City Secrets
Spanish
Birds & Moravian Sparrow
Many Czech dishes have names that don't offer a
clue as to what's in them, but certain words will give you a hint: savle (sabre; something
on a skewer); tajemstvi (secret; cheese inside rolled meat or chicken); prekvapeni
(surprise; meat, capsicum and tomato paste rolled into a potato pancake); kapsa (pocket; a
filling inside rolled meat); and basta (bastion; meat in spicy sauce with a potato
pancake). Two strangely named dishes that all Czechs know are Spanelsky ptacky (Spanish
birds; veal rolled up with sausage and gherkin, served with rice and sauce) and Moravsky
vrabec (Moravian sparrow; a fist-sized piece of roast pork). But even Czechs may have to
ask about Mec krale Jiriho (the sword of King George; beef and pork roasted on a skewer),
Tajemstvi Petra Voka (Peter Voka's mystery; carp with sauce), Sip Malinskych lovcu (the
Malin hunter's arrow; beef, sausage, fish and vegetables on a skewer) and Dech kopace
Ondreje (Digger Ondrej's breath; fillet of pork filled with extremely smelly Olomouc
cheese slices).
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Majales
Until WWII, students regularly celebrated 1 May
as Majales, a spring festival dating back to at least the early 19th
century. Banned by the Nazis and later under communism, it was revived during the 'Prague
Spring' of the mid-1960s, only to disappear once more in 1969. Nobody got it together
again until 1997.
Majales 1998 coincided with a visit by Beat
Generation writer Lawrence Ferlinghetti for the Prague Writers Festival, recalling the
crowning of Allen Ginsburg as king of the 1965 Majales. Ginsburg was allowed into the
country on the strength of his anti-US government views, but he made his distaste for
authoritarianism quite clear and was quickly thrown out. The secret service documents
surrounding his expulsion were published in a booklet in 1998.
Today's Majales kicks off with an
early-afternoon parade - with bands, students in fancy dress, and a float with the Kral
Majales (King of Majales) - from namesti Jana Palacha, via Kaprova to the Old Town Square
and the Karolinum. From there everybody moves on to Strelecky ostrov for an all-night
bash, including live bands, student theatre and nonstop sausages and beer.
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Love Hurts
Sarka was one of a renegade army of women who
fled across the Vltava River after the death of Libuse, mother of the Premysl line. She
was chosen as a decoy to trap Ctirad, captain of the men's army. Unfortunately she fell in
love with him, and after her cohorts did him in, she threw herself into the Sarka Valley
in remorse. The women were slaughtered by the men of Hradcany in a final battle. There's a
monumental statue of Sarka and Ctirad in the Vysehradske sady (Vysehrad Gardens).
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Saints` day
Practically every day of the year is the feast
day of a particular saint, something Roman Catholics will be familiar with. To Czechs, a
person's 'name day' (the day of the saint whose name that person bears) is very much like
a birthday, and a small gift or gesture on that day never goes amiss.
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Mendelssohn Is on the Roof
The roof of the Rudolfinum - a complex of
concert halls and offices built in the late 19th century - is decorated with statues of
famous composers. It housed the German administration during WWII, when the Nazi
authorities ordered that the statue of Felix Mendelssohn - who was Jewish - be removed.
In Mendelssohn Is on the Roof, a darkly comic
novel about life in wartime Prague, the Jewish writer Jiri Weil weaves a wryly amusing
story around this true-life event. The two labourers given the task of removing the statue
can't tell which of the two dozen or so figures is Mendelssohn - they all look the same,
as far as they can tell. Their boss, remembering his lectures in 'racial science', tells
them that Jews have big noses. 'Whichever one has the biggest nose, that's the Jew.'
So the workmen single out the statue with the
biggest conk - 'Look! That one over there with the beret. None of the others has a nose
like him.' - sling a noose around its neck, and start to haul it away. As their boss walks
across to join them, he gapes in horror as they start to topple the figure of the only
composer that he does recognise - Richard Wagner.
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