Come Easter weekend in Prague, tourist season is in full swing. By this time, the citys grey-slated winter cloak is lifted, and everywhere people are coming out of the woodwork, filling the city to capacity. Many of these fresh pedestrians are Czechs, who, after patiently and habitually going about their winter lives indoors, eating heavy stews and drinking lots of beer to keep warm, exhibit quiet satisfaction at finally walking around freely in the sunshine. And, of course, many pedestrians are foreign tourists, giddy to be in Prague. Luckily for them, Czechs seem to understand the allure of their capital city and cater to tourism.
Around the beginning of April, in Prague's historic Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square, the Easter markets begin. The Easter markets consist of row after row of booths dressed up in traditional Bohemian countryside style. In some booths, Czech craftsmen sell traditional goodies like kraslicy, or decorated Easter eggs. From other booths, vendors sell Czech carnival foods—sausages wrapped in potato pancakes, fried caramelized bread, and slices of ham roasted on an open spit—all beckoning tourists with tempting smells. The allure of the Easter markets is undeniable, and these central areas of Prague become, more or less, melting pots of foreign visitors.
With nothing to do on Good Friday, I did a Google search of church services in Prague, but found mainly tourist information about Czech Easter traditions. This seemed appropriate, as the Czech Republic is the most atheistic country in the European Union after Estonia. Unlike in America, here almost no social pressure exists to attend a church service on Easter.
Resigned, I walked over to the Easter market in Old Town Square. I sat on a small square of empty ground underneath the Jan Huss memorial statue and people-watched. I thought back to a couple days ago, when my friend studying in Copenhagen was visiting. While we were sitting in a crowded place, she had asked me to point out who the Czechs are. Now in Old Town Square, I played that game to myself and came up with more foreigners than Czechs. At one point, I heard from behind me a voice say my name, and I looked up to see a friend from the United States with his family. We visited for a while; I finished my pancake and returned to my flat.
On this afternoon of Good Friday, while the roar of the Easter markets could be heard far and wide, a sprinkling of Czechs on each residential street in Prague, removed from the city center, was quietly loading up their cars for this Velikonoce holiday weekend. On Easter weekend, as tourists are moving into Prague, the Czechs are trickling out to their countryside cottage homes, where many prefer to spend the weekend.
In the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia, Easter tradition is this: the boys travel from door to door, like our trick-or-treaters on Halloween. The girls wait at home for the boys. When the boys arrive, they say a chant and hit the girls with willow branches. Once caught and hit, the girls must hand the boys one of their decorated eggs. Adults follow the ritual, but instead of decorated eggs, the women usually offer the men a shot of alcohol.
So, many Czechs living in Prague opt to not share the city with their tourist neighbors on Easter, but rather, when given the chance, retreat to their cottage communities to partake in the Bohemian-Moravian folk tradition of Velikonoce.
The Czech custom of owning such a cottage where the family spends its holidays and summers dates back to communism, when the Soviet government severely limited personal liberties. During this time, if a Czech wanted to leave the country for a vacation, he or she had to appeal to the local government, which in most cases made it very difficult for its citizens to travel. Former Czechoslovakia was a landlocked country, and getting permission to take a vacation to the seaside was particularly difficult. A Czech film called Pupendo (2003, Jan Hrebejk) has as its main character a father who is continually promising his children a trip to the ocean. My host mother Eva laments that she only got to see the sea once every four years.
Instead, the Soviet government encouraged Czechs owning a chata, or weekend cottage, which they would visit and maintain on the weekend, as a domestic getaway from Prague. Many cottages are less than an hour outside the city and are close to other cottages, with still some space in between.
The cottage seems emblematic of the nature of the Czech people. When faced with a lifestyle of limited options, many of them grim and dull, like not pursuing the work one was most passionate about, not speaking one's mind in the university, and not taking a yearly vacation to the sea, the Czechs did the best with the options presented to them. Thus many Czechs of the post World War II generation still maintain countryside cottages, and many, my host mother included, are retiring to the cottage in the summertime. However, the fate of the cottages is uncertain. Eva is not confident that her daughter Zuzana, an only child, will want to keep the family cottage after Eva dies. Maintaining a cottage involves lots manual labor—cutting firewood, trimming trees, keeping a garden, chasing away wild pigs, and managing the plumbing. Eva's concern is that this new generation, born around the revolution of 1989 into capitalist Prague, has little interest in doing this kind of work.
In conclusion, at Easter, as Prague is feeling more like an international city due to the tourist season, Czechs living in Prague spill into the countryside, where they observe the folk tradition of Velikonoce.
With nothing to do on Good Friday, I did a Google search of church services in Prague, but found mainly tourist information about Czech Easter traditions. This seemed appropriate, as the Czech Republic is the most atheistic country in the European Union after Estonia. Unlike in America, here almost no social pressure exists to attend a church service on Easter.
Resigned, I walked over to the Easter market in Old Town Square. I sat on a small square of empty ground underneath the Jan Huss memorial statue and people-watched. I thought back to a couple days ago, when my friend studying in Copenhagen was visiting. While we were sitting in a crowded place, she had asked me to point out who the Czechs are. Now in Old Town Square, I played that game to myself and came up with more foreigners than Czechs. At one point, I heard from behind me a voice say my name, and I looked up to see a friend from the United States with his family. We visited for a while; I finished my pancake and returned to my flat.
On this afternoon of Good Friday, while the roar of the Easter markets could be heard far and wide, a sprinkling of Czechs on each residential street in Prague, removed from the city center, was quietly loading up their cars for this Velikonoce holiday weekend. On Easter weekend, as tourists are moving into Prague, the Czechs are trickling out to their countryside cottage homes, where many prefer to spend the weekend.
In the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia, Easter tradition is this: the boys travel from door to door, like our trick-or-treaters on Halloween. The girls wait at home for the boys. When the boys arrive, they say a chant and hit the girls with willow branches. Once caught and hit, the girls must hand the boys one of their decorated eggs. Adults follow the ritual, but instead of decorated eggs, the women usually offer the men a shot of alcohol.
So, many Czechs living in Prague opt to not share the city with their tourist neighbors on Easter, but rather, when given the chance, retreat to their cottage communities to partake in the Bohemian-Moravian folk tradition of Velikonoce.
The Czech custom of owning such a cottage where the family spends its holidays and summers dates back to communism, when the Soviet government severely limited personal liberties. During this time, if a Czech wanted to leave the country for a vacation, he or she had to appeal to the local government, which in most cases made it very difficult for its citizens to travel. Former Czechoslovakia was a landlocked country, and getting permission to take a vacation to the seaside was particularly difficult. A Czech film called Pupendo (2003, Jan Hrebejk) has as its main character a father who is continually promising his children a trip to the ocean. My host mother Eva laments that she only got to see the sea once every four years.
Instead, the Soviet government encouraged Czechs owning a chata, or weekend cottage, which they would visit and maintain on the weekend, as a domestic getaway from Prague. Many cottages are less than an hour outside the city and are close to other cottages, with still some space in between.
The cottage seems emblematic of the nature of the Czech people. When faced with a lifestyle of limited options, many of them grim and dull, like not pursuing the work one was most passionate about, not speaking one's mind in the university, and not taking a yearly vacation to the sea, the Czechs did the best with the options presented to them. Thus many Czechs of the post World War II generation still maintain countryside cottages, and many, my host mother included, are retiring to the cottage in the summertime. However, the fate of the cottages is uncertain. Eva is not confident that her daughter Zuzana, an only child, will want to keep the family cottage after Eva dies. Maintaining a cottage involves lots manual labor—cutting firewood, trimming trees, keeping a garden, chasing away wild pigs, and managing the plumbing. Eva's concern is that this new generation, born around the revolution of 1989 into capitalist Prague, has little interest in doing this kind of work.
In conclusion, at Easter, as Prague is feeling more like an international city due to the tourist season, Czechs living in Prague spill into the countryside, where they observe the folk tradition of Velikonoce.
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