The Wedding Crashers

Today's Czech Minute!
Apparently, very few continental European households own clothes dryers, and if they do own one, they don't use it because of the energy costs. Jan & Marketa do not have a dryer, but they do have a brand new washing machine. It takes, on average, 1 hour and 40 minutes to wash, rinse and spin one load of laundry. I will admit, I found this sort of charming at first--the energy savings, the "new-ness" of it. As the weather has turned cooler, and it is now taking two days for the laundry to dry as it hangs from a large metal rack that takes up half of the bedroom, I am finding this much less charming. I miss my clothes dryer . . .


On the morning of my first Saturday in Hronov, Martin & Hanka picked me up for a drive to the city of Hradec Kralove--it's about 45 minutes by car from Hronov, and roughly the same size as Eugene. While there is decent shopping in Nachod (9 kilometers south), people in this area go to Hradec for most of their major shopping. It is the closest place to go to find a big Tesco (kind of like a Super Target), a shopping mall, or a "hobby market", which was the target of this particular trip for Martin & Hanka. ("Hobby market" is the British English for a home-improvement store--think Lowe's or Home Depot.) They are finishing the front patio of their house after a major remodel, and needed more tile, but a stop at a mall or two would be included as well. So, off we went . . .

Martin being Martin, no trip anywhere would be complete without a few historical side-trips along the way--this is always fine with me, but I hope Hanka doesn't mind. So, our first stop was about 20 kilometers from Hronov in Nove Mesto nad Metuji (Nov-eh Myes-to nod Me-too-yee, translation: new city on the Metuji River) to visit the square. Nove Mesto is famous in this region because it is one of the few cities to have never had a major fire destroy the buildings on the square, thus it is a treasure trove for anyone wanting to study 15th & 16th Century architecture. One of the elements Martin wanted me to explain in English was a building where the second story extends out over the sidewalk, to create a cover, and then archways are built at the outside of the sidewalk to help support the building. He gave me the Czech word for this style and wanted to know the English word. I looked at him blankly--I know of no such word. (If you do, please let me know! Also, just FYI, this is another place where I forgot to take pictures.) He seemed quite surprised that buildings like this don't exist in America.

K: Um, I think, the oldest building in downtown Eugene probably dates to sometime in the middle of the 19th Century . . . .
M: Oh.

Moving on, we wandered through the castle on the square which has great French gardens that are open to the public. Interestingly, this castle, which has a history dating back to the 13th Century, is still privately owned by the Barton family. It has been, at various points in the past, in the hands of Germans, Austrians, and Scots, and was, of course, seized during the Communist era from the Barton family, who got it back in the early 1990's as the new Czech government returned a variety of property to its rightful owners (as of 1945). Apparently, this has created some interesting problems, especially with businesses, which have been returned to one and sometimes two later generations of a family who may not have any experience or interest in running a business. I would guess that it's one of the aspects of the changing Czech economy that will probably work itself out in another ten years or so.

Because of our shopping excursion, we didn't have time to tour the castle, but I went back to Nove Mesto with another colleague, Tamara, who lives there, a few weeks later. The tour was about 90 minutes and mostly featured the renovations that the Barton family undertook in the 1930's. The interior of the castle is more than a little impressive--photographs were forbidden, but every room had some detail that seemed almost outrageous. The library, which is probably at least 400 square feet, featured a locally made carpet, designed specifically for the room, and the tour guide noted that it was in one piece. Several times, I really wanted to know what the total cost of the renovations would be in today's dollar/crown--it has to be an astronomical number. But, the cool thing about the renovations is that local artisans were hired to design and oversee the entire project, so the entire castle interior really exists now as an exhibit of early 20th Century Czech art and workmanship, adjusted to make sense in a castle of course. The tour ended in the music rooms, which are used for public performances fairly frequently. As we moved from the small music room to the large hall, a string quartet started playing as a way to showcase the room's acoustics. Thus we ended our tour with a beautiful 20-minute performance. I loved it.

This is a photo of the castle, taken from the garden. Incidentally, in this garden I discovered one depressing sign of being American: if, upon seeing a quaint, Bavarian/Bohemian style structure, such as the bridge that links the upper and lower gardens that is in the center of the photo, your first thought is, "Oh, this reminds me of Disneyland . . . ," you're probably American. So, so sad.



(Just in case you don't know this, if you click on photos here, they will enlarge to full size and then you can click the "back" button to return to the blog.)

But I digress . . . onto Hradec Kralove!

So, there are many kind of funny, kind of random things that I encounter here and while I was in Hradec, I actually remembered to take some photos for once, so here are just a few:

Martin actually noticed this and suggested a photo--it's good to know that someone has found a useful outlet for the negative reputation the U.S. currently has in Europe. I guess it probably does make a pretty good name for a band! (Thanks to Jakub who pointed out that this is actually an American band--still, way to capitalize, guys!)



This sign made me crack up--in the sea of Czech signs in one of the three hobby markets we visited, I suddenly could read one! What?! It was box of beginner tools for home improvement projects. I thought it was hilarious.



And, our hobby market shopping excursion was also the first time I encountered this, although I am totally used to it now. This is a shopping cart handle. Here, you have to pay to use a cart at a store. They are connected by small chains, and when you put the coin in the slot, it releases the chain so you can take the cart. For those of you unsure, 5 crowns is about 25 cents. Many of the carts also say you can use a 1 Euro coin, which would be more like a $1.30--yipes!



One of the things I was unable to get a photo of at one of the hobby markets, was an adorable red car zipping through the parking lot that turned out to be a Mazda 2! Imagine my little Mazda 3 with about 3-4 feet cut off of the back end. Awwww . . . . now I want one! I have to think that the back seat and trunk have really been sacrificed but it was still really cute. The vast majority of the cars here are about the size of that Mazda 2--they get better gas mileage (converting price and amount, gas here is about $6 a gallon) and are easier to park and navigate on old, narrow streets.

It does seem silly to offer a report about shopping malls to people who live in the country where they were invented, but one difference that was interesting for me was that they have escalators here that don't have any stairs--basically it's like a moving sidewalk at the airport but at an incline that is a little less steep than an escalator. The one bright spot at the mall in Hradec, in a sea of things I can buy in American for 1/2 the cost (which made me feel bad since the average Czech salary is about 1/3 what I make), was Benetton! Remember Benetton?!? I haven't seen one in the U.S. in a long time, so I did have to spend a little time in there. Overall, I would guess I won't do a lot of shopping here, just because the selection isn't that different from the U.S. and it's significantly more expensive. Germany, on the other hand, is a whole different story, but again, I digress . . .

Anyway! After the mall, we headed into the old square for more history lessons and lunch. The main feature Martin wanted me to experience was the tower, for the view of the city. It was a lot of stairs. I don't know how many, but it was too many. The day wasn't that great, weather-wise, but there were a couple of interesting things to see.

The first was the Labe River (La-buh), which Martin described as one of the major rivers in Europe. I looked at him quizzically until he finally said, "In Germany, it's called the Elbe." Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh. I don't think he was completely pleased that I was so familiar with the German name. (What can I do? I don't decide what names get put on the map!) In any case, here is a not-very-good view of the Labe/Elbe River, at the center of Hradec Kralove:



Martin also said that one of the things that Hradec is known for is the efforts the city has made to maintain architectural consistency in the city center--you can see this really well in the roof lines of the blocks pictured here:



On one side of the tower, we could look down to this building and see many people hard at work at what are clearly some major renovations. Martin noted that this building is being re-fitted to be the new home of the regional government, and said that many people think it's a colossal waste of money. What I found interesting is that the building used to be the local brewery. Only in Europe would an old brewery be considered the perfect place to house government offices . . .



As we stood on the tower looking out into the square, we also watched a wedding party enter the cathedral. (You can see it in this photo on the right--the peach/yellow-ish building with the three green copper steeples.)



Oh, how nice that someone is getting married, we thought, and kept wandering around the tower (which had a balcony completely circling the building.) We climbed down from the tower and were headed back to the car when Martin suggested we should go look at the cathedral. Yeah, good idea Martin, in the middle of someone's wedding? Ha ha ha. He looked very serious. I said, "We're really dressed for a wedding!" (In my jeans and OSU t-shirt). Ha ha ha. He looked at me, and said--and I quote--"I think it is a good idea to visit the church now." Having never crashed someone's wedding before, and being in a foreign country where no member of the wedding party would know me anyway, I decided to go along, thinking, "This will be a fun story to tell later . . ." I looked at Hanka to see if she thought this was a crazy idea, but she seemed to think it was no big deal as well. Is it only in America that it's rude to walk into a church in the middle of someone's wedding? I don't know . . . but as we got to the cathedral, the double doors were wide open so it seemed slightly less odd to just walk in, which Martin and Hanka did without hesitation. Naturally, I followed them. Inside, a woman and what looked like a 12 year-old boy were getting married. There were no attendants standing up with them, and there were, at most, 40 people in the pews. As we walked out a few minutes later, I asked if this was a "normal" Czech wedding, and Martin said that most Czechs actually just have civil ceremonies at their local city halls. I explained what passes for "normal" in American weddings, (the number of people involved, etc.) by way of explaining my surprise at this one, and he looked at me for what was probably the 20th time in four days with an expression that said, "What the hell is wrong with you people?"

It's a good question, Martin, but I have to say that I do think we score points for not walking in on other people's weddings, but maybe that's just me . . .