Excitement in Novy Bydzov

The snow has finally attached itself to the ground here in the Czech Republic and I am just starting off on my bus ride back to my city from Andrea’s. It’s beautiful here, no longer are we only stuck with bitter cold, we have a fine, but nevertheless, spectacular layer of snow coating our ground to hide the cold from our thoughts. It has been awhile since I have written. So, I going to start by completely a post I have been intending to finish for about the last two weeks.
You figure in a town of maybe an inch more than 7,000 people no excitement could be found. Well, you would be right in most cases, on most weekends. The majority of the time I have been living here in Novy Bydzov the weekends have overall been dull. Weekends pass with nothing more exciting than an evening out with some friends we have made while giving lessons. Conversations filled with Andrea and I attempting to learn as much as possible about their different culture and them asking us questions about life in America. I do not want to downplay these evenings because they have been fun, but as far as the word “excitement,” they probably can find only the slightest association to the word. They amount to nice conversation and enjoying each other’s company, nothing more, and nothing less. This has been culmination of eventfulness during our weekends, the one’s we have spent in Novy Bydzov, rather than travelling, or in Hradec, Andrea’s city.
This weekend had a completely different spin to it through, the entire week leading up to it. And as I am unsure where to began on this fantastic, yet saddening, eye-opening, but not always in the best of ways, weekend, I will tell of the week leading up to it. In this story there contains two events which brought excitement to a small city, two events I will maintain my focus.
I will start with my neighbors for the weekend. After one of my late private lessons at the local café I was walking back to my apartment, on this walk I have to walk past my back yard, the area directly underneath my balcony, a wide, expansive field of dirt with a little grass mixed in, and to my surprise I had new neighbors. An entire new community had set up in my back yard, trailers and all things you may attach to them. As I looked upon my new neighbors, with excitement, I not sure if the excitement was derived from having new people living underneath my balcony or if came simply from an anticipation of what would follow from the prospects of a new neighbor just below me. A neighborhood I could watch like a television sitcom or drama from my third floor balcony above them.
To give you an image of what I saw. Have you ever seen the movie “Snatch?” I hope you have because the living situation for Brad Pitt’s character in the movie was identical to what had now become the neighborhood below my window. If you have yet to see the movie, rent it, if not for the fact it is good movie, than to get an understanding of what my new neighbors were. The entirety of the population lived in RV’s, which were definitely run down, with the ringleader, the wealthiest of the bunch, living in the newest of new RV’s, one manufactured in the early 90’s rather than the rest lot who were sporting luxury RV’s ranging from the late 70’s to the mid 80’s.
The first night I saw this circle of my new neighbors I was left in amazement, but was further shocked when I awoke the next morning, walked out onto my balcony to check on my new neighbors and found a camel standing right below my balcony along with six pony scattered about the yard and one larger horse. My new neighbors were the circus. They were busying themselves with propping up the circus tent. So, now my backyard was not only filled with an array of rundown RV’s, but a gigantic red tent. The site was something to behold. I know Andrea got some pictures and I will ask her to post them on her Facebook account. As the tent was erected so were signs posted all about town announcing the circus arrived and there would be shows Thursday thru Sunday. So, the circus was one thing which was going to excitement to Novy Bydzov.
The other event, which anticipated and brought adventure to my small town, was on the first Saturday of every December of every year in the Czech Republic, it celebrates Saint Nicholas day. This celebration intrigued Andrea and I from the first moment we began to hear about it. Sense this was a holiday much revered in the Czech Republic and there was a big celebration attached and we had never even heard of it we were enthralled. The celebration became the main topic of all my private lessons and some of Andrea’s. We both we astonished at each separate and very different accounts we were told. The accounts of what would happen on this day from the beginning fascinated.
Now I cannot recollection who told me what, but the story of what events were in store for us on Saturday evening grew with each day. The first accounts were simple. Many of the people of the town gathered in the city’s square and Saint Nicholas came out and passed out presents to the children. Simple enough; sounded much like something I would see in the U.S. Added to Saint Nicholas, we were told that there would be a children’s choir performing for the crowd gathered in the square. Once again, simple enough, very similar to events in America I have experienced.
The comparisons end there. This is when Andrea and I continued are inquires into the event and discovered much, much more. Not only was Saint Nicholas not dressed as we traditionally see him, in America as Santa Claus, complete with the black shiny boots, large red coat, pointed red heat, and a nice gleaming buckle, he was followed around by both angels and devils. I know the last line just caught you off guard, but let me get to the way Saint Nicholas dresses first. He wears all white, no shiny boots, no red beside the cross on his chest and the cross on his gigantic pope-looking hat. That is right, Saint Nicholas is pretty much, more or less, dressed identical to the pope while holding one commonality with America’s Santa Claus, the big fuzzy white bread. As for the angels and devils, let me give you a little precursor.
The week before we had gone to the Christmas market in Prague and I was taken aback at the fact many children were wearing light-up devil horns or, I guess, light-up angel horns. I came to this conclusion because the horns were either a blinking red or a blinking white. Now, I was at a loss because I never imagined angels with horns, but it is the tradition here and when in Rome. I just had to throw that line made famous to me from one of my favorite Will Ferrell movies, “Anchorman.” Well, to sum up my lead in, we left Prague completely at a loss as to why so many, if not all, children were either were red or white horns. It was this, which pushed our questioning of all the adults we have lessons with and got us some of the most bizarre answers.
Now, like I said, I can’t recollect who told us what so this going to be the sum of what was told to Andrea and I by several different people. Every Saint Nicholas day, which happened to be December 5th, the Saturday of the weekend I am talking so highly of, Saint Nicolas visits the square with his angels and demons. Describing what the angels do as they move about the square is easy and probably guessed already, they pass out presents to the children. As for the devils, and this is where the story of what was going to happen on that Saturday began to grow and grow. At first, I heard the devils would come out with their horns and scare the children. This turned into the devils would come out with chains wrapped around their necks and would threaten the children shaking their chains. Telling the children; and this is a quote from someone I with, “They are going to go to Hell if they are not good children.” I was shocked, but it went even further. I was told the devils took the bad children, picked them up and shoved them into potato sacks, amazing, was all I could think. It story I was being told by several different sources grew even greater as I was told that not only did the devils do these acts to children mulling about the square, but that they travelled throughout the town knocking on doors threatening bad little boys and bad little girls.
So, I believe I have set the stage for our big Saturday in Novy Bodzov, filled with excitement. We had two major events to look forward to that day. First, we had my neighbors, the circus, to visit. Then we had the big night in the town square watching all the stories we had been told come to life.
Let me start by telling you we woke up a little late. We were hungry and I had nothing to eat for breakfast so we headed into town to find a nice restaurant to have a nice cup of coffee and some breakfast, but to our dismay it was already about 11:30 by the time when made it into the town square and of course, as we should have thought, everything was closed. Not a single restaurant in the town was serving even something comparable to breakfast food and we were not quite ready for sausages and potatoes. We turned back and stopped at the market to buy some food to cook for breakfast. It was then we noticed the circus was about to begin. We said to each other, “Oh well, we can just go tomorrow.”
We were definitely wrong in that assumption. After our breakfast we were standing on my balcony watching nothing, but the ponies, camel, and horse surrounding the big top of the circus when I noticed a bikini clad performer being carried out the back flaps of the tent. Her head lay back, lifeless, in the arms of the man who was carrying her. As far as I could see she was unconscious. She was quickly surrounded by workers who made several vain attempts to wake her. I even thought I saw one of the workers go with the tried and true method of smacking her a few times to try to wake her. After about five minutes of repeated attempts to revive her while one worker yelled at another, and then that worker turned to yell at the next and the last, as far as I could tell from their movements, the performer had fallen backwards and smacked the back of her head against something. It was at that point a second performer, a male, dressed like a soldier of some sort, in all black with big gold buttons running up each side of the front of his high-collared shirt, joined the gathered group. This performer was frantic; he acted as if the unconscious performer were his wife. Moving about endlessly and constantly questioning each of the workers who surrounded the woman who still was laying limp in the workers arms. This whole scene was as if we were watching a movie, it did not seem real. It was dream-like and the whole of what we were watching was about to turn even more improbable.
Out from the ten came a third performer. This woman, same as the one who then lay limp, was dressed in nothing more than a bikini. And mind the fact it could not have been more than 40 degrees outside. The second female’s bikini was a bright lime green color and the bikini bottom was a throng. All that we watched from my balcony was as if the circus had decided it would better to put on a dramatic performance outside the walls of the circus tent rather in. The woman in the lime green bikini was carrying on worse than the soldier-looking man. She was crying in hysterics, we could hear her from my balcony and I am on the fourth floor. The man in costume suddenly swept the limp woman into his arms and started running with her toward what I could only guess was their trailer. Hot behind them was the performer in the lime green bikini keeping up with them impressively considering she was in what looked like six-inch heels from our vantage point. It was maybe another ten minutes or so, one of the older woman at the circus had asked a passer-by to phone for an ambulance, and then the male performer exited the trailer looking up to the sky with his head reached out toward it. It was at this I felt I was becoming a gawker and what I was doing by watching this horrifying act unfold was wrong. I went inside.
Andrea stayed outside to watch the rest of the scene. As I was still captivated I continued to look out the window. I saw the ambulance arrive and backed away from the window again feeling as I was doing something horribly wrong by being entertained by such a tragic happening. I did not see the female performer carried into the ambulance, but from Andrea’s account the performer’s entire body was covered in a blanket including her face. I asked Andrea several times if she was sure because as I understand the face will only get covered if a dead body is being carried.
To this day we still do not know the true details of the event nor do we know exactly what happened to the female performer. Nonetheless, the circus did not have a performance that Sunday. They packed up the tent on that Sunday then sat in my backyard for another few days. I like to think they spent the extra time in my backyard, not leaving right away, because they were waiting for the performer to be released from the hospital. Once she was released because the injury was not life-threatening they all drove off in their caravan of RV’s.
I know this post is extensive, but I have yet to describe the actual happenings of the town square that Saturday evening. It is a weekend or actually just one day I will never forget. So, I hope you can bear with this post.
After all the confusion and dismay came to a rest at the circus Andrea and I walked toward the town square. Our anticipation rose quickly as we neared the square. The police had blocked the streets leading into the square and the people of the city were flooding in, as much as a small city’s population can look as though they are flooding anywhere. To us it looked as though my entire city was turning out for the evening’s event. The sun down, the air chilled even more. Andrea and I were lucky to find a table at our favorite café in the town square, which was situated with a perfect view of the stage they had erected. As we sat and watched the crowd start to assemble about the stage we saw a group of about 20 or 30 little children lead onto to the stage. After making those little children bear the cold for about fifteen minutes a man with a microphone came out and introduced the choir made of some of the town’s children. Both Andrea and I stepped outside for a moment and listened to the choir for a moment. They sang songs we recognized not by their words as they were sang in Czech, but by their arrangements. The songs were the same which would be typical sang by an American children’s choir. Once finished with their performance the frozen children were led off the stage and the man with the microphone sounded out to the crowd with excitement as if the real events were about to begin.
On the opposite side of the stage I saw a horse-drawn carriage arrive. I did not see them exit the carriage, but after a few moments Saint Nicholas adorned the stage taking the microphone. He was followed, in a sad way, by just two angels and two devils. Far from what we had expected, at least I was under the impression there would be a large amount of both, both terrorize the children and to adore them. As Saint Nicholas went on with a way too long speech the two angels and the two devils walked about the stage talking and taunting the crowd. I am sorry to say, but after all the build-up it was actually a pretty pitiful sight to behold. After Saint Nicholas finished his long, dragged out speech the angels and him started to pass out books to the children who extended their arms while the devils carrying bags and chains wrapped around their shoulders, as promised, threatened the children. This, however, was over faster than the speech given by Saint Nicholas.
Saint Nicholas and his company then got off the stage and started to mingle into the crowd. This is when all I had been told was shattered. I was watching the devils to see if they frightened the children as I had been told, but as I watched I saw one of the devils approach a child with a full smile and then ask politely if the child if they wanted to get into their potato sack they were carrying. It was not at all what I had expected after all the build-up. I strangely, just to meet my expectations, wanted to see the child picked up with a word and tossed into the sack. The whole image of what we had expected fell apart and the entire festivities seemed to last no more than an hour.
The best part came, though, as Andrea and I were still sitting in the café we enjoy. About an hour after the crowd had dispersed, into the café, which also doubles as a bar at night, walked Saint Nicholas and his entourage. All of whom seemed as if they had found a bar during that hour and made good use of it. Each of them still in full costume with cigarettes hanging from their lips, it was almost too much. Seeing Saint Nicholas drunk as could be, smoking a cigarette, all while he still was dressed in his best white robe with the bright red cross upon it. The lack of excitement given to me by the Saint Nicholas Day festival was made up to me quickly with the ironic sight of what looked like a holy man smoking a cigarette, talking loudly, and definitely not standing straight.
On a side note and this really does deserve more writing, but if you haven’t stopped reading by now I am sure you will shortly, Andrea’s birthday weekend was a huge success. It was nothing spectacular, but we did go to Prague for the day. Andrea finally found a place she enjoyed shopping and spent nearly five hours enjoying her time while I sat in an overpriced café. We then went to a wonderful dinner at a highly recommended Thai restaurant, the first really good Asia food we have found. At dinner I was able to get the waiter to bring out a piece of cake with not just a candle, but almost a firework in it. The restaurant even took the time to play Happy Birthday in English over the speakers placed throughout the restaurant. Andrea was thoroughly embarrassed and I am thoroughly sweet, aren’t I? :)