Festival in Lukovany

On Friday, there was no school for the Czech St. Wenceslas day holiday. Ruda and I slept in for awhile before getting up and finding something to eat. In the afternoon around 3, we headed down to the park that’s by the pub to watch them put up the tree.

Basically there is a really tall tree that is cut down, stripped of all of its branches and bark except at the top, and then decorated with streamers and ribbons. Then a bunch of the guys from the village all work together to carry the tree down a hill and slowly but surely, stand it up in a hole. Then they fill in the hole with rocks and dirt until the tree can stand on its own.

After the tree was up, we went back to the house to work in the garden a bit. We had a small dinner in the early evening. Then later in the evening I went to Dita and Miloš’s house before we went dancing. They introduced me to some friends of theirs who are from Ostrava, who were really nice and spoke English. We went down to the pub together for the first night of dancing.

The first night of dancing was more of disco style music for the most part. I had fun meeting new people and dancing for hours. Michal introduced me to some of his friends who spoke English, which was really nice! To end the evening of dancing, there was a raffle for a bunch of different prizes. The prizes were everything from candles to large bottles of wine. When the dancing was over we went home, and I fell asleep as soon as I laid down.

Saturday

Saturday morning I had to get up at 9:30, which felt early given that we were out late. Once I was dressed, I left the house and walked down to the pub to meet up with some people to start the parade around the village. There were 10 “couples” that were dressed in the traditional dress for the holiday. The 10 couples got in a line and we made our way as a group to the “main lady’s” house for the first dance.

Last stop of the group before more dancing

All of the couples made a circle around the “main” couple and they danced to the music that was played by a few people in the parade. Then they sat on some of the guys’ shoulders and they did another dance before the couple kissed and were put back on the ground. Then they did a dance with the main lady’s parents. After all of the dances, they passed around food and drinks to everyone.

They continued around the village doing this as the rest of us slowly followed them along. The only time we did anything different was at the houses of each of the 20 people dressed in the traditional outfits. At each of their houses they repeated the 3 dances that they did at the main lady’s house. But instead of the main couple in the middle and on the shoulders, it was whoever’s house it was and their partner.

After we had made it through the whole village we ended back at the tree by the pub for one last dance before dinner. All of the couples did a special dance together while everyone took videos. After their dance, they each found a partner from the audience and took them for one more dance. I went and danced with Michal for the second part. After the dancing, they took more group photos and everybody socialized for awhile.

Dana was kind enough to invite me to her house for dinner with her, Karl, Jana, Michal and one of the other guys from the group. I ate so much food during the whole parade since they just kept offering more and more. So when it was time for dinner, all I really wanted was a cup of tea to warm up and maybe a little soup. But instead I was given, tea, soup, bread dumplings, meat, cabbage, and left over sweets from the parade. I of course said yes to everything because it’s all so delicious.

So when dinner was over we went to go put our shoes on and finish getting ready for the evening of dancing. It took 3 people to get Jana’s boots back on since they were the wrong size and we were all so full from dinner. After we struggled to get out the door, I made it back home to get dressed and try out my new dancing shoes. I walked back to Dana’s house to meet her and Karl to walk to the dance together.

At the beginning of the dance the couples did their special dance together to start the evening. Then the night was full of more traditional dances than the night before. I danced with a few of the guys from the couples, along with Miloš, Michal, and a few other guys I didn’t know. My dancing skills are still not great, but I didn’t break anything trying to dance in high heels, so I would call the night a success. We ended the second night of dancing with another large raffle. And yet again, as soon as I got home I fell asleep.

Sunday

On Sunday, I woke up around 10:30. I called my friend Madelyn for 3 hours and told her all about my amazing weekend, and of course we got distracted with other things as well. After calling her I was still tired from the last couple days so I went back to bed for a couple hours. When I woke up, Ruda and I decided to have lunch a little while later. After lunch we picked more pears, (I feel like I type this a lot, but there are a lot of pears to pick). We mostly hung out in our rooms all day resting. Then we had dinner and went to bed for school the next day.