Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Het heeft gesneeuwd!

Snow gathering on the balcony railing in the kind-of-gloominess of yesterday.
Which is Dutch for "It snowed!"

Yesterday was only the fourth time it got below freezing all year.  And it was also the first snow!  It wasn't very much snow but it was real snow.  And it stuck.  I am very, very delighted.  It is supposed to stay under freezing (around 30 degrees) all the rest of the week, too.  For what it's worth, all this week it is going to be around 20 to 25 up in Friesland, which does say good things about freezing stuff, maybe.

I went for a walk in the snow in the afternoon.  It was pleasant, a little chilly, and it finally felt like winter.

As I was walking down the street, I noticed that all of the cars had been cleaned off in a peculiar pattern.  The side windows, the hoods, and the trunks had been cleaned off.  However, for the rear windows and windshields, only the outside edges had been cleaned up.  At first I couldn't figure out why this was so.  Then I saw little kids running around and realized that the cleaned areas of snow were where they had scrapped off all the show that they could reach, so that they could have snow ball fights.  There were kids out all over the place, running around, chasing each other with handfuls of snow.  They seemed to really be enjoying themselves.  Even the adults seemed to be in a particularly festive mood.  Snow is good stuff.

This morning, with snow sparkling in the sunshine.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Jesuit College


The Jesuit College was a major political/religious institution at Kutná Hora.  It is in the massive, long, white building beside the St. Barbara's Cathedral.  It is now used as an art gallery.  It houses the Czech Museum of Fine Arts.  I was going to include a link to that but it doesn't display the nicest of paintings.  The Jesuit College is a UNESCO world heritage site.



  

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Chrám Sv. Barbory

Chrám Sv. Barbory, or St. Barbara's Cathedral, is the major cathedral of Kutná Hora.  It is a fair walk up mountains (at least compared to the Netherlands) to get to it. and there is a very pretty approach.  It was a gorgeous view, even though it was gray and misty.  I can't even guess what it would be like if it was a clear sunny day out.  St. Barbara's is the spiky spire-filled building.  The white building is the old Jesuit College.




If you notice the terracing beside the cathedral (see, I told you it was on a mountain) that is all set up with grape vines and, if I understood them correctly, they make local wines here.  It makes it mighty picturesque place to walk around.

These are pictures of the vineyard and the valley from the St. Barbara Cathedral.









The walk up to the cathedral is lined with lots and lots of giant stone statutes.  It is impressive looking.

















 




Some of the statues are more ghoulish than others. 

Front view of St. Barbara's Cathedral


There are some pretty impressive stained glass windows in the cathedral.  I don't know what the technique used was (and you probably can't really see it) but there is some pretty impressive shading and detail on the glass that make it look more like a painting than like a stained glass design.












The statue on the left is of a miner as the area was full of silver mines.  The backwards apron  is specifically so that the miner can use it as a sled to slide down into the mine.  Can you image what the climb out, at the end of the day must be like if the best way down in the morning is to sled down on special leather aprons?

The pulpit below is pretty elaborate.

        





I liked the Cathedral ceiling.  It looks kind of like an antique modified double wedding ring quilt with appliques.






Friday, January 27, 2012

Elfstedentocht!

Just a little interruption in the (almost concluded) saga of my Christmas trip to Prague.  In January or February, there is a wonderful event which sometimes happens in the Netherlands.  The Elfstedentocht--or the "Eleven City Tour"--is a great Dutch tradition which is over a hundred years old, although the race itself has only been run 15 times.  The race is a speed skating race around 11 major cities of Friesland--the northernmost region of the Netherlands.  If you go to this link here you can see a map of the whole race course.  This happens to be the official website of the Elfstedentocht where you can sign up to take part in the race yourself.  (It is only in Dutch or French, though.)

The race is run so rarely (and at different times of the year) because it depends entirely on the weather being cold enough to freeze all the canals and lakes over which the race is run.  This happens fairly rarely but every year the Dutch get super excited about it.  There are, even now, websites and news stories asking "Will the Elfstedentocht be on this year?"  It has been years (15!) since the last race and everybody keeps saying "Global warming means we will never have another race again!"  And then everybody is sad.  The Dutch take their speed skating seriously (in the 2010 winter Olympics the Dutch got more medals than any other nation in speed skating events).  When it gets cold enough, not even world war and occupation by hostile forces will keep the Dutch from doing the Elfstedentocht.  When the race is on, it is announced in the Friesian dialect which is quite different than standard Dutch.  It doesn't matter, though.  Everybody knows what it means.  "It giet oan!" means "It's on!" (the most accurate translation is "it continues" or literally "It goes on" but I think that "It's on" captures the mood of it better).  The Dutch version of this is "het gaat door" but it's tradition to use the Friesian instead.

The Wikipedia article on the Elfstedentocht, which you can find here, is really interesting and definitely worth reading.  It has information about the race, its history, interesting tidbits, and the record of winners.  One interesting thing is that there is a really noticeable increase in average speed and a really noticeable decrease in the average finishing time over the history of the race, presumably as a result of changes in technology.

There are videos of the sports-casts available as well that are pretty worth checking out.  I have attached links to the 1941 race, the 1947 race, the 1954 race, and the 1963 race.  (You can probably find videos of all of the race, actually, if you look "Elfstedentocht" up on YouTube.)
Most of them aren't too long (about 5 minutes).  Of course, all of the commentary is in Dutch but it isn't really necessary to understand Dutch to appreciate people tripping over their skates and tumbling across the ice.  It is interesting to see the changes of film-making technology, crowd size, and race procedures.  In all of them, you can hear the commentators talking about the racers getting their tickets stamped to prove they stayed on the course ("afstempelen") and getting drinks of hot chocolate ("chocolade") from helpful bystanders.

Wikipedia includes the 1933 race on a little 2 minute video as well.  I think that this may have been mislabled, though, as this video has sound, the quality seemed better than would be expected, and the interviewer at the end looked like he was wearing an outfit from the late '40s or '50s.  I could be wrong but you can take a look at it, if you want, and see for yourself.

In the 1941 race, it is especially interesting because it occurred during the German Occupation.  Throughout the the film you can see German soldiers walking around as well as what appear to be plain-clothes German officers.  Periodically you will see men, usually two together, wearing clothes that are a little bit nicer, and a little bit differently styled, and with facial structures that are a little bit different than everyone else around them.  I couldn't prove that they are Germans (although there were people in German uniforms around) but if I were going to make a film about evil Nazi SS men, those are the guys that I would cast.  This film is the longest (it is 11 minutes long) and it also doesn't have sound, so it is probably the least interesting of all of them but, if you're interested it is fun.  The film includes those silent-movie info screens with things like who is in the lead and weather reports.

The 1963 video is of the super cold race.  The Wikipedia article says that it was -18 (Celsius which means about 0 Fahrenheit) but at the beginning of the video the announcer says that it was -15.  In this video, they made the racers run up and down stairs to get over dikes and around open water (in previous years they had carried the racers piggy back or in a chair-hold) and running up and down tippy stairs in speed skates is always good for a laugh.  Toward the end of the video, a helicopter comes in and the announcer says that it is Princess Beatrix (now Queen of the Netherlands) coming to watch the finish of the race.

Even if they do have the race, I won't get to go see it live (apparently hotel rooms become impossible to find and local home-owners rent out rooms for people coming from all over the Netherlands) but, apparently, if there is ever another race it will be broadcast live on TV and the internet for everybody in the Netherlands (the last time the race was run there was barely an internet at all).

The Elfstedentocht has a huge place in the Dutch psyche.  If you go to this link you can see a little comedy sketch and song about the race.  Herman Finkers does a little five minute sketch about how hard it is to come up with a good song about the Elfstedentocht because if you make the story too miserable, nobody will want to listen to it but if you don't make it miserable enough, it lacks luster and the old timers get resentful.  It is all in Dutch and it takes a while, but it is kind of funny (he starts off with a story: when you go skating in a rink, you always skate on the left--he doesn't know why, you just do--everybody skates on the left, except for this one rink in this one little village where they skate on the right.  And that's how he ran into his wife).  The first verse of the song says that his grandpa did the race wearing only his underpants and barely even shivered.  He did the race wearing a whole outfit and he's still cold.  The second verse says that folks who joke about a thaw with the Frieseians, are likely to be found dead in a hole in the ice.  And in the third verse he says that they had lots of races during World War II, even though the weather was awfully terrible and when they ran the race during the Cold War, three skaters froze to death but that didn't bother them.  They keep on hoping for another race.

And, finally, the 1963 race, which is referred to as "the Hell of 1963" because of the cold (only 1% of the skaters finished the race and, as the song noted, three skaters froze to death), is the subject of a recent movie called "De Hel van '63".  You can see a preview of the film (which was released in 2009) here.  The preview is in Dutch, of course, but you don't really need to understand what they're saying to figure out the jist of the story.  I have, however, translated the tag lines that they pop up on the screen periodically, which will give you an idea what is going on:
the longest skating marathon in the world 
love and friendship 
will-power
hardship 
one winner 
thousands of quitters 
in the most terrible race in history
The race to end all races begins December 2009

I've got my fingers crossed that I'll get to hear "It giet oan!" sometime this winter.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Kutná Hora Sights

Kutná Hora was a fun city to walk around in.  It had lots of little, narrow, windy streets and high walls.
The Italian Court, Kutná Hora
A sign that points the way
to the Cathedral, the view,
and the restrooms
 
         A little doorway into the wall of the                                Good King 
                         Italian Court.                                                    Wenceslas



A monument to Karel Havlickek
Borovsky with a memorial
to Vaclav Havel.
This monument has a storied history.  Since Borovsky is a nationalist hero,
every time the Soviets or other anti-nationalists were in power, they destroyed the statue and as soon as they were gone, the Czechs put it back.
The inscription on the back of the monument reads:
"Built by the Committee for the Erection
of a monument on behalf of a grateful Kutna Hora.
Revealed, 27 October 1938
Destroyed, 1942
Restored and revealed,  27 October 1948
Destroyed, 1959
Restored and revealed,  27 October 1991 
This is a memorial to 

"Victims of communist terror, violence, and despotism between 1948-1989 and participants in the anti-communist resistance in Kutná Hora." 


The Stone Well
A spigot on the Stone Well.

Detail from the Knights House

The Knights House


If you want to see more pictures of Kutná Hora, you can go to the official city site here, which has interesting historical information and lots of good pictures in it.







Even though the city is a little more run down than Prague, there were still a lot of the same kind of architectural sights around.





 

 
 



It was a really fun walk through town with lots of fun things to check out.  When I was walking by, the little kiddie car was playing the theme from "The Addams Family" for some reason known only to its makers.