Frank Trnka's Czech Adventures - 2009, 2012, 2014 & 2017: 6.20 Letohrad, Kočí

Letohrad

Morning snack:

Village museum with lots of lace:

Some old Perníky cutters and presses:

Kroje in the museum:

The church:

The Museum of Occupations:

A new beer for lunch at the restaurant in the museum:

Richard Nicoli's page of Top 10 Czech beers which included Bernard:

Kočí - wooden church

More of the countryside:

I found this WWI memorial quite touching:

This was a very common cobblestone pattern on sidewalks. Imagine laying all those individual bricks.

Slatiňany

Kladrubský horses

The Slatinany stud devotes itself to breeding Kladrubien black horses, the only oldest Czech breed used for ceremonial and charioteers' competitions.

The Sokol Hall where our evening happened.

This year being the 150 year anniversary of the founding of Sokol, the hall had posters with historic photos of Slets past. They give an idea of the size of the Slet events during the prime years.

Several local communities had joined together to put on Smetana's Bartered Bride. The Formani musicians and dancers from Slatiňany made up much of the cast. This was the version of Bartered Bride that Sokol put on in Prague as part of the Slet festivities, so we got to see the group again in Prague on stage and in the Slet parade.

Here's a link to the Czech TV coverage "Sokolové z Minnesoty ve Slatiňanech" of our time together:

http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/10118379000-udalosti-v-regionech-praha/212411000140621-udalosti-v-regionech/video/208221

The first dinner:

Welcome to us in English:

Three couples from our group danced Stodolicku for them:

Mrakotin - the dance they wanted to teach us that we already knew, but there were some variations and differences between the two versions. In spite of my knee issues, I got recruited to fill out the couples.

It was the local Sokol President's birthday (red apron) so he was celebrated.

As a special treat for us, he had made his specialty, which Louise got to help slice. It was a very complicated dish that came to the table looking like a roast chicken, but the inside had smoked duck, sausage, bacon and other delights. This was the second dinner of the evening and our guide made it clear that it would be very insulting if we did not have more food!