tysolna | home sweet home (Reply)

The sky over moravská vysochina, the southern part of Moravia, is unlike any other sky I've ever seen. It somehow seems closer and bigger at the same time, with huge fluffy white clouds (only some of which are spewed out by the nearby Dukovany nuclear power station) and bright sunshine reflecting off the half metre of snow still lying on the fields as our car approached the village my mother grew up in.

Heh. I didn't know that village also (already?) has a website or two. The second link is to the old beer brewery in Dalešice which was used as the setting for the 1980 movie "Short Cut" by Jiři Menzel, and has since then been renovated and re-opened. They are brewing beer there again, which tastes heavenly. Sadly, both pages are Czech only.

Anyway, Mum and I met with my grandmother, aunts, uncle, their respective families and the odd cousin. We had fun, we laughed, we discussed politics, current events, the danger of believing everything you see on TV, and of course, family. On the day we left, my grandmother became a great-great-grandmother - my cousin's eldest daughter had her first child, a healthy boy, Lukaš. My cousin is only four years older than I am, and she's a grandmother. Her household includes a husband, two more daughters, three dogs, two cats, an uncounted amount of rabbits, ducks, three horses, three goats, a pig, a budgie, and a chinchilla. I told her she should open a zoo, or at least let city children come visit so they can learn what country living is like. For that, she jokingly replied, they would also need a cow to show them where milk comes from.

I hope that, when I am 88, I will be as mentally active as my grandmother is. She's a tough small wiry woman, who loves to read, do crosswords and work in her flower garden, and still regrets the fact that, being a child of a big family eighty years ago, and a girlchild at that, she couldn't study as she wanted to, and as her teachers were imploring her parents to let her do. Alas, there wasn't the money.
If there is one thing I wish for her, besides continued health in body and mind, it is that she should learn to stand up for herself. But, at 88, I guess she's too accepting of some situations.

Mum and I drove to nearby towns - Třebíč, Námešt nad Oslavou, Jaromeřice, and Moravské Budejovice - to shop and walk around in the castle courtyards and gardens. Did I mention that there was still a huge amount of snow and ice on the ground, with temperatures from -10C at night to +5C max during the day? Only a day before we left, the temperatures stayed above freezing, and the further west we drove, the less snow could be seen.

There is something about the skies of Moravia. Maybe it's the simple matter of it being higher above sea level than my home town, or the rolling landscape of fields, woodlands, and dotted with little lakes, with cities and villages which occasionally hide in the dales, but it always makes my head and my heart lighter to be there.