regional homestay, part jedna (one)

I'm writing this in Cesky Krumlov (I'll get to that later) but I just spent almost a week in a small town called Slavonice on the border of Austria. Slavonice is famous for its well-preserved 16th century architecture and "sgraffito" (frescos on the sides of buildings) and has a bit of an artists' community from artists who moved there after the fall of Communism. Most of the other people there come from families who were border guards during Communism. I was with one other girl from the program and we stayed in a hotel because our contact person, who was ostensibly supposed to host us, didn't. (She was a pretty awful contact. We had lots of miscommunications with her.)

We did have a few interesting and lovely adventures while there. My favorite was probably the day we crossed the border and went to Austria, to a village called Fratres. I found a sign that said "Museum Humanes" so we went there. It was an old Baroque house run by a tall, gangly, frizzy-haired man named Peter, who was clearly a superhero. He was a political scientist who had traveled around the world and collected the most beautiful pieces of ancient art I had ever seen--from China, India, the Middle East, and central Europe. Peter spoke eloquently to us about his museum and it was obvious how passionate he was about his views on art and humanity. Later that night we went to a Czech rock concert, which was quite an experience. There was everyone there from an 8-year-old girl to a 70-something-year-old man. Lots of people were dreadlocked and trenchcoated and the room was pungent with cigarette smoke. One thing I'll say about central Europe, my lungs will probably never be the same.

Another really positive experience we had was on Monday with a ceramics artists named Tereza Kuhnova. We got to go to her big yellow house, which also happened to be her studio. She talked about her work and showed us around and explained the process of making stoneware and raku pottery. Later, she taught us how to throw a basic object on the pottery wheels and we got to try it. Eventually I got the gist of it, but I didn't end up making anything because I would always make it too thin at the last moment. Oh, well. I drank hot mulled wine later and felt a little better about my lack of ceramics skills.

There were quite a few negative experiences in Slavonice, but I'll get to that in the next entry. I'm going to go watch another folk dance performance in the Cesky Krumlov main square. Be well.