One of the fun things about going to any country is reading up on its history, current politics, some key language terms, and of course culture and anthropology (one of the very funny things is that yes is ano and no is ne—and of course in Japanese, ano ne means something like ummm or geeeez…). My family had a bit more time on their hands than I did prior to coming here, and they digested a steady stream of books and movies. One of the more interesting things I’ve found out here is how connected Czech is to Western Europe. Many of its castles—zameks at least—were founded by French barons fleeing the French Revolution. In many ways it seemed like an accident in history that such a country would end up east of the wall and thus be associated as belonging to Eastern Europe. I mentioned this to a Czech friend steeped in history and he agreed, saying it was the decision of a few very high-level administrators sitting around a table after WWII.
I’ve heard so many fascinating stories about the changes the country went through under the Communist years and then again coming out from them, and it’s tempting to write them all. My friends say they really had no conception what existed just west of their borders outside of the occasionally smuggled magazine or reverse-James Bond films. Not even any juice! But as hard as the times were, they also describe a society where unemployment, poverty, and homelessness, among other things, flat out didn’t exist. In everything I have seen in my lifetime, I realized that this is totally inconceivable to me. They described the poet and future president Vaclav Havel shoveling coal and one woman’s father, a doctor, being assigned far from his home. They were laughing as they said this, and I asked if they meant this as a positive thing or negative—“it just was the way it was,” they said. Such a different world before 1989…! We can’t even imagine now. Another time I happened to mention to a friend that it seemed I’d been seeing so many babies around Prague. He said it was funny, because this was actually at an all time low. I asked why, and he said it is kind of like a thing which must be fitted in with the modern life—with two parents having a career, needing to make enough money, etc., and the more kids, the harder it is to support. While before, their lives were pretty much set, and the bigger the family, the more support the kids would offer. Not only were families having less children and doing so at older ages, many were simply never becoming parents. It was kind of sad to hear about the kind of sacrifices as the society moves into “modernity”…
Just the other day David was telling me about a very traditional way a family would kill a pig at a special holiday, by slowly slitting its throat and stirring its blood for soup. They carefully took out the intestines and washed them in a special laundry machine the grandmother had for this purpose only. They then cut the organs into very tiny pieces and separated the fat, then put these small meat pieces back in the intestines and fried and cooked them. Today no one has time to do this, so they just buy pork from the big grocery store in town. Don’t know exactly how I feel about all this as one who abstains from meat, but interesting nonetheless.
I’ve heard so many fascinating stories about the changes the country went through under the Communist years and then again coming out from them, and it’s tempting to write them all. My friends say they really had no conception what existed just west of their borders outside of the occasionally smuggled magazine or reverse-James Bond films. Not even any juice! But as hard as the times were, they also describe a society where unemployment, poverty, and homelessness, among other things, flat out didn’t exist. In everything I have seen in my lifetime, I realized that this is totally inconceivable to me. They described the poet and future president Vaclav Havel shoveling coal and one woman’s father, a doctor, being assigned far from his home. They were laughing as they said this, and I asked if they meant this as a positive thing or negative—“it just was the way it was,” they said. Such a different world before 1989…! We can’t even imagine now. Another time I happened to mention to a friend that it seemed I’d been seeing so many babies around Prague. He said it was funny, because this was actually at an all time low. I asked why, and he said it is kind of like a thing which must be fitted in with the modern life—with two parents having a career, needing to make enough money, etc., and the more kids, the harder it is to support. While before, their lives were pretty much set, and the bigger the family, the more support the kids would offer. Not only were families having less children and doing so at older ages, many were simply never becoming parents. It was kind of sad to hear about the kind of sacrifices as the society moves into “modernity”…
Just the other day David was telling me about a very traditional way a family would kill a pig at a special holiday, by slowly slitting its throat and stirring its blood for soup. They carefully took out the intestines and washed them in a special laundry machine the grandmother had for this purpose only. They then cut the organs into very tiny pieces and separated the fat, then put these small meat pieces back in the intestines and fried and cooked them. Today no one has time to do this, so they just buy pork from the big grocery store in town. Don’t know exactly how I feel about all this as one who abstains from meat, but interesting nonetheless.
Oh, of these two photos... one is of a couple pigs being roasted at a fair we walked through. They cut its flesh off it directly to make the sausages below. The other is a meal a friend got... raw beef with a raw egg in the middle surrounded by a variety of spices. You mix this all together, and then are served bread fried in oil. You scrape a garlic clove against it and a pinch of salt, and spoon the meat onto it....
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