I never thought that I’d be thrown into battle here in the Czech Republic…but, the tall man in the yellow and black outfit decided to find out if us American’s were up the challenge.
He singled us out pretty quickly as Sophia ran up to say “Dobry Den” – he then rattled off a bunch of Czech that left us confused and then he said, “Want to play in a game”. Paul B. (our friend/professor/outgoing soul) jumped at the opportunity and pulled myself and his wife into battle against a group of bloodthirsty 13 year old Czech kids. We had to prove ourselves worthy and strong like “Arnold Schwarzenegger” by doing 10 push ups.
We were then given about 20 mins of instructions all in Czech and handed foam swords and told to climb into the ring to face off. With each blow we had to tuck that limb back and not use…luckily I only lost one arm in the battle, until I was the last man standing on our team and was chased down by 4 angry warriors and dealt a finishing blow to the head.
It was AWESOME. I mean look at the fair madens behind me cheering me on! As we finished up about 45 mins of battling/chanting/etc…they asked us to follow our leader who was bearing a very large spear to the next events location. We quickly asked how many more and he said, 3 or 4 more events. Politely we bowed out, as Robyn holding 5 tired and hungry children weren’t going to hold out for the rest of the evening!
This was all part of a weekend long festival that we had no idea about. We live up in Vinohrady (the vineyards) – and this weekend was the harvest festival (we’re pretty sure the juice we sampled wasn’t fermented yet!??!). It’s been an awesome cultural experience.
Sophia was most excited about the dancing princesses and the King and Queen that were watching us battle.
We also some interesting modern architecture on our walk around town. We’re going to request these apartments next time!