20 August 2011

Today was a exhibition of “old car and motorcycles” in the area. It was a sort of small festival and people from neighboring villages came to see the spectacle. The cars were lined up down the one street in the village and most of them were old rally cars of mostly Czech make, but some of them were from other parts of the world. The motorcycles were old, some of them looked like relics of ages long past. The cars and the motorcycles, in turn, participated in a “race”. I don’t think it was a serious race, but they did hand out trophies at the end of the day.

One of Josef’s friends had a Velorex, which is a small 3 wheeled motorcycle surrounded by leather. I got to take a turn around the village in it. It was very cool, but a bit small for my liking. I said that it looked like a small turd driving down the road, I believe it an accurate description.

The day was sunny and warm and the multitude of people around was unusual for the village. Josef showed me some of the stone statues around with stories of the guy who made them. Apparently, he did a lot of his work while drunk and most of the statues are unfinished. Still, they’re on display for everyone to see.

Josef’s dad was in charge of making some goulash for whoever wanted to pay for it. When it was finally finished, we took a container and filled it, grabbed some bread and then made our way back to his house to eat it outside on the bench. It was a little bit salty, but it was also damn good. It was more like a soup than a stew and I have no idea of what kinds of spices were used. The bread was alight rye bread with caraway seeds in it. Josef informed me that it was “Czech bread”. I can only assume that it was typical bread made throughout the country.

We shared some ice cream in the shade of a tree and some girls, around 10 years old, came to talk with us. They were trying hard to utilize their English skills, and I found it amusing to watch. Of course, I was as helpful as I could be. They managed to get us to watch a soccer game with them. The game was for kids between 5 and 7 years old, and Josef and I were moderately uninterested in watching. We helped ourselves to some drinks and talked about the day while enjoying the sun.

Back at home, we made a fire in a brazier and cooked some thin sausages over the fire and ate them with mustard and some more of that “cigar bread”.

It was a great day and I enjoyed meeting some of Josef’s friends.