Spring Holidays (jarý svatky)

So this past week has encompassed 2 spring holidays: Passover, and Easter. I'll start with Passover.

No one here knows anything about Judaism, let alone Passover. I didn't explain it to many people, but basically just that there is no bread, flour etc. Trying to keep kosher in this country is freakin' hard. Life here revolves around bread and pork and oil. So pretty much my kosher involved just not eating bread or pork. The other stuff is just too hard to avoid while trying, well, to eat anything at all. I did have the matzoh though, found in Prague at a little cafe after asking at one of the synagogue gift shops. The box, in 6 languages, says that it is good for weight-reduction diets and when you have a stomach ulcer. Hmmm....

Easter. Strange czech holiday. Czechs are not religious people. I think it is one of the least religious countries in the world. But they have some strange traditions. Namely, boys/men go around knocking on doors, and when the women/girls answer, they get hit with pussywillow sticks, and the men say some like rhyme or something. They then (the boys) get rewarded with chocolate, eggs, or for the older ones, alcohol. I managed to avoid most of them, other than from my little host brothers and their 4 friends, 3 of whom I have never met before. The other thing that sometimes happens is that the girls get buckets of water dumped on them. Such fun. That didn't happen either, thank god, but my friend maria got dumped in the bathtub three times.

I also have some new pictures on picasaweb.google.com/beccaintheczechrepublic. Check them out.