(the events of Sat. June 20, 2009 - Cesky Krumlov)
By morning the rain had thankfully passed us by and we headed out to grab some food before the festival activities began. We ended up at the local bakery and each selected a couple of goodies from behind the glass using a mix of pointing fingers and attempted use of the words in Czech. The bakery, while not as good as those in Prague, satisfied our hunger for the time being and we headed back to the main square in town for the beginning of the day's activities.

When we arrived at the square we found it much more full of people than it had been the day before. When you're in a Czech crowd you realize very quickly that American's and Czech's don't share the same views on personal space. You will find people almost leaning up against you as things become crowded and they're perfectly comfortable with it that way. We however were less comforted by the close proximity of our neighbors and decided to continue on up to the Hotel Ruze to check out the scheduled Croatian folk dancers.

When we arrived at the Hotel courtyard we saw a group of people dressed in distinctive clothing, but were unsure if they were the Croatian dancers or just people dressing up for the renaissance festival. My father John has full Croatian heritage and fact he and my step-mom Jan were just over there visiting for the entire month of May. These dancers were a group hailing from the medieval walled city of Dubrovnik and it crossed my mind that perhaps my parents had seen the same group perform during their visit to Dubrovnik the previous month. I was just about to go up to them and ask when we heard some commotion and into the courtyard entered about 60-75 men and women in Croatian folk garb. Laney and I staked out a place that we thought would be a good one to watch the show and waited for it all to begin. We had no idea what a show we were in for. The dancing and singing lasted for well over an hour. During that time we got to see a septet sing Croatian folk songs, men and women dancing traditional dances, and a completely unexpected and elaborate military themed dance centered upon swords used for both dancing and fighting. It blew us both away and very nearly cost Laney an eye as it turns out our perfect place to stand was a bit too close to the action. We left very satisfied with what we had seen and excited to show the pictures to my dad.

After the folk dancers we headed back down to the main square and again the crowds were a bit too obnoxious for us so we decided to do a little souvenir shopping and grab some lunch. We didn't find anything that knocked our socks off souvenir-wise, but we were again impressed with the little hole-in-the-wall pub that we found the day before. Laney ordered another spicy potato pancake and I had pork "neck" in the potato pancake that Laney had ordered the day before. I washed mine down with more of the tasty local brew while Laney opted for some lemon soda that was very much like Sprite. The soda she ordered came in a very thick and interesting glass bottle that looked as though it had been used and reused since the Soviet-block era. When our meal was finished we checked the schedule and concluded that there was no way to avoid going back to the main square since the parade was about to begin and it offered the best option for seeing the procession. We made the short walk there in short time having learned how to shove our way through the crowds like the locals do.

The parade was actually very familiar to us. It was very much like a parade would be in the USA except that the participants were all dressed in period clothing, there were many more horses, and the floats were replaced by carriages carrying "nobles" as it wound it's way to the festival parade grounds. I'm not a huge fan of parades, but it was really quite a show to see streams of kids and adults pass by dressed in fancy and colorful clothing or wearing armor and carrying weapons. One thing that was notably missing was the "pooper-scooper" and with all of the horses taking part you better believe that it was needed. We were standing back a few rows from the parade route and I was trying to figure out why the whole procession seemed to be bogging down in our particular spot on the route. I pushed my way through the crowd to take a look and discovered that several feet of the road had been totally saturated in horse droppings. It was actually quite amusing to watch the lords and ladies tip-toe their way through the muck. After the last member of the parade had passed from the square the mass exodus of people began worming it's way down the narrow streets toward the festival parade grounds where a knight's tournament was to be held.

After a lot of crafty pushing and shoving Laney and I managed to work our way to spot very near the front of the crowd as we entered the parade grounds. We may have earned a few nasty looks, but as long as we didn't open our mouths we were just a pair of Czech's and pretty much blended right in. Our hard work earned us a place in the gallery of the red knight and we were led in cheers of "Viva la Rouge!" by the jester in charge of leading cheers for our section. We both took part with much enthusiasm and were having a great time with it all. The knights were in reality actors from the Knight's Academy in Cesky Krumlov and they put on a great show. In the end an actor playing a commoner won the tournament to the wild cheers from the audience and was rewarded by being granted a knighthood of his own. The whole show was very well done with a lot of comic relief between the knightly competitions and even a trio of belly dancers with snakes were thrown in for good measure. We had already enjoyed a very full day at the festival and there was still more to come including more live music in the main town square and a torchlight parade followed by fireworks. When we finally went to bed that night I slept so hard I might as well have been dead. We definitely had gotten all that we could of this visit to C. Krumlov!

Click the image below to see more pictures from this day:

Europe Day 08 - C Krumlov