Just got back from Carodejnice,
It Wasn’t Quite So Authentic
the annual witch-burning at Kampa Island, which was a lot of fun, as always, but…
We got there late because the 22 tram took forever to arrive and all of the trams were slowed down around Narodni Divadlo, I don’t really know why, I guess even the tram drivers need to lean over and take a look at the damage from the explosion, which looks like nothing more than a couple of big piles of rubble stacked up either side of the street, and a lot of barricades and a bit of broken glass, there’s nothing to see, but we went back to be ghoulish rubberneckers and stand there and take pictures on the way home, too.
The parade was already onto Charles Bridge and had started heading down the stairs by the time we got to them. There were some pretty cool costumes, but a far larger number of people without.
When we were with the parade, I was thinking “There aren’t as many people here as last year. I wonder if the weather is keeping people away.” It was cloudy and looked like it might rain at any minute, although the forecast said no. Then we hit the park and it was like WTF, where did all these people spring up from, as the parade advanced, the crowd was thicker with every step.
Isabel asked to sit up on my shoulders, there were a bunch of witches dancing around in a circle, so I gladly put her up on my shoulders to see but I was sort of bopping to the music and she kept saying STOP! So, apparently I am not only obligated to serve as her stage, I was expected to stand perfectly still while doing it and then when walking, to do it at a normal gait.
We soon lost track of the others but then they found us again, at the same time as a friend and his kid, and Sam had a friend with him, so it was a bunch of kids, which is fun, it keeps it interesting, but they kept running off, which was scary.
The big difference from last year, and a disturbing development, was that there was only one little rinky dink fire for cooking hot dogs – they obviously are trying to force everybody to the surrounding snack stands. That sort of changes the atmosphere. I don’t like it. But I imagine next year it will be the same, if they don’t do away with the hot dog fires altogether.
There were more people crowding around one little fire in a grate the size of a rubbish bin, trying to roast a few weenies, than we had at our recent Free Bradley Manning protest on Wenceslas Square – by a lot.
Anyway, we finally found a place to set up our blanket at the edge of the crowd, pushed in to roast our hot dogs, and had just finished them when it started to rain. So we left.
But it was still a pretty good time. The witch got burned. Spring is here.
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