Weekend 3: Medieval Hussite Festival & The Ballet
On Saturday, I had the ECES-arranged Medieval Hussite Festival in Tábor, a town about an hour from Prague (it seems like everything is an hour from Prague). I'm still confused about exactly who the Hussites were -- let me check Wikipedia.
"The Hussites (Czech: Husité or Kališníci; "Chalice People" Latin: Hussitae or Calixtinism) were a Czech proto-Protestant Christian movement that followed the teachings of reformer Jan Hus (fl. 1401-1415), who became the best known representative of the Bohemian Reformation."
Amazing; thank you, Wikipedia.
We were taking the 10am train, but it kept getting pushed back due to an extremely messy situation that occurred farther down the track and had to be cleaned up before any more trains passed over it; I'll let you interpret that for yourself.
It was getting pushed back in 30 minute increments, and during what happened to be the final increment the people sitting across from me that both happen to be my roommates but will not be named to avoid embarrassing them into oblivion except that it's not Christine because she stayed home decided to get off the train to use the bathroom and I had to be the bearer of bad news:
To be fair, they did leave right after the man came around and said 30 more minutes and then we left about 10 minutes into that 30 minutes. Luckily, they were able to get on the next train so they didn't miss the festival and I didn't miss having friends to walk around the festival with.
We arrived right as the Medieval Costume Procession (parade) began and walked along the route to get our tickets. I was shocked at how many people were in the crowd; I was expecting a much smaller event. The intern leading us for the day had to head back to the train station to retrieve the nameless people that had to take a later train and I joined him because they're my friends and I was also carrying their bags. He also exchanged our return tickets so we could go back two hours later, since we arrived two hours later than we were supposed to.
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| Medieval parade |
After finally meeting up with them, we headed to the festival. Michaela and I got a fried-dough pizza thing that was really good and that's when I spotted someone with a souvenir cup. You know I'm all about that souvenir cup life so I tracked them down and got a strawberry lemonade.
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| Medieval pizza |
We walked around the festival, which consisted of some medieval reenactments and a lot of vendors. I bought a tiny wooden spoon for 75 cents, we watched a (staged) fencing tournament, checked out the town castle, and found a nice overlook to relax at. We got some dinner at the time we would have been meeting up for our original departure and all agreed we could have kept that original ticket. We sat around listening to medieval music -- I learned that I love a good tune busted out on the wooden recorder -- and then embarked on the journey home.
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| Fake medieval cat that embodies everything my cat tries to be |
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| Medieval hospital (a.k.a. massaging a child with a rolling pin) |
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| Medieval torture |
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| Medieval fencing tournament |
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| Medieval view |
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| Medieval noodles |
I got up early and went grocery shopping, then worked out and walked around the park.
We were attending Romeo and Juliet, the ballet, in the evening and I had a minor freakout over not having anything nice enough to wear because I had seen some men in bowties coming out of the symphony and I definitely did not bring anything as elevated as a bowtie. However, I felt a lot better after we arrived and saw girls in ripped jeans and a father and son in matching FC Barcelona jerseys -- at least I was wearing my shiny Birkenstocks.
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| Inside of the National Opera building |
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| At the ballet |
The ballet was really good and I can only hope to have the opportunity to partake in an intense dance-off between feuding families one day.
1. I've been able to order in restaurants or have a short conversation with a cashier in Czech!
2. There are way more KFCs than McDonalds