Easter in Prague

In Turkey, Easter in only celebrated by the (Christian) Armenian community - our colleague Alvin had taken Sunday off to celebrate with her family. But in Czech Republic, Easter is everywhere. We hadn't really thought about the fact that we were travelling on Easter Monday, which is a public holiday.

After we booked into the hotel, while we were waiting for Max to return from his match, we decided to come out and explore the Ceskamoravska area. There was a bus station, and a Metro station, just a few metres down the road from the hotel, so we headed across to that.














After the hustle and bustle of Istanbul, this was a bit of a shock! It was like a ghost town. Where were all the people.

Nope, none of them this way either.














Maybe there were celebrations going on somewhere else. Or maybe everyone else was having a sleep-in.

We were by now quite hungry, and there was one tiny kiosk open. Some pictures of fairly delicious-looking foods were displayed above the window, and so we both selected what looked like an almost-Australian-style hamburger with mustard, sauce and a heap of onions. But as the little lady in the booth leaned heavily on the mustard and sauce nozzles to spleurch! a dollop into each bun, and then heaped on the ... sauerkraut! I opened the bun in my hand and stared at the reddish patty wondering just what animal. It didn't bear thinking about, we were hungry and nothing else seemed to be open.

Willow Whips

A few people appeared in the bus station. Some of them - young and old - were carrying a plaited stick with coloured streamers on the end. They didn't seem to do anything with them, but Peter remembered reading about Willow Whips in a magazine on the plane. They have some connection with Easter, and there was a warning about watching out for young boys with Willow Whips playfully whacking people. (I have also since seen a news picture on the internet about women being whipped and doused with water as part of this Easter tradition.)



I saw these two young boys with their short whips. They were quite pleased to have their photo taken and to practise their two words of English.







Later when we went into the city centre and climbed the clock tower, we were looking down on the people milling about in the town square. We noticed an older guy walking around with a whip, apparently whacking people at random - mostly women. They were completely taken by surprise, and turned to face him - he then raised his whip again, and they walked away. Except for one woman, who struck out with her feet ... but didn't make contact.



In the town square(s) there were special market stalls, and there were decorations everywhere like the 'eggs' you can see in this tree.





There were also some giant eggs made of willow twigs, like this one.


And of course restaurants had special Easter table decorations.