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April 2, 2012. I went to visit a friend who lived in a village near Ostrava. (This was not a backpacking trip.) I learned a lot about European history during my stay with her. There had always been Germans and Czechs living in Bohemia and Moravia (and a whole bunch of other ethnic groups such as Pols, Hungarians, Jews, and various other Slavs) but I guess Czechs made up the majority. For example, when Charles University was founded in 1348 in Prague during the Golden Age of Czech history, the university was divided into Czech, Polish, Saxon, and Bavarian "nations." The house my friend lived in was originally German. When the Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia after WWII, they were not given much time to move and they weren't allowed to take much with them, so they left most things behind. The government then allotted the German houses to various Czech families in the area and my friend's family got this house that she lives in now. There was one whole section of the house she had not yet renovated and that was where she stored all the stuff that the German family left behind. I went into an antique shop
in Trebič and was admiring all the really old stuff you can so easily find in Europe and my friend said that she's got a whole room full of stuff like this (her storage), including a gun from the 18th century, meaning, she didn't find the shop impressive and why was I ogling everything with my mouth open. I found books over a hundred years old on her shelf at home. I guess Europeans are just so used to living with so much history around them.
She lived near Studenka which has a sports centre and we went swimming there. It also had a hockey rink. We visited the castle at Hradec nad Moravicí . Mozart, Beethoven and Liszt were all guests at this castle and lived in the grounds for short periods of time. There was a floating sculpture in the garden. We went for walks around the countryside and saw a house occupied by a gypsy family. They were friendly and said hello. I saw a pair of white-tailed deer in the forest, a ptarmigan (the large and fancy one), a woodpecker and a river otter.
It was Easter and the central square in Brno was full of stalls selling food and touristic items as well as Easter goods such as the pomlázka (whip made from braided twigs) for hitting the women on Easter morning. People were selling ham roasting (rotating) on an open pit. I went to the farmer's market at Zelný trh square. The honey and several other things looked really good. I was excited to find a St. Francis of Assisi church at the square but it was closed so I visited the Petrov Cathedral. There were too many other amazing places in Brno but I had no time.
In Trebič, we went to a café near the hostel and it had hot chocolate in all kinds of flavours: dark chocolate, milk chocolate, vanilla chocolate, white chocolate, with strawberries, with cherries, amaretto, cinnamon & orange, hazelnuts, caramel, egg liqueur, etc. They also had chai with mango or mint.
The most amazing thing I saw on this trip was the Jewish cemetery in Trebič. The oldest grave was 1631. All the really old graves were in Yiddish. Germans migrated to Bohemia and Moravia in the 1st century BCE, the 6th century ACE and again in the 13th century, and it seems like the Jewish communities came with them because Jews in Bohemia spoke Yiddish and lived in the German areas, but eventually, they integrated with the Czech communities because the more recent tombstones had Czech inscriptions and even the names were more Czech than Jewish. I did not go to the Jewish cemetery in Prague but that one dates from 1438! After that, we went to the Basilica which was built in 1250. The temperature inside was 7°C for the preservation of relics. The confession queue was super long.
Bílovec has a small Jewish cemetery and since no living relatives were left, the Jewish Society was taking care of the cemetery. But the Jewish Society no longer wants to take care of it so now it is falling into disrepair.
My friend's mother said that her mother (my friend's grandmother) was born and had died on Feb 22 and she herself was also born on Feb 22. Well, that's a lot of 2's. I thought bonbon (candy) was a French word but it's actually Czech. I had some homemade strudels and it was so delicious, ten times better than any strudels I've had anywhere. In fact, I've never really liked strudels but that was sooooo good. I don't eat sugar normally especially not baked goods and I think I had 3 of them. My mouth waters every time I think about those strudels.
My friend had a sauna in the house and a tub full of water that sits just outside the door of the sun room in the garden. The outside temperature was around 3°C so the water in the tub would have been around that temperature. The procedure is to set the sauna to 80°C, take a shower, sit in the sauna for 20 minutes, take a very quick shower to wash the sweat off, dunk yourself in the tub outside, and then sit in the sun room until you feel cold, then go back to the sauna for another 20 minutes, quick shower, dunk in cold tub, sit in sun room till you feel cold, then go back in the sauna and cover yourself with honey (or coconut oil, or almond oil, etc.) and then sit for 20 min, then a quick shower, dunk in cold tub and relax. After my first 20 minutes in the sauna, I couldn't bring myself to dunk as the water in the outside tub felt ice cold. But after the second 20 min in the sauna, I dunked in cold water very very quickly (not even half a second) and when I was sitting in the sun room, my whole body throbbed violently but it felt so good, like it was much better than any cardio work-out. So after the third 20 min in the sauna, I dunked again and not as quickly as the first time. My friend does this once a week. I think she will live beyond 100 years old for sure.
My friend told me about what she and her family experienced when the Russians were in Czechoslovakia. She was in her 20's so remembers everything really well. It was amazing to hear a first person account of what happened. Those were some crazy times!
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