Out with the Winter, in with the Spring - a folk ritual

Every year at around this time, our neighbours' huge family gather with a few friends, among whom I have the privilege to be counted, to do a Czech traditional Spring ritual. It involves making an effigy of Winter, and taking it to the river, where it is burnt and thrown down stream.
And so it was yesterday, too: the family own a fabulous early-renaissance mill right outside Cesky Krumlov, which they've had for 30 years or so, but is it still in a comfortably delapidated state that makes it desperately attractive and homely (one of those 'ahh, I wish...' sort of places, of which, I am sure, I shall be writing much more as time goes by). Anyway, here they all were: old, young, toddlers, dogs, cats, goats, food and drink, musical instruments.... The effigy is a combined effort, it gets made and dressed, its face painted fearsome and ugly, and it is given a necklace of painted eggs. Then, accompanied by singing and dancing, the crowd, bearing fresh twigs with ribbons, takes it to the river, where it is ceremonially lit.

More singing, and the burning Winter is thrown into the water,
chivvied on its way downstream by 'Out out out, let the Spring come in' (except it rhymes in Czech :-) of course ) Then everyone dances back into the Mill, waving their fresh twigs, which they'll take home and put in a vase to watch their buds open in a day or two.

The family keep photos of this event that go back 30 years, and it is moving to see the patriarch in his prime, and the babies on the old photos now being women in their 30s with children of their own, yet still doing the same things, singing the same songs, year by year.
May their yearly rituals, like the changing seasons, go on forever.

Spectacular vernacular

A while back I was enthusing about the buildings of Cesky Krumlov – especially their painted facades and plasterwork like elaborate cake-icing. Well, there are delicious buildings in the Bohemian countryside too, and the sight of a group of vernacular-baroque farmhouse fronts arranged along the edge of a village green is one of the pleasures of this region. Probably the best place to see this is the village of Holasovice, where the long green with its pond and tiny church is completely lined with lovely plaster-covered houses. Most of them have the typical local courtyard-farm layout of a pair of wings on either side of a central gate. Some have simple pointed gables, some go the whole baroque hog, with curvaceous gables and all kinds of charming decorations. Quite a few bear dates from the 19th century, although I don’t know whether these dates relate to the building of the houses or are when the plasterwork took its present form. Whichever, the place is a delight, and an easy drive north from Cesky Krumlov.

Easter preparations

It's coming up to Easter, and people are busy with their preparations - they do take their Easters seriously in this country. Of course it's a major Christian holy time, but it's the pagan customs that seem to dominate the early Spring here. The houses sprung flowerpots and boxes with willow branches hung with decorated eggs and ribbons, and women are busy baking Easter lambkins (see blog entry below for the recipe) and 'mazanec' pastries, and of course, decorating eggs - the most important part of their pre-Easter activities.
The men, meanwhile, are prowling the countryside searching for the most moist and bendy willow shoots from which they'll be making their special 'whips' with which to symbolically beat their women in exchange for the eggs and the cakes, of course with some slivovi to make the cakes go down.
I will report on how this Easter goes, but for now I'll stay with the preparations. The egg decorating is a fine art, honed by generations of women who pass their know-how on, and with very defined regional variations, indeed almost every village has some particular design or particular method of egg-decorating. The techniques vary from simple painting to elaborate wax batique or scratching, some are even clad in fine lace. The designs are abstract, but very meaningful, and the women here mostly know what all the symbolism means to every detail.

Same with the whip-making, like the egg symbolism a fertility rite: there are so many ways of plaiting the whip, from simple three or four shoots strong, to a twelve-shoot, complex, design. It the duty of the elderly men in the community to teach the boys this art, and some villages even make a communal whip, competing in its length with the neighbouring groups of men. Very phallic, of course, but that's the fun of it.

Well, we've been lucky to have neighbours who are incredibly dilligent about their folk traditions so each year we get to be included, and our visitors too. So we're learning to decorate the eggs and to plait the whips, and it's been great to watch the British men struggle with the unforgiving willow, coming up with variously bent and sorry-looking creations next to the expert perfection of the old man's from next door, but it's all in good humour, because we all know that only years of practice make perfect :-)

You can go to www.radio.cz/en/html/paint.html (last year's but no matter) for Easter customs and pictures of all sorts of regional egg-decorating designs, and where you can also read about the whip-making, with instructions. Or search your Google images for 'kraslice' (decorated eggs), many different designs come up.

I'll write more on the subject as we get nearer the dates, meanwhile I shall be stocking up with eggs: only my own decorating is a bit freer than the tradition would allow! Here's my Easter bunny with three Easter Graces.

It's snowing again......

Well, having said the Spring has arrived, this is what we've woken up to early this morning in Cesky Krumlov. I wondered why the locals tut-tutted when they saw me uncovering the Spring bulb shoots in the garden, a week or so ago, from their Winter layer of insulating leaf-mulch: 'Březen-za kamna vlezem' (March - crawl behind the stove), they muttered, quoting a folk saying. I obviously still have a lot to learn. But then, this weather has arrived in the wake of the big storm, and I am told there were snow falls even in England these days.
Anyway, now I hope it'll snow even harder: perhaps we can go and ski a few more times (always looking at the bright side)....

Treasure in the attic

Continuing from:
Second Home Adventure
More on Forest House

Had a great time clearing out the attic at the Forest house - the roofers and the builders will start arriving soon.
First the partition walls had to come down: it was a bit alarming to realise the partitions were made of unfired bricks so one good knock and the partition came down. The bricks are so soft that if you squeeze one, it crumbles to dust in your hand. Apparently these sort of bricks were being used all through the area for centuries, and I suppose they served well - if one didn't go knocking at them too hard :-) My builder tells me that the old local brickworks were squeezed out by the big boys and cement/concrete makers after 1930s, and ever since then houses can't breathe properly. Obviously my builder is one of those Czech locals who believe in using old and local materials whenever possible. But he needn't worry, I won't be putting concrete in the attic - the partitions had to go as I am planning to open the space up as much as possible. Luckily the roof beams seem 90% sound so I can keep the old structure, just clean it up a little.
Which brings me to tell you about the treasures I found when clearing up. It seems that the previous owners, who were there since the 1970s but only used the house as their occasional weekend retreat, didn't ever bother to look behind the partition walls into the dark spaces of the actual attic nooks. I found four ancient tin baths, old leather suitcases, loads of dusty bee-keeping equipment and bee-keepers' magazines from 1920s and 30s, old clothes and several wooden trunks, most of them too damaged to be reparable. But one of the chests was in good condition, and when I dusted it off and looked inside, I found a real treasure: hundreds of fine pencil drawings and watercolours, again dated between 1920s and 1930s.

Whoever lived in the house then was not only a good artist, but someone who obviously loved the countryside here and kept returning to the same trees and cottages to draw and paint them in all seasons and weathers. I wonder how many of these cottages still stand - because many were bulldozed by the communist authorities during the 'Fifties as this area was close to the border with Austria, and many villages fell simply because the authorities feared that people who might be thinking of escaping to the West might find it too easy to hide here. Or so I was told. In any case, I look forward to walking the local places and looking for any building that might be familiar from my gentle ghostly predecessor.

And when the house is restored and finished, I look forward to having his artworks framed, so they can adorn my walls and live again.

The weather and the Lake house ruin

Well, after all that Spring eulogy, I have to admit that we've had a rotten couple of days, with high winds and rain, apparently coming in from the Atlantic :-)
Without wishing to blame any British weather coming over, I was reminded of our holidays in Wales which we very much used to enjoy but never without wellies.

And so today we left Krumlov and went the 14 kilometers South to check on our Lake House - the semi-ruined 'holiday' home at Olsina lake, lovely (the pic is from late last Summer) but in dire need of a total reconstruction, for which it might need to wait a long time, since we can't, unfortunately, afford to do anything to it. But maybe we will, some time.
Well, it was a good thing we went there, as the fence - as dilapidated as the rest - was strewn all across the little road. In battering wind, we proceeded to gather up and chop its bits for burning, thanking the gods that the roof didn't come down.

But all praise to the local road-workers, as even first thing in the morning the little country roads were cleared of fallen trees that were already cut up by the roadside: quite a few trees fell due to the tremendous wind that kept us up most of the night.

Being there, though, even in the rain, is always great.
There were periods of bright sunshine, and driving back to Krumlov, almost magically, a bright rainbow stretched over the Klet mountain like a welcome banner. Rain or shine, we love it here. And the little ruin? Something to look forward to, a project which, I am sure, will be well worth taking on for the heartwarming beauty of the place, and for the peace that comes with being by a lake with no tourists anywhere.
One day, we will do it.

Skiing at Lipno lake (Kramolin) resort

Our family came to visit, with two small children - the purpose was to go skiing for their half-term holidays, as the nearest resort here is only 20 minutes drive from Cesky Krumlov. I was very nervous, as the weather has been much milder lately and most of the snow has gone, so I apologized as soon as they arrived: sorry, the snow at the resort will be no good any more.
But they insisted they wanted to go, and so it was completely touching to see their enthusiasm even at the little that there was! Having had no snow in Britain at all, they pounced on the sorry remnants of it here, and immediately started to roll in it, make little snowmen, do snowball fights and even carry large lumps of it around as if they were some fabulous treasure.

It almost wouldn't have mattered if I haven't had arranged for lessons. But they enjoyed those too, especially the older, 7yr old girl who was here for the second time. Being in Czecho, it is affordable to get private tuition, so each of the children had their own instructor with whom they quickly bonded and learned very fast. The older girl was bombing down the red runs like a pro by the end of the week, and even the younger boy was confident to ski straight down the blue at some speed.

But now they are gone, the house feels a little empty, but meanwhile the Spring has arrived and everything is starting to green up, with Spring flowers shooting out of the ground, and catkin bushes buzzing with millions of bees. I hope to take some pictures and post them up here soon.