12 June
Just how totally royal is it to be me? Spent the afternoon and evening lounging in this beautiful Moravian garden surrounded by grapevines which both Milan and his dad got up every now and then to pick a handful of suckers from. Those are the extra vines that can deplete the energy from the grapes. I have armloads of sweet smelling clean clothes and am filled with a wonderful chicken and pasta salad and frankcovka 05 and strawberries and cherries and too many chips. In Moravia, instead of having hor d'oeurves before and dinner after, you eat dinner, then continue to nibble alll night long. I have the illusion of having been helpful in the production of all this because I put a few clothes on the line to dry and helped haul a table outdoors and chopped vegetables for the salad. But actually I mostly lazed about in the lawn chair and read an episode from Dawson's Creek (I had no idea it was a teen agers' program) and The Secret Garden and scratched Beni's ears and followed the progress of a bright green ultralight overhead. Also ate green peas straight from the garden and smiled a lot. Milan's girlfriend Veronika, who is also a former English student of mine-no, I have not taught every single Czech--came over and we had a wine tasting in the Supalkovi cellar. Ivo told me it was empty but he missed a jug or two apparently.
Tuesday--more of the same. Finished LUCKY JIM by Kingsley Amis between arduous sessions of vegetable chopping and dry clothes folding. Funnier than P. G. Wodehouse without being so contrived and should be must reading for all seeking the academic life.
Walked to the bakery to choose breakfast bread with MIlan. We stopped by Veronika's as he had bought her one of her favorite type of bun--sunflower seed braid with cheese filling.
Upon return home, I had a BLT with no B on rye bread, a slice of Dutch Gouda and a fresh peach. We lunched on last night's salad with shreddded lettuce and ice cream sundaes--walnut, strawberry, whipped cream, strawberry syrup.
Pronunciation note with a bit of culture thrown in: Though both Hana and Radek have told me that it is foreign to Czech culture to tell anyone except your mate that you love them, several people here have said that to me and to others in much the same sense that we do in America--children, parents, good friends. I do not want any native English speakers to get cocky until they can properly pronounce the R in Dvorak and the CH in Mucha but Czech speakers often have difficulty with both TH and V/W. The TH thing makes brother into brudder and the confusion of V and W often makes my name into Lovely. LOW-vull-ee.
The EE on the end is a diminutive noting affection and not a plural as is usually the case in Czech. Though I am the giant economy size by their standards, there are not two of me. This is not Theo's LOO-ver-ly which she usually uses to denote things that are anything BUT lovely, but an actual heart-melting pronunciation.
These links are from Josef Zak and are for the readers who think it is just me who has this fascination with things Czech. The Pendolino train lines Fulgham refers to include the train I took down here Monday.
http://robertfulghum.com/index.php/fulghumweb/entry/400_czech_news/
http://robertfulghum.com/index.php/fulghumweb/entry/402_czech_news_exhumed_and_resumed/
Slave labor: I shelled garden fresh green peas and pulled baby carrots after having filled my plastic baggie that I have been using for a coin purse with ripe mulberries for Betty on a walk with Milan and Veronika. Betty and I drove through vineyards, peach and apple orchards, rapeseed fields and barley fields to Naklo, the highest hill in the area, from which you can see many villages and the White Carpathians on the Slovak border and another range whose name I forget. The site is marked by a tall wooden pole with interesting knobs at the top and village coats of arms on the base. It is surrounded by large stones inscribed from nearby towns and villages. There is a gazebo with a bell but it had been vandalized and the clapper removed. I learned to tell the differnce between barley and wheat fields. Wheat heads remain upright while barley heads droop at a sharp angle.
We drove on to Dubnany (where the Thai masseur Mojmir lives when he is not in Iceland) to see Betty and Voytech's workplace, Orfus. It manufactures truck parts for Dutch and German firms and is on the site of an old coal mine. (The Suaplekovi have an old coal mining car in their back yard which they use as a cooling off sort of swimming pool in the summer and as a cistern from which to water the garden.) At the behest of another employee we went mushroom searching but all the ones I found were poisonous, worm infested, or too little.
For all of you who ask for pictures, I will try to explain these in order so that this will NOT be a matching test.
Dvorak Memorial--exterior of house and long shot down central hallway to spiral staircase in rear hall
Meat Cake--literal translation of this party food--rather like a 3D party platter available form the butcher shop that belongs ot my landlady;s family in PragueDoll Museum in Paris--these are all from Raynal which is sort of the French equivalent of Madame Alexander
Svata Hora--Looking toward the terrace chapel built for hte coronation of the wooden statue of Mary and Jesus
Vojna Memorial--one of many wooden towers situated between two rows of barbed wire fencing--convenient for pot shots at desperate escapees
Na shledanou, Pronouced NOSK luh don oo and means good bye,
Lowell
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