zmrzlina, brusinka, and dr pepper!

hi everyone!

welcome to another edition of vanessa-and-anne in the land of the czechs. so much has happened in the last 2 or 3 days that i am already exhausted...and my extremely comfortable bed doesn't provide much inspiration to overcome my exhaustion either...neither does this slightly gray day, or the book i am reading, brick lane....all in all, it is a day for relaxing and staying in bed. that is what laptops are for!

where to begin? pictures will tell the stories better than i can, so hopefully we can get a few of them off the cameras and uploaded to the blog shortly. anne came in early on wednesday morning, and i walked through a still-sleeping plzen to find her at the train station. we spent wednesday walking the city, orienting ourselves amongst the myriad parks and monuments. the city is actually quite lovely, full of large grassy areas, manicured gardens, and tinkling fountains. i was marveling at the sheer number of parks and gardens when someone pointed out that most of the cities hit hard by WWII or local uprisings against communism have tons of parks, due to the fact that something had to put in to take the place of the buildings that were bombed out or demolished....hadn't really thought about it that way before....

after a day of seeing plzen and discovering both cranberry juice (brusinka) AND dr. pepper (two things i simply can't find in italy), we headed back to the hotel so that i could get ready for my first show. the superb jakub korinek is my touring partner during these few days that i am here, and he opened the show for me. he is a self-taught guitarist, blues-style, and one of the best that i have even seen - ranks up there with jeff lang from australia, for whom i opened last year. he is really, really talented - and only 25.

the show went really well. an incredibly kind man named george, and his wife nika, bought my CD after hearing sound check, and after the show he proceeded to nearly throw himself prostrate at my feet, thanking me for playing. he loves american folk/country, he said, and i think i made his week. when i told him i would be playing there again the following wednesday, he was nearly beside himself.

anne, on the other hand, was beseiged by two friendly (overly) czech folks who spoke czech and only a tiny bit of german...we speak english, french, and italian, and a bit of spanish...so 6 languages between us, and we couldn't communicate to save our souls. this didn't seem to bother them though...they ploughed on for 3 straight hours, talking and smiling and shaking their heads as though it was a pity we couldn't understand them, but what could you do? the show must go on....the man was rather drunk, and insisted on dancing with anne for the better portion of the evening, and after he bought 4 copies of my CD, he rewarded me with a big fat smacker on the lips. all in all a bit of a hair-raising siutation. they were really kind though, buying us food and drinks all night (i had to keep hiding my beer, because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but i don't drink beer, and therefore 2 beers were definitely beyond my ability to fake sipping it...) When it came time for us to leave, we weren't sure how to tell them that we needed to go to bed without offending them, but a stroke of marvelous luck from above brought an italian man and his czech wife over to our tables... italian poured out of my mouth, out of sheer relief and excitement....the czech couple looked at me like i was crazy, as i hadn't spoken all evening....but anyhow, between the 6 of us, we managed to convey the message that we had enjoyed ourselves, etc, but the time had come to be moving on....they seemed geniunely disappointed to see us go, though i can't imagine what possible pleasure they could have derived from the evening...

anyhow, we snuck away and off to bed, because we were planning on getting up super early to take a train to cesky krumlov, a charming little town about 3 hours from here. we made our train with time to spare (italian-style, it was running late), and when the conductor punched our ticket, he said something that sounded like autobus, but we had no idea, so we just smiled and nodded. then at some point, about an hour or two later, the train stopped in the middle of nowhere, and everyone started getting off...so we did too. everyone piled onto about 5 buses, and the buses drove through the czech countryside, which actually looks a good deal like east texas....and 15 minutes later, we were at another train station, so we all re-boarded the trains and took off again...a bit later our train arrived to the town where the original budweiser beer was invented, called cesky budujovic, and we had to change trains (rather, run for our train) again....this was the train that was headed to cesky krumlov, and the car we chose was full of elderly czechs, i suppose on some sort of organized outing... we were the youngest people in the carriage by 40 years, easily...then other stop, all the old folks off, and on with the young kiddies, a group of 5 or 6 year olds on an outing with a couple of harried teachers in tow.... all in all it was 3 hours full of surprises and funny smells...the smells of trains, of buses, of sausage, of 20 sweaty little kids crammed into a train car...

anyhow, czeky krumlov was worth the madness. it is a lovely little town, UNESCO-protected, lodged in the middle of green hills and basically surrounded, island-like, by a river that flows around and through the center of town... we climbed to the top of the magnificent castle, whose moat is protected by bears, and got an incredible view of the town... we ate like kings for 500 kroner, which is about $20...we had potato dumplings, all kinds of meat dishes, sauerkraut, spiced mead, and dumplings in blueberry sauce for dessert... so good... and with our teeth purple, we marched back out into the sunny day. we visited the marionette museum, which had a kind if super-strange curator, who seemed to be in love with each individual puppet...they seemed to be real people to her, so concerned she was with the individual well-being of each of them... Later that afternoon, we had coffee on the banks of the river and watched all the rafters and canoers go by.... quite a lovely day, actually. the only blight on the day occurred on the way home...struck by one of my famous hunger attacks (those of you who know me well know that when i am hungry, rationale goes by the wayside quickly), i made the shameful decision to eat at.... mcdonald's. yes, it is true. i have to say though, it was good, if not great. my only regret was not trying the McZorba, a greek hamburger made with feta and cucumbers....

anyhow, we slept in yesterday, exhausted from our day of catching trains and clogging our arteries. George Janacek, a Czech-American who owns the hotel where we are staying, took me around running errands yesterday, helping me buy stamps at the post office. This hotel is a landmark in Plzen and has been in his family for 100 years…his parents escaped to America just before the end of WWII, and had to wait until the Velvet Revolution in 1989, when Communism crumbled here, before returning to reclaim it. It had undergone extensive renovations and is lovely – if you are ever planning a trip to the Czech Republic, check out http://www.hotelcontinental.cz/

Yesterday I had a show in Most, a town about 100 km north of Plzen. Jakub, Anne and I went by car, and guess who drove? Jakub doesn’t have a license, so it fell to me. Driving in a Toyota Corolla through the Czech countryside…who would have thought? We pulled over at one point to buy fresh blueberries from a woman selling them on the side of the road…her mouth and teeth were purple, so I guess whatever she doesn’t sell, she eats….but 30 kr later (a little more than a dollar), and Anne had half a liter of blueberries to munch on to her heart’s content.

The show was fantastic. The pub is tiny tiny…holds 40 people uncomfortably, and there were at least that many there. The audience was superb though – dead silent and attentive. I always find it fascinating when foreign audiences listen so closely, because it means they find something worthwhile in the guitar or vocal melody, because it certainly isn’t the lyrics they were listening to…no one there really spoke English, at least not enough to follow what I was saying.

Today we are going to the Plzen Zoo and then to Duchcov tonight for another show, and then Monday I go into the studio with Jakub to record a song for a compilation CD he is working on...should be fun. Thanks to all of you who have been buying Thin Thread...cross your fingers that I make it into the top 100 sellers...

dobry den,
vanessa