I am running with this story now that Brno has become the 27th place in the world to visit out of 52 this year, according to New York Times.
I am very proud of this city. It has completely revamped itself from its communist mantra lasting until 1989. It is en par with the great cities of Vienna, Geneva, Prague and Budapest.
The architecture in the downtown area of Svoboda’s Square and the pedestrian zones is Art Nouveau, Empire and Neo-Classical. These styles are visible on the building of Janacek’s Academy of Music in the university district adjacent to the main square.
I was born in Brno, graduated from the Technical University of Brno in 1986 and I visited this gem in 2013. My friends live and work in Brno. I cherish the memories in my heart. Enjoy this city as much as I have.
I have safely returned home after travelling around several European countries including France, Spain, Czech Republic and Switzerland.
This is the eighth installment in my adventure travel series when I decided to step back into the past to fuel my memoir “Greenwich Meridian, where East meets West.”
Lost in Brno- Czech Republic
I had one entire day on Sept. 25th to relive it all in post-revolution Brno, while my friend Jane worked her post-revolution work for an Austrian firm.
“Just follow the tram tracks into town,” she said.
Now, that was easier said than done. Brno was and is a pulsing metropolis that has cleaned itself up, so it is completely en par with Prague, Paris and Geneva. As I got into town, I found myself caught in an entire web of pedestrian zones surrounding a big park; they all seemed to lead onto Jost Boulevard.
Lowell, MI – The January Daily Post writing prompt “If I could turn back time” hits close to home as I am writing the second half of the family immigration memoir “Greenwich Meridian.”
Whenever I sit behind the computer and think about the past, it evokes an entire spectrum of memories ranging from excellent to poor.
If there was a time machine, I would return to two big eras in my life. Chronologically speaking, first I would go back into the late 70s and mid-80s.
Clock work hardware.
It was a tumultuous time in my life. In not even a decade, I managed to get married, have a first-born daughter Emma, finish prep school Gymnasium Zlin, work at a veterinarian institute and finally complete bachelor’s degree at the Technical University in Brno. I got my first car as a present from parents for graduating. It was a black Skoda Rapid LS, the sports version. What I didn’t manage to do was to get a driver’s license because of all the other studying. I regretted that later in my life when I came to the USA in the nineties.
So, why would I want to return to something as intense as the marriage while studying bundle?
There is one great reason that threaded through all that time. And those were my grandparents Anna & Joseph Drabek. They lived in Vizovice, Moravia, that is the central part of Czech Republic.
My grandpa bought a house in 1979 on the outskirts of Vizovice because he was sick of living in a tiny apartment overlooking the château park. He called the dilapidated dwelling “ranch.” It had the lucky street number 111.
Old Town Square in Prague with horologe.
That completely struck harmony with my husband Ludek and I, since we were sick of living in the massive apartment complex “Southern Slopes” that housed more than 30,000 people. These massive apartment complexes that sprang all over the Czech Republic were known as “Building successes of communism.”
People desperately tried to escape those modern concrete successes. Most often they escaped into the local pubs and breweries. The luckier ones had cottages and dwellings in the country. Thanks to my grandparents we were among the lucky ones.
And the beautiful years on the ranch ensued. It was an epic time.
Every weekend, we packed up Emma in a portable baby carry on, boarded the morning bus to Vizovice and for a while we forgot all about living in a concrete box at the concrete fort in Zlin, then Gottwaldov.
To this day, I hold Vizovice close to my heart. I went to kindergarten and first grade there and I made many friends on the street. I call them my “street friends.” We still meet when I go back on rare occasions usually for funerals.
Classic plum brandy known as slivovice.
Later with my husband, we made friends together in this plum brandy capital of the world surrounded by the Carpathian Mountains. Yes, this city in the Walachian region rich in folklore, boasts the headquarters of the liquor giant “R. Jelinek” established in 1894. The plant spurts out 100 proof plum brandy into the whole world. The liquor is known for being able to “knock out everything that’s bad in you.” That covers bacteria, bad thoughts, habits, flu and earaches.
One moment at the ranch really stands out in my memory. As we were cleaning the house, we found 20-year old canned pork steaks that the owners Bohacovi left. The pork had beautiful pink color. I remember my mouth watering.
On Sunday, I opened the jars, sniffed and tasted the meat. Perfect. I made the best breaded steaks in my life. We all ate them and waited into the night for a sickness that never came.
A true CzechAmerican treat Budweiser in a kriegel.
There were countless episodes of searching for grandpa who loved to wander off into the local watering holes. His best excuse was that he was going to get some beverages and groceries so we can make lunch and dinner.
That Saturday in the heat of the summer, there was not a drop of water to drink on the dried out premises.
“Where is grandpa,” asked Ludek working on the bathroom. “I don’t have anything to drink.”
I was hand washing the universal cotton cloth diapers and Emma’s baby clothes in a bucket in the front yard, while grandma Anna was resting on a wooden bench. Grandma suffered from Parkinson’s disease. She spent most of the day laying on the bench that grandpa made for her. Baby Emma was sleeping in her carry-on.
“That beastie, I bet he’s at the hotel,” said grandma with a sigh.
Socialist successes- apartment mega complexes that surround Brno.
She was referring to the local hotel with a restaurant known as the “People’s House” with the following inscription, “Equality, freedom, fraternity.”
I always wondered why the hotel had in its coat of arms the slogan of the French revolution. No one could answer my question.
“Ludek can you please go to the hotel and get grandpa to come home?” grandma requested.
“Okay, I’ll be right back,” Ludek hurried away hiding his ulterior motives.
As my stomach growled, I had a strange feeling that afternoon.
Grandma dozed off and I headed to the kitchen to figure out what we’re going to eat. There was some salami and old “rohliky” or Czech croissants, already chewy like a gum.
“Okay, we’re just going to have to wing it this time,” I thought to myself as I made some chewy sandwiches.
Minutes changed into hours and the sun started its path down the horizon.
“Emma, you’re going to have to go and get them,” grandma said struggling with the sandwich. “I’ll watch Emma.”
It wasn’t the first time or the last time that I had to drag out of the hotel the twosome.
I found both of them in great joy downing their 10th beer “kriegel” along with shots of brandy.
“Grandma says you gotta come home,” I begged. “We’re hungry and thirsty.”
“Come and have one with us and then we’ll go home,” grandpa laughed.
“You promise?” I downed the “kriegel” filled with Brod beer from nearby Uhersky Brod.
That was the best case scenario when they would finally agree to go back to the ranch as the dusk set in.
And I write about all this and much more in the memoir. I want to finish the memoir this year.
Part II If I could turn back time……Living in Canada coming next week.
Lowell, MI- It’s been 26 years since we’ve landed at JFK on this day, Dec. 22, 1989. The long flight from former Czechoslovakia finally ended. We took the Czechoslovak Airlines flight (CSA). People were still smoking on jets back then.
I was exhausted with two children and from the previous night ride to the Prague airport.
Me and Al Capone in America.
It was a journey into the unknown, although I have lived in the USA in the 70s. My parents were waiting for us at the frozen airport. I only had a Benetton denim jacket on and I was freezing. I was still sporting long hair and jeans from Austria.
We spent the night at a friend’s house in NYC. And then a long trip to Big Rapids, Michigan ensued. Any water tower that we passed, my son Jake wanted to climb on it. Also he insisted on sitting in my lap over and over despite the fact that he had to be buckled up.
“I’ll make you a chock for you to sit on,” said my dad.
The windows of the gray station wagon have frozen up. We were like in an ice cave from the film Elsa. That increased the claustrophobia in me, as well as anxiety.
We finally arrived on Christmas Eve in Big Rapids. We picked up my brother Vas from his trailer with an enormous flood light in Roger’s Heights.
Mom had the festive supper ready ahead of time. The Czech traditional fare for Christmas Eve is mushroom or fish soup, fried fish and potato salad. And of course traditional Czech pastries. The only choice of fish back in Czech homeland was carp.
Czech homeland
We opened presents and all I could think of was if I could go to bed. Dad turns on TV and there’s the Rumanian revolution. I just have escaped one, the Velvet Revolution. I participated in it on frigid town squares including Wenceslas Square in Prague. I shouted along with two million other people:
“Havel na hrad.”
That translates as, “Havel for president or Havel to the castle.”
I finally laid in bed thinking about all of this.
“What’s ahead of me?”
My husband received immigration visa to Montreal, Canada. I had to make decisions again what to do, “Stay or leave?”
We moved to Montreal and we lived in that great cosmopolitan city for three years. In 1993 we returned to Michigan. I took journalism classes at the Grand Rapids Community College.
In 1995, we built a house outside of Lowell in Vergennes Township and that sealed it for us.
Traditional Czech Christmas pastries.
The details of all of this are in my memoir “Greenwich Meridian” that I have to complete. It is my goal to pick it back up in January 2016 and to finish our story.
Happy holiday season to all from Emma Blogs, LLC. A Czech tradition, the three Sundays of Christmas. They are bronze, silver and gold Sundays prior to Christmas Eve. People head out and shop in outdoors Christmas markets.
Copyright (c) 2015 Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
A note to all. I am participating in a 30 day content writing challenge by Learn to blog. All posts reflect my views on today’s world including my own.
This morning I woke up to a Facebook post that made me cry from Czech homeland. It was from Radhost mountains in Czech Republic. I’ve been to the Radhost mountains many times even though I am a bad downhill skier, but the area has grown close to my heart.
Plus we got our first snow in Michigan yesterday.
I want to share the beauty of Radhost with all my friends.
Radhost mountains in Czech Republic.
Cyril’s chapel
Friends at Radhost.
Copyright (c) 2015 Emma Blogs, LLC. All rights reserved.
Czech Harvest Festival “Dozinky” in Bannister celebrates ethnicity
By Emma Palova
Bannister, Michigan- For years I’ve been going to the Czech Harvest Festival to honor my Czech heritage. I consider it a miracle that I even found out about it through a press release to the Ionia Sentinel-Standard from an insurance agent.
Considering that it takes place in the middle of nowhere in Central Michigan in the August heat, I think about what made me go that first time.
First of all, it must have been curiosity if anyone will speak Czech there at all. I am by nature a lover of new things, whatever they may be.
Czech dances in Bannister, MI in traditional costumes custom-made in Czech and Slovak republics.
I was in for a surprise. A gentleman sang folk songs in Czech even though he didn’t speak a word of Czech to the lonely tunes of an accordion. A Czech polka band accompanied the hymns at the Czech Heritage Mass at the Saint Cyril Catholic Church. The hymns were in Czech. The gifts included bread and plum brandy.
The harvest festival opens with a parade of dancers and singers carrying decorated rakes and sickles. Then follow the three national anthems, American, Czech and Slovak.
And the absolute highlight were the dances in folk costumes starting with two-year-olds all the way up to 70.
Coming from a region in Moravia in Czech Republic which is big on folk costumes and traditions, I felt a sincere appreciation for dance masters Tom & Diane Bradley. The Bradleys completely recreated the Czech tradition of celebrating the wheat harvest based on research only.
The tradition in Bannister will live on despite the aging population of the organizers. The hall published a cookbook dedicated to future generations during the 100th anniversary celebration in 2011, so they will not forget the recipes of their ancestors.
We always eat the main meal at the ZCBJ fraternity hall either inside or on the large porch. That brings me to the staple of the festival which is Czech food. The women of the hall prepare traditional Czech fare that is dumplings, sauerkraut, fresh cucumber salad, ham and chicken. The dessert is either apple strudel or rolls filled with nuts.
Of course no Czech festival would be complete without beer.
Most of the participants have never been to Czech or Slovak republics. I admire the zeal that has lasted, thanks to the ZCBJ lodge, for more than 100 years.
Lowell, MI- I love the Fourth of July holiday for many reasons. Most of all the Independence Day reminds me of my independence when I decided on my own free will to leave my homeland Czech Republic to pursue a better future in America.
Most of my dreams have come true and I am working on the ones that haven’t materialized yet. I am grateful to this great country that I have the freedom to express myself without censorship, that I can fly as high as I choose to, that I can be a woman entrepreneur.
Lowell Showboat decked out for July 4th
While honoring the past in Czech Republic, I am moving ahead with life in the USA. Sometimes seemingly small steps lead to bigger victories. The path is not always straight, it winds and twists much like life itself. We now have deep roots in USA with the fourth generation already born here on the continent right at Bronson and Borgess hospitals in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
I trust that Josephine, 19 months old and the new guy will be fully bilingual in this ever-changing world. I know they will be able to travel to the old country to trace their roots and marvel at the European culture, try some Czech beer and the national dish; pork, dumplings and sauerkraut.
Lowell, MI- I am a lifelong tea drinker, even though I had my periods of drinking coffee during the early 2000s while working for the Ionia Sentinel-Standard.
My love for tea goes back to my childhood. We cured everything with either chamomile tea or plum brandy.
We used chamomile tea with honey to calm us down and at night to sleep. Quite often stories circulated about giving a brew from raw poppy heads not quite mature yet to kids, so they sleep better.
Healing teas and VanGogh’s self-portrait
The love for tea grew stronger while living in Sudan, Africa. There is a huge misconception that in hot weather you have to drink cold beverages. Actually, the body and the beverage temperatures should be close, just like in cooking.
“Everything has to have the same temperature,” says my cousin Brona Pink, a trained chef. That’s probably why Russians eat ice cream in winter.
Not knowing this fact back then, we drank by default both cold and hot tea in huge pitchers at the African apartment complex. I didn’t know much about herbs back in the 1970s, so we used mostly black tea with caffeine.
Betty Dickinson of Ionia
The next run with tea was after I gave birth to my daughter in 1979 and started having problems with my gall bladder and digestion. I looked deeper into herbs and teas. There are many teas that are good for digestion. These are mostly made from bitter herbs like dandelion. Dandelions are not just those ugly yellow flowers in your lawn. Our friend in Czech Republic used to make wine from them.
“They are one of the nature’s best medicine,” writes herbalist Betty Dickinson in her book “Creating a Healthy Corner.”
“I eat the leaves fresh early in the spring before they blossom,” she writes.
My encounter with Dickinson in 2000 after I came back to USA from a trip to Czech Republic was one of the most important milestones in my life.
Dickinson was and still is a columnist for the Ionia Sentinel-Standard and she also writes for EW Emma’s Writings and for E Health & Wellness.
I was already organically bound as opposed to using chemicals, but she helped me understand the workings of nature.
I was overweight at the time and she suggested a tea mix consisting of celery seeds, kelp and nettle. I still use it to this day. Nettle and burdock are in most digestive teas.
Tea has always inspired me to a point that I wrote seven chapters of “Tea Council” in 2000, and lost them later when I switched computers.
The most recent run with tea was in 2012 when I lost my hair for unknown reasons. Dickinson had a cure for me; nettle again and yucca.
I also discovered the best tea line ever the “Health King.” Their “Hair Regeneration” with privet root and black sesame helped me get my hair back. But their “Dong Quai Lady’s tea is the true king.
Ironically, my mom, who is a former pharmacist does not believe in herbs, teas or supplements.
“That’s a bunch of bullshit,” she says.
Well, all I can say is how I feel when I have the teas and when I don’t. The Lady’s tea with Angelica chinensis helps maintain normal gynecological functions and it alleviates cramps.
Whenever tired after long hours of writing I use yerba mate by EcoTeas.
The Organic India tea line is also good.
My love affair with teas continues. I love to serve them, I love to drink them and the artist in me loves their colors. They range from yellow jasmine to dark chocolate yerba mate. Maybe, there is a British or a Russian person in me. Plus drinking tea is a highly social event in many countries like the United Kingdom in the form of “high tea.” The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island also serves “high tea” at 5 p.m.
authoremmapalova 