Second Trip to Drahonin

Returned to Drahonin this weekend with Sam and Marketa. It was Vlasta's birthday, cool old guy in the village. He'd gotten a piglet in a contest of some sort towards the beginning of the year and decided to slaughter is for the party. I'm told it was something like 200 kilos when they weighed it.

We arrived just as the sun was setting and went straight to the Boofy's house (Rudo, Ivana, and the kids from last time). Mickey was there, too. Beer was immediately produced for each of us. Current music in the Czech Republic, at least for the thirty and forty somethings sounds like Metallica or AC/DC, in Czech. Pretty good, but a little surreal. There was a little flurry as Ivana and Marketa debated what to use to wrap Vlasta's new shot-glass roulette wheel, eventually settling on a plastic Zara bag. Sam went out to get more beer from the car. I got to look at the stove built into one side of the kitchen. Blue and white tile, of the old fire-box variety, with a stove top at waist level and two ovens that stretch up to head height. Just like Grandma woulda used. This is what Ivana cooks on. Meanwhile, they were trying to set-up a new cellphone for Dominic, the twelve year old. It's one of those 2^nd gen. Razrs that don't actually have any buttons, but just a keypad printed on the plastic that senses when you touch it. It's also uber-simple, black and white display, intended for old people and kids. So simple in fact that the adults can barely figure out how to use it. By now we've asked where Sam is a couple times, so I go out and check on him. Can't find him, so I walk down the driveway and look down the road. There's a faint little blur in the dark, which soon turns out to be Sam carrying the Boofy's dog. He looked a little bushed, saying that the dog had led him all the way up out of the village, onto the fields, before he said “Enough!” and turned around. At which point the dog decided that he'd had his fun and ran past Sam back toward the village. We drink a little more, while Rudo chain smokes, and Rudli (the 8 year old) vies for the attentions of the foreigners with his Lego creations.

Soon we head to the community hall, think an Eagles or church basement set-up, where there are a couple dozen gray hairs interspersed with a number of the younger generations, mostly children and cousins. We're greeted heartily and happily, even Sam and I, and as soon as we sit down Mickey finds us some beer and a woman brings us each a plate of food. The schnitzel is breaded and fried pig-slab. The potato salad is a little mustardy and very creamy, probably the first piece of food I've had in months that tastes like something I'd get at home. I eat it very quickly. There's a couple of greasy guys in red hawaiian shirts on stage playing all sorts of music. They look like the cheesiest, my-cousin-has-a-band kind of outfit, but they play some awesome tunes. One's a keyboardist, the other switches between sax, clarinet, and guitar, he also does a mean Louis Armstrong impression. They even played some Dire Straits later in the evening. It made me very happy.

Sam and I wind up hanging around outside. It's a little quieter and the kids have fled the adults out there, too. We talk with a couple guys who grew up in Drahonin, one drives a tram now, I didn't really get the other one's CV. It was fairly difficult to talk with them, the tram driver knew just a little English, his buddy almost none. Eventually a couple girls (high-schoolers, I think) showed up and one of them spoke very functional English, which is all I can really hope for in most of those situations. So we pressed her into the conversation and made her be translator for an hour or two. She's studying to be nurse in Brno and works in a pub near Drahonin in the summer. She told us a little about town life and the people, it felt like home in a lot of respects. After awhile all the kids decided at once that it was time to leave and they did. Oddly enough a couple of twelve year old girls showed up a few minutes before that and decided that they needed to be the official keg minders. One of them spoke a little English, but found the older kids and the toasted Americans a little intimidating.

Other pig parts, ham and bacon, were being trotted out as hors d'oeuvres, with cheese spread on bread with onions and peppers on top. Some Czech food is really good, but lots of it will prevent you from kissing anyone until you've brushed your teeth twice. I was pressed into a game of shot-glass roulette at this point, using a nearly neon peppermint liquor that was not quite schnapps. After a round or so of this I decided I needed some more air and went back out into the cold, clear night.

There I met Jacob, who turned out to be Vlasta's nephew, and his cousin, whose name I don't remember but was wearing a denim vest with “Minotauru Fight Club” across the back. Jacob was pretty cool, just about my age, and he works in a CD pressing plant near Prague. He decided that we needed to have some slivovice to cement our acquaintance. Slivovice, which I can hear you trying to sound out, is plum brandy of serious fire-water caliber. It's clear and has a slight turpentine and sugar odor, generally coming in 60 and 70 proof varieties. Think high quality plum moonshine. Jacob led me to the bar near the stage, which Vlasta himself was tending. Perhaps he hadn't seen me well when I walked in, or he was trying to warn me off the slivovice, but he said something along the lines of 'I remember you! You were here earlier.' I wasn't sure that he should remember me, but he quickly produced a phone with pictures of me on it. Pictures of me from the last time I was in Drahonin. Sleeping on the table next to the town drunk. We laughed, him heartily, me a little embarrassed. But he clapped me on the back and produced a bottle. Jacob had hunted up some shot glasses, which looked tiny, maybe half an ounce each. Vlasta poured us our shots, we toasted, “Nazdravie!” and downed them. It burns all the way down, not terribly, but enough that your eyebrows go up and you let out a breath that could melt paint.

After another half an hour or so, things had been visibly winding down for a bit, Sam and I were both fading. He at least had the excuse of being somewhat ill for most of the week and having a serious case of the sniffles. I despair of ever keeping up with him on a long night. This was about 3am and Mickey was still intent on plying us with beer, which I had the good sense to refuse. We made it to the cabin, walked down the path in the dark because there was no moon, and tumbled into bed.

Thus ends the Second Trip to Drahonin, Pt. I. Look forward to Part II and, finally, a Description of The Flat, in the next couple days.