When I was in Prague I got to meet different people and I had a really good time. The first night I was in Prague, I was the only person in the hotel. The second night, though, three other people came as well. They were older Czechs, maybe in their early 60's, friends who were coming to Prague for Christmas because they didn't have any family around. One of the ladies was also called Hana and the other two (a guy and a lady) had very Czech names with lots of Zs and Js.
I first met them when I back to the hotel after an evening out at the Christmas Markets. I came back to the hotel and, as I was going through the lobby into my room:
"Dobry den (hello)" said the guy.
"Dobry den" I replied in my best Czech accent. And then he started talking to me in Czech.
"I'm sorry" I said, "I don't speak Czech. Do you speak English?"
He shook his head. "Sprechen Sie Deutsch? (Do you speak German?)"
"Nur ein bisschen (only a little bit)" I replied. And then I went into my room. I heard them chatting in the lobby (which was right outside my room) and I decided to go sit in the lobby, have a cappuccino, make plans for the next day, and be sociable.
When I was finishing up, they invited me over and they produced a computer with a translating program. Then, with the Czech version of Google Translate, the overlap of my Dutch and their German, their few words of English, and lots of miming, we talked about politics, history, religion, and Czech culture for the next couple of hours. It was a lot of fun.
They were actually from near the town of Zlin, which is the area where the Andersons are currently working as missionaries. I had been reading in a guide book about the Czech Republic and knew that there were three cultural divisions--Bohemia (which was where Prague is), Silesia, and a third that I couldn't remember (it's Moravia). I was trying to think of good questions to keep up a good conversation so I asked if they were from the Silesian part of the Czech Republic. I figured I had a 50% chance of not looking like an idiot by mentioning Silesia and it worked out. (Although, considering the relative sizes of the regions, it was really more like a 10% chance) The guy was from the Silesian part, although the ladies were not. He was really impressed that I knew the name because they associated the term with religious differentiation rather than cultural or dialectical distinctions and he wondered why an American would know about a weird, tiny, fundamentalist religious minority in the Eastern Czech Republic (if you click here it will open up a new window with a map showing the regions of the Czech Republic). I blamed it on Dad and said that he had taught us a lot about religious history, which also intrigued them and they wondered if we were Catholic (they crossed themselves a lot to ask that question) and if Dad taught at a religious school or had taken holy orders.
The Czech folks had the doors to their rooms open and the guy had the soccer game on so that he could listen to it. At one point, the announcer started cheering and the guy shouted "Point". I asked who was playing and the ladies laughed and said that he didn't know and that it didn't matter. It was just whatever game they happened to have on at Christmas.
They also shared Christmas cookies--which were delicious. They had some that where exactly like Russian Tea Cakes--in the crescent shape and everything, although I think they used regular walnuts, not black ones--but they didn't call them "Russian". I looked them up, to find the real Czech name for them but all I came up with was "Vanilkové rohlíčky" which means "Vanilla Rolls". However, I don't think that is what they called them--the translator called the "Hell Hesky", or something like that (the translator had fairly frequent contextual issues) and now I can't figure out what they called them. Vanilla Rolls just sounds so boring. By the by, though, when I was looking for the name, there was a site that mentioned that the popularity of the name "Mexican Wedding Cake" rose during the Cold War, I guess in the same way that "Freedom Fries" became a not-so-subtle political statement.
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