have been living in Central Europe for 13 and a half years so I really have to reach back a little to remember some of the things that gave me a bit of culture shock when I first got here. I have written about this on Quora before but since then I have thought of a few more things.
- No shoes in the house — where I come from in the Midwest of the USA, we generally leave our shoes on in the house, especially when we are visiting. (I have been told that this is not the case for all places in the USA, but I have never lived in a place where it wasn’t the norm.)
In Central Europe(as in much of the world) visitors always take off their shoes on a visit as a matter of course. The benefit of this is much, much cleaner floors. When I think of the stains that would accumulate on my parents’ carpets, the practicality of taking off shoes becomes crystal clear.
Now this may not seem like a big thing but I was irrationally horrified at this custom. I was really afraid of foot odor. I even asked people: "Aren’t you afraid that…you know…your feet might…stink?”
They tittered a bit. 'Well, sometimes it happens, and you just pretend you don’t smell it.’
Eventually I got in the habit. And that’s when I realized that taking your shoes off regularly actually cuts down on foot odor. I used to have a problem back in the States. No longer.
- A relaxed attitude toward alcohol consumption.
- Ill never forget it: waiting at the bus station to catch a bus. January, 2004. Snow falling thick. Dim blue morning light of 7.00. And a group of young people standing around sharing shots of slivovice, the local pungent home-made plum brandy/airplane propellant which is at least 52 percent alcohol.
Or going for bike ride with my colleagues at work one fine autumn morning when the sweetly smiling brown-eyed beauty who would become the mother of my son offering me a swig from her bottle to fuel the journey.
“We never drink this early in America!” I told her.
“That’s OK. We are not in America.”
I drank.
This extends to children’s parties. I think mileages may vary but even drinking a single beer at a children’s birthday party, say, would be frowned upon where I come from. Here beer is just another choice for the adults. Alongside wine, Coke, Kofola(a local cola-like drink), sparkling water…
The catch is, no one really gets that drunk. A beer or two might be downed, but it’s not like everyone gets shit-faced and embarassing. There is a line between drinking a glass of beer or wine every day(which most everyone I know does) and being an alcoholic. Most people don’t cross that line.
- Easter. Talk about a shock. Where I was a kid in St. Louis, on Easter Sunday, the Easter bunny would come and brings the children easter baskets of jellybeans, marshmallow chicks and hide a couple dozen boiled eggs around the house which we would joyously hunt for upon waking. Then we’d dress in new dress clothes and be forced to go to church where we would have to endure two hours of interminable Easter service.
Eggs, an obvious symbol of fertility, are a part of the Easter festival here, too. But everything else was terrifyingly different.
Here, children dye eggs, more or less the same way as they are done in the states(though in our house, we use home-made dye, a concoction involviing boiled onion skins).
But on Easter, which is celebrated on Monday(and it’s a public holiday, as is Good Friday), the men journey forth and visit the homes of girls they know. They carry with them pomlozka’s…
Sometimes you have to improvise a little, as I did last year, using a wooden cooking spoon wiht a ribbon wrapped around it. No one minds.
Traditionally, the boys take these switches and beat or whip the girls with it while reciting some ancient rhyme:
Hody hody, doprovody,
Dejte vejce malovaný,
Nedáte-li malovaný,
Dejte aspoň bílý,
Slepička vám snese jiný….
(feed me, feed me, escort*,
Give me painted egs.
If you can’’t give me dyed eggs,
At least give me a white one.
The chicken can always give you another one...)
(*very difficult to translate this first line, actually)
Obviously this is no more than an ancient fertility ritual. The idea is that through the ritual, the woman will renew her fertility for the years.
In villages, this can get pretty intense. I know men from nearby village who set off to visit every house in the village at MIDNIGHT. AS they visit, they are given eggs and chocolate and assorted eats — and of course, an obligatory shot of slivovice. As they ramble through town they get progressively drunker and the beatings get progressively more enthusiastic. In some places, the humiliations can get even more severe. I have heard tales of men filling a bathtub and throwing the woman of their choice, clothes and all, into the bathtub. Or even taking them to a local river and dunking them. This still goes on in some villages.
IN America, we call this assault.
Still, for the most part in bigger cities it is pretty tame. The ‘beatings’ amount to no more than a few perfunctory swats. I’m used to it now and accept it.
I do not participate in this. I would like to, but I simply can’t do it in the spirit of innocent fun it’s intended. I do take my son around to do it(that’s him in the picture above) because, after all, he is half-Czech and I don’t want him to not participate in something that is absolutely normal here. But I told him that he must ‘hit’the girls very, very, gently and never hurt them —and he is gentle. And they appreciate it.
- Christmas. Christmas in the Czech Republic has a number of really interesting traditions. There is no Santa Claus (St. Nicholas shows up on December 6th); the presents are brought on the 24th by Ježišek or Baby Jesus. Which may explain the high level of atheism in the Czech Republic, now that I think of it.
But anyway, none of this is particular shocking. What is, is the Christmas dinner, which, traditionally, is carp and potato salad.
Now eating potato salad on a cold winter’s night is strange enough and eating carp at any time is even stranger.
But they buy these carp live. They are sold in these huge vats.
Brought home. And put in the bathtub for a few days. Alive. When the time comes, the man of the house, takes his trusty hammer, bashes out their brains and the Christmas fun commences. As a result, at Christmas, you are not just killing a fish; by this time you are killing a beloved, often named pet.This is traumatizing.
In fact, our family stopped doing it after one of my stepsons got upset about it 12 or 13 years ago. Nowadays we have the fish killed when we buy it; or we just buy (already dead) salmon.
- Strippers in random bars.I’ve written before of it. Here it is again, in brief. i don’t know if this still happens. My instincts say no, as the Czech Republic has gotten more conservative over the years. I don’t go out much any more and I don’t tend to stay out late when I do, so I don’t know.
Anyway, there I was, drinking borovivička, a horrible drink concocted from fermented juniper berries — I couldn’t stop drinking it. Each shot was so unbelievably bad, that I had to have another, just to convince myself that my tastebuds were not imagining the foulness.
It must have been about one o’clock in the morning. I was in a disco. Standing there, watching young people dance. This bar had a lot of young people. (Drinking age is 18.) There were a few older women and men, but mostly kids.
Suddenly, a woman entered the dance floor and began dancing very, very energetically. She was a beautiful woman, with a casual, overpowering sexiness that was almost aggressive. Imagine my surprise when she started taking off her clothes! Soon enough, she was completely naked. The dance floor had cleared off. She was winding herself down the center pole, doing tricks.
I still am not sure what that was about. But I saw the same thing happen a couple months later. Different bar. Different drink. Different town.
Same woman. Same routine.
Related to this, around that time I learned a valuable lesson. Nightclub in Central Europe is not the same as a nightclub in an English speaking country. Come with money. Lots of it.
Before I came here, I talked to man who had recently travelled through the country. “It’s a bit disshevelled.” “It’s very poor.”
After 13 years of living here, I don’t think the Czech Republic is poor at all, not with the relative prices of things. Services, especially, are dirt cheap in the Czech Republic. And though electronics might take a bigger chunk out of one’s pay check than in the USA, most of the people here seem to be ok, taking holidays to the sea, going out all the time, driving new cars….I think of the Czech Republic as a relatively rich country, all things considered.
But I can see how someone would think that the country was poorer than it was. It’s because of the public areas. They tend to go longer without upkeep than they would in the States. Grass is unmown. Hedges untrimmed. Cigarette butts and litter linger on the sidewalks. Dirty pebbles from the winter are never really swept away. No one hastens to paint over graffiti, unless it’s in a very touristed area. On the sidewalks blades of grass grow between the cracks. The space between curb and road is often lined with weeds. Occasionally you see people working on these, but not often enough.
Now, it’s MUCH better than it was ten years ago when I first arrived in West Bohemia, Sokolov. Here in Moravia, where I have lived for the last twelve years, it’s much better.
Indeed, if I saw such public spaces in the USA I would immediately come to the conclusion that I had entered a very shady neighbourhood
But it’s not that way here.
In America, a shop keeper would sweep the front of his shop and rid it of litter every morning, ritualistically. Here, most people just don’t really care. In fact, this don’t-give-a-fuckery kind of extends its arms all through the culture.
Yet, you will never…or hardly ever…find a house with an overgrown lawn. The private gardens are immaculately kept and painstakingly plotted, manicured and exhibited. Bright flowers adorn most windows.
Back home in the Ozarks, where I grew up, some houses would be like that. And some would be run-down shitholes. With kids toys in the yard, unmown grass, dirty walls…
Depends on the individual, in America.
The lazy or unclean individuals don’t seem to exist here. Or they are very rare and they don’t live in houses.
No one cares if the lawn around the apartment buildings are overgrown. But your own lawn? That must be kept up.
This can really throw off a person’s perspective and is indeed the main reason I think that the Czech Republic still has the reputation of an Eastern European pisspot with people desperate to leave, violent gangs and grey everywhere. It’s not, though.
- Unisex changing rooms at pools.
- Not every swimming pool has this, but quite a fewtdo: one large locker room for patrons to change their clothes. Women, men, children. Everyone in the same room, getting naked and changing into swim suits. Everyone averts their eyes or keeps them on their own family or their own stuff. Completely normal. Totally un-sexual, too.
This would be unimaginable in the states. (NOTE: the showers are separate.)
Occasionally I see a topless woman at a public (outdoor) swimming pool, but not really that often. When I do, it is inevitably an extremely fit, slim woman, FWIW.
- Finally, shelf toilets.
At first glance they may not look that bad. But they are.
A German invention, apparently, the shelf toilets are ubiquitous throuout Central Europe. You can imagine my horror the first time I used one of these monstrosities and faced the mound of shit that I had just left. Disgusting.
I won’t go into it too much. It is too traumatic.
Thankfully they aren’t everywhere. But the toilets at both my schools offer this so I have the lovely opportunity to inspect my leavings every day before I flush.
Eventually I got used to all these things. Indeed, some of the things were pleasant shocks.
I love life here. I think that in a lot of ways the quality of life is many times greater in Central Europe than most people in the USA or even Western Europe realize. It’s true I had more disposable income than I do here; but I didn’t have health care, and I am healthier, happier and feel less psychological pressure than I did in the States. It’s quite a pleasant place to live, really.
Except for, maybe, some of the toilets.
Written January 30
