Tonight we sup wonderful Czech beer (for almost nothing) in a campsite in the middle of nowhere. The times on the above map are not Lupetto times; Google has not got to grips with a dashboard sundial calibrated to the Julian calendar.
More anxieties allayed.... another border crossed at 80 - kph not mph, mind
We raced into the Czech Republic with not a glimpse of an official of any kind.
Carolina clearly felt at home on her road:
We enjoyed motored Prague with the huge reduction in trucks once we left Germany,. Several things to note in town and countryside; no bicycles and no litter. When did the English disregard the idea that you didn't just throw litter out of the car window? Our parents generation never did it. What went wrong? Apart from junk food of course.
Prague is functioning normally but with NO tourists. Save us of course. Neither of us had been before but it was clear talking to the locals that the place is empty. Masks are in evidence on public transport and here and there but not with any uniformity of compulsion.
We loved the Lobkowicz Museum in the castle. Very personal but with some fine works. We were the only visitors!1
Two versions of the term 'empty museum'.
So onward eastwards towards the Poles and a chance to visit Olomouc allegedly a wonderful city with no tourists. (Err... logical?)
Welcome to Bohemia!.
Why are Bohemians so…. Well Bohemian?
Well walking around Prague, the answer is they aren’t. Here are torn jeans and t-shirts aplenty, the occasional smarter jacket or outfit (on both sexes) and the unfortunates, with their bottles (not cans) of Urquell, whose predicament disallows fashion statement in the universal grime of destitution. Where are the gypsy skirts or patchwork waistcoats, the loose floaty trousers or Carpathian cloak? Where are the knee boots or outrageous millinery of head turning style? Where is the bold or daring, the uncommon or flamboyant? It ain’t here Kid, it ain’t here.
Alas Wenceslas wouldn’t be able to spot yonder peasant as he or she is dressed in the torpid uniform of Instagram. The good burgers of Bohemia these days are more likely to be Prada and Ralph Lauren than Mimi and Rodolpho.
But being in this charmingly kitsch city one has to ask who were the Bohemians?
When in 1917 Marcel Duchamp (him of urinal fame) along with his mates Drick and Sloane climbed to the top of the Washington Square Arch and lit a bonfire proclaiming a new State of Bohemia, it wasn’t out the blue, because they would have been old enough to be aware of Puccini’s success with La Boheme which was premiered in 1896. The concept of ‘La Boheme would have been familiar to artists and musicians in fin-de-siecle Paris, who then just as now, enjoyed exploiting the concept of the beauty and validity of the struggling, impoverished artist as a pertinent modus vivendi.
But if the lineage of the concept of ‘Bohemian’ can be traced from the 1850’s, when Murger penned his collection of stories (later to become a novel) Scenes from a Bohemian Life, on which Puccini based his opera, what about before that? Where did Murger find his Bohemians? Where they the good citizens of Prague, or that part of what on maps of the Holy Roman Empire, are labelled Bohemia, who he happened to bump into in the cinquieme?
Well, the thinking is that it was the Roma people who, expelled from their home in the Punjab, and like the Flying Dutchman seemingly condemned to eternal wandering, were given sanctuary by the king of the Czech people and Holy Roman Emperor Zikmund. He took pity on the itinerant Roma and in 1423 drafted a letter of safe passage. We can all imagine, then as now, the reaction provoked in a member of the constabulary trying to move on a group of traveller’s caravans, claiming that they could stay because they had a letter from the Holy Roman Emperor! But apparently this authority did hold some sway in the Second French Republic where the colourful, self-sufficient, dance-loving alternative lifestyle of the Roma became associated with ‘Bohemian’.
In any event it all matters little as we have had to move on to Moravia, about which I know absolutely nothing.
Help someone!
As the grandson of my grandfather, born in Lipnik, Bohemia I am grateful for this new perspective of my identity. He travelled West and then Northwards at the beginning of the 20th century thanks to the philanthropy of the Lobkowicz family/foundation.
Just in case you think you're the only people having a good time, Buckinghamshire is bathed in sunshine, and everywhere is looking lovely as we wait for the second viral wave, lapping around our ankles like the placid shallows of the Aegean Sea before a Tsunami.
In three weeks' time it will be safer in Andros if it isn't already.
Iroikos! I Odysseia tou Reg.
Great respect for your adventurous spirit.
Send photos of dogs.
T.