17 September, 2011 - Rounice

Rounice, Jan and the Wine Festival

A friend from New Zealand picked me up in the morning and we returned to his home village 45km north. It was the day of a wine festival with games and music and a whole assortment of food. At around 10am, we met up with a couple of his friends and headed to the festival.

For me, it seemed like a combination of a carnival and music festival, with wine and beer involved. There were some interesting attractions for the kids and the usual carnival rides that are seen at small fairs. There were some awesome sausages sizzling away on the grill, served with your choice of horseradish or mustard with traditional Czech bread. The bread is a light rye bread with some caraway seeds sprinkled throughout. It can be found in any store and is served with the more flavorful dishes like goulash.

I tell you, these people know their sausages. There are so many different kinds and all of them make my mouth water. They have a paprika sausage that reminds me of homemade Portuguese sausage, a white sausage that is soft and fully cooked. You eat it by squeezing it out of its casing – yum. Then there are blood sausages and ones that remind me of frankfurters. The deli’s in the stores serve an assortment of cold cuts that are usually shaved right in front of you. But I digress.

The festival had numerous stalls with knickknacks and doodads, like you’d find at just about any fair. There were a few cheese vendors who let us sample some cheeses. The names are completely different, and I have yet to find a Czech cheese that is familiar to me. I did get to try some excellent parmesan. It was very nutty and I was tempted to buy some to take back to Hredle with me.

They had an assortment of drinks. We stopped on the grass in front of a small tree in close proximity to the Bacardi hut, a homemade fruit wine stall, and numerous food stalls. The homemade fruit wine was only mildly alcoholic and you could taste the fermentation process slightly. These “wines” were made fresh and only boasted 2-3% alcohol. They are made from plums, or apples, or whatever other kind of fruit is plentiful at this time of year. They are usually very sweet.

The music was interesting. I got to see “Elvis from Rakovnik”, who’s English while singing made me think of Elvis while completely intoxicated. You know they don’t understand the words that they are singing because that little pause between words gets lost and they start running together to form new words that no one has ever heard before.

We sat, we listened to music, we ate – and then there was the air show. Para gliders launched themselves from planes and landed right in front of us. It was pretty cool to feel like you’re right in amongst all of the action.

The light faded and night was upon us. The friends we met had to catch a train back to their town and we all left together.

Fantastic day!