Wine harvest festivals

Vinobraní is the name given to the traditional autumnal wine harvest festivals of the Czech lands, and the 2009 season is in full swing.

A traditional vinobraní in a small vineyard sees family members and friends travel from all ends of the country to help bring in the year's grapes and prepare the new wine. A small house or large weekend cottage near the vineyard is the focus of activity, and there seems to be as much or more eating, drinking, singing and laughing as there is fruitpicking or wine making, as well as catching up and sharing burčák with neighbours and friends not seen since the same time last year.

But there are also public vinobraní festivals that anyone can go along to and the biggest and best are held in South Moravia, the country's main wine growing region. Znojmo and Mikulov both had their festivals on the weekend of the 11th and 12th, Mělník and Bzenec were this weekend just gone and Velké Pavlovice's vinobraní was way back at the beginning of the month. But the season being in full swing means it's not over yet. On the 3rd of October the Valtice vinobraní will take place at the UNESCO-listed chateau and coming up on the 25th and 26th of September will be the Litoměřice vinobraní and the Valtice burčák festival.

Despite being little known abroad, burčák is a favourite and much anticipated drink in the Czech lands. A lightly alcoholic drink made from partially fermented white grape juice, burčák is only available for a short time each year and in South Moravia, they sometimes say there are four seasons; winter, spring, summer and burčák.

Good burčák should be golden and slightly cloudy and is best a few days after the beginning of the fermentation process. It's also possible to make burčák from red grapes, but because of the way red wine is left to steep and colour, it's difficult to find outside the wine growing regions themselves.

They say that burčák cleanses the blood and that to do its job properly, you need to consume as much burčák as you have blood. And at every vinobraní plenty of people gleefully set about doing just that, because it's sweet and easy to drink in great quantities. But take it easy the first time. Burčák contains living yeast cultures that continue to work in your body when consumed, and drinking too much too quickly might see you cleansing more than just your bloodstream.

That said, it's a natural product high in vitamin B, and when Mrs. Oddsocks was at the doctor last week, she was told “Burčák is healthy, drink as much as you like”.

Na zdraví!

Best festivals of Summer 2009

Summer is here again and that means long drinks in shady beer gardens, swimming in the lake outside town, ice cream on the square at dusk and an almost non-stop programme of festivals. Here’s a roundup of the best.

June
Lots of cities and towns have their annual festival on the first weekend of summer; this year from Friday 19th to Sunday 21st of June.
June 18-20 United Islands of Prague
June 19-21 Festival of the Five-Petalled Rose In Český Krumlov, Free entry for those in some approximation of historic costume
June 25-28 Stražnice folklore festival
June 26-27 Prachatice Golden Trail festival The only renaissance festival better than Český Krumlov's festival of the five-petalled rose

July
July is the month for big outdoor music festivals
July 2-5 Zahrada The country's best and biggest festival of Folk and World Music
July 3-4 Creamfields Central Europe
July 3-11 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
July 4-6 Rock for People with Gogol Bordello, Placebo and Underworld!
July 9-12 Colours of Ostrava This year with David Byrne, Mercury Rev and Morcheeba amongst many, many others.
July 16-19 Boskovice 2009 Music, film and theatre festival in Boskovice's Jewish quarter
July 17-19 Mighty sounds The festival for ska, punk, reggae and hip-hop
July 24-August 2 Uherské Hradiště Film School A film festival with theatre, workshops, seminars and other activities.
July 24-August 9 Prazdniny v Telči festival

August
August 8 Hradhouse Moravian open air electronic music festival
August 14-16 Chodsko Folk Festival, Domažlice is one of Western Bohemia's prettiest towns and the Chods were known for stubbornly preserving their traditions
August 20-22 Hip Hop Kemp
August 20-23 Trutnov Open air music festival-The Woodstock of East Bohemia
August 22 Okoř castle outdoor music festival
August 28-30 Trnkobrání Vízovice, Jelinek distillery
August 29-30 Hefaiston International blacksmiths’ festival in the grounds of a huge ruined castle

September
Most people are back at work, school and uni by September and the festivals start to come back into the cities and towns.
September 11-12 Znojmo Wine festival Harvest festival in the prettiest town of the country’s largest wine region
September 18-20 Mělník Wine festival Harvest festival in the prettiest town of the country’s smallest wine region
September 25 –October 16 Gaudeamus Igitur Student festival travelling to various university cites around the country

Spring festivals roundup

English-language media in the Czech Republic tends to focus on events in or close to Prague, undoubtedly because that’s where most of their readers live. Understandable, but also a pity because there are wonderful and unique events in other places and with the excellent and inexpensive public transport, it’s not difficult to get around.

Here then are the top events of Spring 2009 that you won't find in the Prague Post or on expats.cz.

April
April 14 – 19 AFO documentary film festival
April 15 – 18, Polička Jazz festival

May
This year, the 1st and 8th of May public holidays fall on Fridays.
May 7 – 10 Znojmo wine and food festival There’ll be wine and food of course, but the hidden gems of this festival are the top-notch Romany musicians performing on the Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
May 8 - 9, Valtice Wine Expo
May11-June 4 Dvořák’s Olomouc
May 12-June 12 Mahler’s Jihlava
May 13 – 17 Olomouc beer festival The Czech Republic’s largest beer festival with dozens of breweries and 20 bands on two open air stages.
May 20 – June 5 Janáček’s May Classical music festival at the Hukvaldy castle ruins
May 23 – 25 Mikulov Weekend of Jewish culture
May 23 - June 8 Ignis Brunensis The Brno fireworks festival is like five festivals rolled into one with a hot air balloon rally, a magicians’ weekend and dragon boat races just some of the opening acts for the fireworks displays
May 29 – 31 Vlčnov Ride of the Kings If you only see one traditional festival in the Czech lands, make it this one.
May 31-June 7 Zlín Film festival

June
June 12 – July 6 Smetana’s Litomyšl International opera festival in Bohemia’s prettiest small town.

The Rožnov Easter festival

The Czech lands have some wonderfully colourful traditions connected with Easter, but unless you know where to look, they can be easy to miss.

Most people with any connection to the Czech Republic would know that there’s a tradition of decorated eggs and some kind of whipping on Easter Monday. But to really understand what’s going on, why, and how it came to be is sometimes difficult. Even local people are often unable to explain the traditions and are hasty to dismiss them as only for old people and country bumpkins.

One way to really find out is to go to an event with performances by folklore troupes, which are groups of people dedicated to preserving the traditions of their forefathers. The troupes have members of all ages, genders and professions, and are a popular alternative to other leisure and social activities like football, fishing, scouting or ballet lessons. Some troupes focus on traditional music, others are more oriented towards dance and still others excel at particular events like the Ride of the Kings or Masopust.

A good place to see pure Easter traditions performed (half drunk teenagers chasing their schoolmates around city streets with sticks doesn’t count) is the Easter festival in the Outdoor Museum at Rožnov pod Radhoštěm.

The outdoor museum is the oldest and largest in the country and owes its existence to two brothers who, in the early 20th century, dedicated themselves to preserving the traditional wooden buildings of Wallachia. Whenever they found a building that was going to be torn down they relocated it to the riverside park in Rožnov and eventually recreated an entire town square.

Among the buildings are a functioning post office, a church (whose tiny cemetery includes the grave of local boy and Olympic champion Emil Zátopek) and three working pubs with benches that spill out onto the square whenever there’s a big event on. There are three parts to the museum, but the Easter festivities are all held in the little wooden town, which is the collection of buildings around the green square.

The second part of the museum is the mill valley where the flowing waters are converted into power for grinding stones, a woodsaw, an oil press and a blacksmiths’ hammer. The third and largest part of the outdoor museum is the Wallachian farming village which spreads across the hillside above Rožnov. The farmhouses, barns, wells and windmills are all used for their original purposes and horses, cattle, ducks and geese, flocks of the local Wallachian sheep and bees are all tended here.

Events are always well run here and the Easter festival is three days of music, traditional dance and demonstrations. Some of the specific Easter traditions are the burning of the winter maiden, rattle processions, chases with birch whips and the dance to wake up the new year, which is represented by a sleeping man wrapped up in a white blanket.

The museum is worth a visit at any time, but going during the Easter festival is two for the price of one. Why not take your Czech friends along and challenge them to buy you dinner if you show them something they didn’t know about their own country?

Festival season is almost here again!

One of the things I like most about living in the Czech Republic is that there's always so much going on. Most of the year, events are focussed on the cities and towns, but in summer Czechs love to be out in 'the nature' and they take their festivals with them. July and August are a non-stop party, but there's something happening on most weekends in May, June and September too.

Here's a roundup of the ones I've most enjoyed or would most like to go to. There are a couple of cross-border ring-ins and some dates haven't been announced yet, but I'll update this post as I find out more.

Hope there's something here for you...

May

• May 7-10 Olomouc Beerfest The Czech Republic's largest beer festival
• May 7-13 Třeboň Animated film festival
• May 12-June 4 Prague Spring
• May 23-25 Ride of the Kings
• May 25-31 Khamoro International Roma cultural festival

June

• June 18-July 5 Smetana’s Litomyšl
• June 19-21 United Islands of Prague
• June 20-22 Festival of the Five-petalled rose In Český Krumlov, Free entry for those in some approximation of historic costume
• June 26-29 Stražnice folklore festival

July

• July 2-5 Zahrada Folk Music festival
• July 3-5 Rock for people with Massive Attack this year!
• July 4-12 Karlovy Vary International film festival
• July 10-13 Colours of Ostrava This year with Sinéad O'Connor and the Happy Mondays
• July 12 Creamfields Central Europe
• July 17-20 Boskovice 2008 Music, film and theatre festival in Boskovice's Jewish quarter
• July 17-19 Pohoda festival Trenčin The Streets, Fat Boy Slim, The Prostitutes.
• July 18-20 Mighty sounds Ska, punk, hip-hop
• July 25-August 10 Prazdniny v Telči festival
• July 28-August 3 Uherské Hradiště Film School Like Karlovy Vary, but without the celebrity glitz.

August

• August 8 Hradhouse
• August 8-10 Chodsko Folk Festival, Domažlice
• August 12-18 Sziget festival All the way down in Hungary, but it appears that REM, the Kaiser Chiefs, and the Sex Pistols will play. Yep those Sex Pistols.
• August 15-17 Vízovice Trnkobrání, Jelinek distillery
• Dates TBA Trutnov Open air music festival-The Woodstock of East Bohemia
• August 22 Machač on the shores of Macha’s lake (Machovo Jezero)
• August 23 Okoř castle outdoor music festival
• August 24-26 Hip Hop Kemp
• August 27-31 Fresh Film fest Festival of student films
• August 30-31 Hefaiston International blacksmiths’ festival at a ruined castle

September

• September 12-13 Znojmo Wine festival
• September 13-14 Rožnov Fujara festival The Fujara's a traditional wind instrument, usually associated with the shepherds of the Tatra Mountains
• September 19-21 Mělník Wine festival
• Late September–late October Gaudeamus Igitur Student festival that travels the country

Czech Easter traditions

The Czech Republic’s Easter traditions are colourful both in appearance and name.

Green Thursday is so called because of the long green robes worn in church and the spinach and cabbage traditionally eaten on the day. The Thursday before Easter was the day of the last supper, when Christ feasted with the apostles on lamb with bread and wine, labelled Judas as a traitor and began the institution of the Eucharist by pronouncing ‘this is my body’ and ‘this is my blood’.

Green Thursday folk customs include the boys’ game Chasing Judas, and the baking of twisted spiral buns representing serpents, the symbols of betrayal. In some villages there are processions led by a captive Judas in a straw suit which is ceremonially burnt at the end of the day. When sprinkled into a clean jug of water, the ashes of Judas were believed to have special powers including the abilities to guard against fire and protect the health of livestock for the coming year.

Good Friday here is Velký Patek; Great Friday! It’s a serious and sombre affair, not even interrupted by church bells, which are said to have “flown away to Rome” Christians attend church services and take the Eucharist but no music is played and mass is not performed. On the morning of Great Friday, people would wake before dawn and find their way to the nearest watercourse, where they would ceremonially wash themselves and gather pristine Great Friday water to take home and use in their baking.

White Saturday was the day that early Christians baptized new members and converts and the name has evolved from the colour of the robes worn to those ceremonies.

But Sunday’s the big day. The day that Christ rose from the grave, the day of new life cleansed of suffering and victorious over death. The morning is for attending church services, (the bells having returned from Rome) and the early afternoon is set aside for a great feast. After the meal it’s time to visit relatives, and in some places to ride in a horseback procession through the countryside with blessed twigs to ensure fertile fields for the year ahead. While the men and boys are out gallivanting around on horses, girls are at home decorating eggs in preparation for the following day.

Red Monday is the day for a peculiar ritual; the symbolic whipping of girls’ legs with braided willow twigs to encourage vigour and health in the year ahead. Men and boys use green willow twigs to braid their whips, which are known as Pomlázky, (from the verb pomladit; to rejuvenate). The custom probably dates from pre-Christian times and involves men and boys marching throughout town and chasing the girls who make a show of running away.

The whipping is not intended to be painful, but there are undoubtedly occasional miscreants who get carried away and need to be reigned in by somebody’s brother or father. Especially if there happened to have been shots of slivovice at each house in place of the more usual gifts of sweets and painted eggs. In some regions the girls get their revenge on Tuesday when it’s their turn with the whips. In other regions they return the rejuvenation with a bucket of ice-cold water.

Usually, colourful hand-painted eggs are presented to the boys in thanks for bringing the refreshment and invigoration of a new year. The eggs are a symbol of the rebirth of life and hope and are called Kraslice, from the old Czech word krásný, meaning red, which was the most common colour used for dying. Egg decorating is a distinct craft and there are competitions for the best Kraslice and even a dedicated national museum. Different regions have different styles that aficionados can apparently tell apart at a glance.

Like Pomlázky, Kraslice can easily be bought from street markets in the weeks before Easter, and both make interesting and unique souvenirs. If you’d prefer to see the traditions in action, you can take your chances in a random village picked from a map or attend one of the organized festivals at one of the country’s fine ethnographic museums. The photos in this post are all from the Easter festival at the outdoor museum in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, North Moravia. This year the festival runs from Thursday through Monday, but the best days to visit would be Saturday and Sunday.

If you’re in South Moravia on Monday there will be a procession through the historic centre of Telč beginning at 8am and interestingly, the girls will be doing the whipping because it’s a leap year. In South Bohemia you could visit the Easter markets and museum exhibition at Strakonice, in Northern Bohemia, there are markets in Jablonec nad Nisou, and in Central Bohemia the outdoor museum at Kouřim is a good bet especially if you want to see Judas on Green Thursday.

Happy Easter!

The colours of Masopust

One of my favourite Czech traditions takes place in Vortova next Saturday, 2nd of February.

The Masopust parade is performed every year about seven weeks before Easter. It’s the equivalent of Mardi Gras, Carneval or Fashing celebrations in other parts of the world, a farewell feast and celebration before people give things up for the sober 40 days of Lent.

Masopust parades take place in lots of towns and villages, even in some of the more community minded suburbs of Prague, but the one in Vortova is widely considered to be the most colourful and spectacular parade in the country. I heard about it from former Lonely Planet author Richard Nebeský once at the Ride of the Kings in Vlcnov. We got to talking about Masopust parades and “Vortova’s the one to go to” was his recommendation.

And he’s not the only one to hold it such high regard. Czechophiles will know that the definitive work on local folk customs is Lidové Zvyky by Jiřina Langhammerova (director of the Prague national folklore museum). Not only do photographs from Vortova illustrate the Masopust chapter, but of all the colourful traditions that take place through the year around the country, Vortova Masopust was chosen for the front cover.

The parade itself starts in the morning and after asking permission from the mayor begins to wind its way throughout the village, visiting each house in turn. Horses always lead the procession closely followed by the butchers, the turks and the joker and his wife. The second half of the parade is made up of the chimney sweeps, the strawmen and the travelling salesmen, and the local brass band brings up the rear.

Each character has his role in the procession and it falls to the joker and his wife to knock on each door and find out how many songs the homeowners would like performed. The band strikes up and the young Turks do most of the dancing but the other characters join in or fall out as the mood takes them. When the song and dance is over, the performers are rewarded with a share of the family feast, including donuts baked specially for the occasion and shots of a clear liquid with a high, high alcohol content, if the steadily degenerating dance moves of the Turks are any indication.

The rear of the parade is just like the back of the school bus-this is where all the mischief takes place. The chimney sweeps carry lumps of greasy black coal and put big stripes of it on everybody’s face for luck. According to old mythology, the strawmen are charged with ensuring fertility for the coming year, and the lady of each house is supposed to take a straw from the costume to ensure their animals breed well and the crops flourish over the coming year. The fertility also applies to the lady of the house herself, and if the strawman thinks he can get away with it, he might even drag her out for a tumble in the snow.

The parade doesn’t end until every house in the village has been visited, which might take several hours and include a break for lunch. In the evening almost the entire village gathers at the local pub for a dance with music from the same band that played all day. The strawmen are not likely to roll you in the snow if they don’t know you, but you can’t expect to get away without a blackened face.

And if you do happen to get rolled in the snow, then you should consider it a compliment. This is one of the things I enjoyed most about last year’s Masopust parade. I really felt like the locals went out of their way to make us feel included and that we became part of the event, rather than just spectators, like at the Ride of the Kings when the participants glide above the crowd or at Mikulaš which is focussed on children.

Have you been to a Masopust parade or are you going this year? If you’re a traveller, is a festival like this something you would go out of your way to see, if you knew about it in advance?

How to get there

Vortova is a village of several dozen houses about 8 kilometres south of Hlinsko and 48km from Pardubice in Eastern Bohemia. Coming from the west (Prague) it's best to take the train to Pardubice and change there for a bus to Hlinsko and another to Vortova. From the east (Olomouc, Brno or Ostrava) you’ll switch trains at Pardubice for the bus to Hlinsko.

Where to stay

There’s no hotel or pension in Vortova, but Pension Betlem in Hlinsko (http://hubert.hlinsko.cz Tel 469 311770) offers double rooms with ensuite bathroom for 800Kč/night.The pension is in one of the traditional old wooden cabins in the historic part of town, as is Hospoda U Sv. Huberta, with good meals, reasonable prices and an open fire.

When

The official start of the parade is 8am, and it would be good not to be too late. Because Vortova is built around a crossroad, and the parade goes several kilometres in each of the four directions, it could be kind of difficult to find unless you catch them at the crossroads when they begin. If you do miss the start, ask somebody at the Hospoda (pub) to point you in the right direction.

Three Kings Day

K+M+B 2008

Ever noticed initials like that scrawled on or above Czech doors and wondered what it was all about?

Schoolteachers doing a spot of freelancing on the way home or a note from a wife to a husband saying “don’t bother coming in if you’ve forgotten the milk again, buddy”. Nope, it’s just that Kaspar, Melichar and Balthazar are in town and they’ve been around town chalking their initials on houses for the New Year.

They’re not just some gang of mischievous teenagers on the loose for the holidays, though. They’re the Three Kings who visited Bethlehem with gold, frankincense and myrrh a little over 2000 years ago. You might know them better as the Three Wise Men or the Magi, and if you’ve been travelling Europe for while, you’ve certainly passed a painting or two in their honour. Botticelli, Breughel, Rubens and Velázquez have all had a shot, and the Uffizi gallery in Florence holds two of the most notable works; by Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Durer.

The 6th of January is the Three Kings’ Day, and as the 12th and final day of Christmas it’s also the day that many households, towns and cities choose to pull down their Christmas decorations and pack them away for another year.

Are the chalked K+M+B’s a form of low-tech tagging by the Three Kings then? A kind of ancient “K+M+B were here”? Well, partly. The three letters are their initials and do show that they’ve been to visit, but the inscription also stands for Christus mansionem benedicat (Christ bless this house), and is intended to wish health and luck on the occupants for the coming year, which is why the chalk is left up even when Three Kings’ day is over.

In the Czech lands (and nearby) the traditional commemoration of Three Kings’ Day has evolved to become one of collecting for charity and trios of young collectors dressed as K+M+B will be doing the rounds for about a week. The money collected is used for things like caring for the disabled, projects in underprivileged communities and so on. Specifically this year, amongst other things, the donations will be put towards emergency housing for mothers with young children in Prague’s 5th district - Smichov, and to purchase an X-Ray machine for a hospital in Uganda.

So if you’re in the Czech Republic today and bump into Kaspar, Melichar and Balthasar, spare them a coin or two, it’s a local tradition that goes back a long way and the money is going to good causes…

Christmas markets

Traditional Christmas markets on the main squares of the Czech Republic’s towns and cites are something to look forward to every year. After the warmth and glimmer of the golden autumn sunshine, November is a drab, grey and depressing month. But when December rolls around, the Christmas markets explode in a burst of colour, music and energy, and bring everybody out to forget about the grey skies and enjoy the festive season. And the punch.

The punch is a staple of every Christmas market I’ve been to, every second stall will have a cauldron of it bubbling away and a crowd of ruddy faced revellers getting ruddier by the sip between puffs of frosty breath. You’ll find Irish punch (with whisky), French punch, Viennese punch, Finnish punch and English punch, with the bar staff in their approximation of national dress. You can also go for the old standard mulled wine, warmed and spiced with cinnamon, cloves, and sugar.

There’s always plenty of food on offer. Most of the stands offer typical old fashioned hotdogs (parek v rohliku), langoš (a Hungarian deep fried batter with your choice of toppings, sweet or savoury), corn on the cob, or roasted chestnuts. There can also be a big barbeque area with spit-roasted pork and a range of thick and spicy sausages (klobasa). More progressive markets might even offer things like crepes with your choice of toppings or hot chocolate spiced with chilli, ginger or orange. In Moravia you’ll find traditional pastries like Štramberk Ears or Wallachian Frgal (a delicious and relatively healthy pizza-shaped fruit pie, eaten by the eighth or quarter).

Markets being markets, you can also buy stuff. Most markets will offer wintery gifts like socks, slippers, sheepskin coats, some will have traditional craftwork like woven baskets and straw figures, works of embroidery or weaving, and you might even see a blacksmith knocking out bells, candelabra and decorative door handles beside a portable forge. Christmas necessities are also catered for-you should able to pick up some smoked meats, your Christmas tree and when the big day gets closer, a fresh carp or two.

When you’ve shopped and enjoyed a drink what else is there to do? Well, the better markets also have a program of entertainment. Everyone from popular bands that have been playing for 20 years to school groups cobbled together weeks ago has their chance on stage. Carousels, horse-rides, and craft workshops for the kids are part of any good Christmas market.

So if you’re travelling the Czech Republic (and Central Europe) at this time of year, there’s no need to worry that you’ll run out things to do because all the castles and tourist attractions have closed up for the winter. Just pull on your warmest clothes and get down to your nearest main square to join in the festivities with the locals.

Just make sure you can find your way home after all that punch!

Mikuláš - St Nicholas' Day

Today, December the 6th is St Nicholas’s day. As in Saint Nicolaus, Santa Claus to you and I.

In the Czech Republic it’s the first real day of the Christmas season and like all good medieval traditions, it’s celebrated the evening before, i.e. on the 5th. (This is because, before clocks and watches were in widespread use, sunset was considered the natural end of the day. So twilight on the 5th was the beginning of the 6th).

On the evening of December 5th, St Nicholas (Sv. Mikuláš in Czech), the Angel and the Devil (or Devils) come to find out which children have been good and which have been bad. If you’ve been good the angel will give you a treat, probably something sweet. If you’ve been bad it might just be a potato or a lump of coal. If you’ve been really bad, you might find yourself bundled into the devil’s sack and carted off to hell!

Sounds scary doesn’t it? Not many kids actually seem to get carried away by the devils, but some of them sure do get a fright. The newspaper this week had an interview with a psychiatrist who said that every year he sees at least one child scared badly enough for the parents to have sought his professional help.

For those of us too old to get sweets or be carted away, it’s fun to watch the antics of the costumed characters and, at least in the city that I live in, the big public Christmas tree is lit for the first time and there’s a ten-minute long fireworks display that brings five or six thousand people down to the main square.

The families with children usually make their way home after the fireworks, leaving everybody else to enjoy a cup of hot chocolate or mulled wine from one of the market stalls, while the next band gets ready to play up on stage.

It’s good fun and a real part of local life, so if you’re travelling around at this time of year, make sure you’re not stuck on a train somewhere on the evening of December 5th.

All is white on St Martin's day

November the 11^th is St Martin’s day and he arrived on his white horse this year. It’s been snowing heavily since early this morning and is showing no sign of letting up now. There are lots of sayings in Czech connected with St Martin, mostly predictions for the winter weather:

“Na svatého Martina zima svůj chod začíná’. – On St. Martin’s Day winter begins its march.

“Na sv. Martina kouřívá se z komína”. On St Martin’s the chimneys will smoke.

“Přijede-li svatý Martin na bílém koni, metelice za metelicí se honí”. - If St. Martin arrives on a white horse, there’ll be blizzard after blizzard.

And “Je-li na svatého Martina pod mrakem, bude nestálá zima. Je-li jasno, bude tuhá zima”. - If St. Martin’s is cloudy the winter won’t be much. If it’s clear, the winter will be tough.

Even the Czech meteorological bureau has been known to keep an eye on St Martin.

To me it really feels like the beginning of winter. The Christmas tree will be trucked into the main square any day now, the Christmas markets will be underway not long after that and then St Nicholas’ day is celebrated on the evening of the 5^th December.

Guess it’s time I dug out my hat, scarf and thermos-bottle? Happy St Martin’s day!

Three days, five festivals.

Here's a photo from Ječmínek's Kingdom-the Festival of Puppetry and Street theatre, underway in Olomouc until tomorrow (Sat 25th). There have been performances at three venues, including the main square. Everything is free, including concerts by Čankisou, the Děda Mládek Illegal Band and tomorrow night, Lokopala, from Portugal.

This weekend is amazingly busy in Central Moravia, festival-wise. Helfštýn castle is hosting Hefaiston; the annual international festival of artistic blacksmithing, Bouzov castle is expecting around twenty hot-air balloons for their annual festival, Sovinec is hosting a martial arts weekend and the annual Slavnosti is on at Náměst na Háne. Phew!