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Christmas
The national Christmas dish in Czech is carp, a freshwater fish. They make soup with it or fry it (they fry a lot of things). Anyway, the week before Christmas, you start seeing these tubs outside the grocery stores. They look kind of like kiddie pools, but they are deeper. And they are full of swimming carp. There's usually a guy or two standing around to pull a fish out with a net, weigh it, clean it and take your money. They are supposed to always kill it and clean it, but there was an article in the paper saying that sometimes people want to take them home in plastic bags filled with water and keep them in the bathtub until Christmas Eve (keeps 'em really fresh I guess).
Czechs celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. Most people are off, and any stores that are open close at 3 p.m. After dark (which is 4:30 in Prague), they eat dinner, and after that they open presents. Haven't quite figured out what they do on Christmas day.
New Year's Eve (Sylvestr)
New Year's Eve is the one holiday where your normally staid, reserved Czechs cut loose. We had the pleasure of being there for the Y2K celebration. We started our celebration in Cafe Ebel in Old Town, then heading to New Town for beers in a pub. We went to Wenceslas Square, or Vaclavske Namesti, to view some fireworks, before making our way to the Old Town Square. They we packed in with thousands of our closest friends to count down to the New Year - only to be sprayed by champagne and frisked by pickpockets while viewing the fireworks. Afterwards we were pushed out of the square into a side street by the crowd, and made our way to a pub. Ted and Nicole made friends with some locals who offered them tastes of some canned tube steak, a fine delicacy I am sure. We ended up at the Yukon, a pool hall that was fairly empty and had a fine spread of meats (and not much else).
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Having participated in Mardi Gras in New Orleans in 1999, we thought we'd check out the Masospust parade in Prague. Masopust is supposedly the Czech Mardi Gras; it literally means "meat fast" (looking ahead to Lent). Giving up meat is a big deal to the Czechs... Anyway, they say that Masopust is celebrated more in small villages than in the city, but as we are in Prague we headed to the working-class neighborhood of Zizkov, where the celebration was to be. The parade here was more of a participant event - anyone interested in joining the parade was the parade. Many people dressed up, and a couple small bands of 10-15 people played. Apparently there were a few parties afterward.
For a better view of each picture, double click on the thumbnail.
Last updated 23.08.2001
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Carp vendor |
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At the pub before the fireworks |
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