A Menu

Traditionally Czech restaurant food has been heavy on meats, and it still is, although there is now more choice for vegetarians. Czech restaurants often offer a selection of grilled meats cooked over a logfire on a griddle (as here), these are eaten with a choice of side vegetables. Others offer casserole-based dishes such as goulash or meat smes (a mixture of meats in a spicy saunce). Then there is the offering of various roasted meat in sauce such as the Czech classic svíčková (when cooked well one of my all time favourite meals anywhere in the world) which is roasted marinated beef in a spiced vegetable sauce with cream.

Sometimes the translated menu can bring some interesting images to the mind of the bewildered foreigner,  as here in this menu from a restaurant in Slavonice. But then one has to wonder how on earth one could translate English popular foods such as spotted dick or roly poly pudding. I shall say no more than that I had a chop of Mrs Katerina and it was excellent and my husband enjoyed Zacharias' chop.

The Coasts of Bohemia

A few days ago as I was looking at the Google Analytics account to see what search terms people on the internet were putting into Google which led them to my site. It is a source of endless amusement and bemusement to me.

The first source of bemusement is just how many people still search for Czechoslovakia - even though the Czech Republic and Slovakia split happened in 1993 nearly twenty years ago.

The second is the number of ways people come up with of spelling Czech (bear in mind that this is an English language search), here are some from last month: Czek, Czexh, Tchech, Chez, Cheze, Chczh, Chek, Chec, Checkz, Cezk, Chec, Cezh, Check, Chech and of course Chekeslovakia and Checkislavkia.

The third are some searches which say something about perceptions and misunderstandings:

• sex tour Czech Republic - I'm not going to comment on that one
• is Czech Republic safe to visit? - answer: yes very
• Hogwarts Castle in Czechoslovakia - I love this query, the country is full of wonderful magical medieval castles (NOTE to Author: possible line for a book)
• beach holidays in the Czech Republic - despite Shakespeare talking about the coast of Bohemia* in the Winter's Tale the Czech Republic is right at the middle of the European landmass, the only beaches the Czechs have on lake and river banks and probably not what the searcher had in mind.

Alas, all these search terms show what a task I and other Czechophiles have to increase knowledge of this lovely country.

*watch out for a full blog on the coast of Bohemia/Winter's Tale which I planning to write soon.

Coals to Newcastle, Fezes to Turkey

In the museum housed in Strakonice Castle you will discover much of interest, but nothing is so extraordinary as the story of the Strakonice fez industry. How did this provincial town in South Bohemia come to be the centre of world fez production?

The story is that a Linz businessman came to the town and asked for someone to make fezes to sell in Turkey. That someone was a knitter called Jan Petras. Petras was so successful that other knitters soon followed and the Strakonice fez industry was born.

In the 1820's a Jewish entrepreneur called Furth established the company that was to take fez production in the town to a whole new level. With mechanisation the production grew and the company expanded selling fezes to Egypt, India and the middle east as well as to Turkey. By 1937 business employed 3000 people, sadly with the war the Germans took over the factory and then after the war the business was nationalised. Now the successor company no longer makes fezes but instead creates fabrics for car upholstery.

I was in an antikvariat the other day and found a selection of fez labels (see above) and there it is in French (so presumably it was destined for Morocco) - "Societe Anonyme des Fabriques de Bonnets Turcs. Strakonice, Republique Tchecoslovaque".