Our recent trip to Czech Republic was exactly what I needed. As I mentioned in my last blog, I felt like I had run out of epiphanies, which is hilarious. Czech Republic renewed the passion missing in our European quest. (I also realize that I'm completely cursed with a writer's mind: analyzing, searching and constantly striving for anything that sparks powerful emotions.) So my starving mind gratefully gobbled up a mound of new thoughts and ideas that are going to regurgitate onto the paragraphs below.
I know the point of this blog is to keep in touch with our family (that includes friends) while we're overseas, but the point of us moving to Europe was much more than a future photo album. I refuse to repeat stories about a great meal or a clever run-in with a crazy local person without including how and why he felt a certain way about that situation. I've seen different places around Europe now, spoken with different international people and experienced more than I thought possible after landing in Venice over a year ago. And after visiting Czech Republic and being exposed to once again, a different side of things, I'm completely baffled, and not scared to admit it.
What's so hard about describing this however, is the immediate bias most people generate about this type of festival atmosphere. Whether it be a liberal agenda thing, a hippie powwow or whatever else that gets people to reject this group information swap - it doesn't make it any less significant to the people involved, or to the people listening. Tattoos, Vegans, Politics, Religion, Sexual Orientation, Drugs, Alcohol....I could go on, but it's these highly sensitive subjects that were presented and discussed at this music festival. The bands presented their opinions on stage and through their lyrics. Booths were set up with information about various subjects. Movies were screened in a cinema tent and every single person was talking in whatever language they could to share their ideas.
Meat eaters and non-meat eaters is a subject I've grown up with because my aunt's family is vegetarian, then I went and married myself a vegetarian, so the subject continued. Most of the festival goers were vegan, but not everyone. I decided to eat vegan the entire weekend and educate myself as much as possible on both sides of the vegetarian story and it has made meat hard to swallow for me.
Since we've returned, I've been searching the internet for pro-dairy and pro-meat eating sites and the information points to humans being supreme and meat/dairy being necessary (even though our bodies can survive without it - but watching animals get slaughtered doesn't make me feel supreme, it makes me feel like shit).
Ignorance was mighty bliss for me before learning what I have so far. I understand the obvious argument of meat for survival (and I haven't made any decisions about my diet lifestyle) but I am going to keep learning about the process of the meat and dairy industry, their slaughtering techniques, the use of hormones and the effect these farms have on the environment, as opposed to vegetable growing. I know North Carolina is always having issues with the pig farms.
Also, most of the festival goers were straight-edge (non-drinkers and non-drug users). There were 6-7 American bands over the weekend - all but one were straight edge. This movement has been going on since the eighties when kids wanted to see punk shows but weren't allowed in because of drinking laws. The infamous "X" on underage hands was invented to allow fans into the clubs, along with the philosophy that keeping your mind clear was a greater threat to corruption rather than giving in to escapism. Obviously, this argument falls under the same category of (what I see as) non-arguable subjects (religion, politics, and yes, vegetarianism - yikes!) but this is what everyone explained to me and I definitely respect it. We still drank a few beers throughout the weekend, as did many other people, but the peace remained, no drunken fights or straight edge arguments.
Outside of all of these highly sensitive subjects - we also got to see a side of the Czech Republic most tourists don't see. The town we were in is called Rokycany and sits about an hour (by car) east of Prague. The town is very (very) small and about twenty years behind in terms of mostly everything. However, the people embraced the motley crew of the festival, estimated around 7,000 this year, with open arms. They opened up their community pool each day for everyone to shower and lounge before the bands started and the scarce local people wandering around the town would glance our way, smile politely then get on with their business.
The oddities of the trip - there was only one restaurant in the town center and we couldn't find one café anywhere! The only hotel in town allowed us, and many other groups, to dine in their restaurant every morning to drink coffee or eat breakfast even though we weren't hotel guests. The waiter would bring us free bread, jam and orange juice, and refilled our coffee cups before they had the chance to be empty, then would charge the whole table an amount in Koruna that added to about 3€ a person.
The drive home was long. We missed our exit for a gas station in the middle of nowhere in Germany (people who have driven long distances in Europe probably know that turning around for a missed exit is practically impossible), which resulted in us running out of gas. Nice people helped us out within twenty minutes. 
So that's what's going on for now. We had plans to attend Oktoberfest in September, but we might stay home to save money. I'm not sure if we'll have any travels coming up until the big move home. I hope everyone is doing well, none of us have any reason to not be doing well so hopefully you're all waking up happy. I know this blog was long, but I wanted to share what's on my mind with everyone. Life has a funny way of taking side roads off the main highway sometimes.
No comments:
Post a Comment