The school year is practically over, and classes no longer meet. The only job responsibilities that remain are administering exams, returning essays, and saying good-bye. Since we had no classes to teach, C. and I went exploring earlier this week to an area of the country called Wallachia, which is largely inhabited by the descendents of a migrant group of shepherds who moved to Silesia (in the Czech-Slovak-Polish borderland) about 500 years ago. The town we visited, Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, is famed for its open-air museum that features a number of wooden houses that have been relocated from throughout the region and set up to form a working village. I mention wooden houses specifically because they are actually very rare here. Avid readers might recall my previous missive about how love-struck the Czechs are with stucco, and I can only reinforce that idea. Everything I've seen in Brno and elsewhere is brick and stucco, or cinderblock and stucco, so Wallachia rightly makes a big deal of what it likes to call its "Little Wooden Town." And, in fact, due to how love-struck the Czechs also are with diminutives, the makers of the signs and brochures in Rožnov assiduously translated the diminutive of město (městičko) as Little Town. It just served to underscore how quaint the place was anyway.

Not only quaint, but fairly distinctive as well is Rožnov. The way of life of these migrant shepherds with their origins shrouded in mystery was noticeably different from that of their neighboring Slavs. (Past tense because they have modernized just like everyone else and assimilated into the population at large.) While walking through the Little Wooden Town, however, I assumed that these tiny buildings—where 11 children slept in one room and all the cooking for the entire family was done in a closet-sized windowless enclosure—dated from the mid-nineteenth century or earlier, and was very surprised to read on the placard outside one of the typical houses that it was occupied in its original setting until the mid-1950s.

I was also attacked by a dickhead goose while talking to a pig at one of the homesteads, but it doesn't deserve much comment.

On our second day in Rožnov we went hiking in the mountains outside of town, looking for the Little Wooden Church and a stone statue of Radegast, an old pagan god after whom a local brew has affectionately been named. It started raining, and we lost the trail, and we never did find the statue. The tourist brochures in Rožnov had made it sound interesting because of the way they referred to Radegast as an old pagan god who had been replaced by Christ in the middle ages, as though the changing of religions is perhaps as monumental as the changing of long-distance phone companies. "Honey, it looks like the Christians have a deal where we'd get Eternal Salvation and a chance to win a roller-skating date with God in the Kingdom of Heaven, and Radegast, well, he's just got those same old smoky fires and virgin sacrifices and stuff, so do you want to go with Christ, or what?”

i just translated your blog with "ask snoop". you're not a very small word guy, and so snoop had some trouble getting you properly niggaed up, but i thought this sentence was kind of funny (especially assiduously shizzolated):

"Wallachia rightly makes a big ass deal of what that shiznit likes call its "Little Wooden Town", know what I'm sayin'? And, in fact, due how love-struck da Czechs also are wit diminutives, da makers of da signs 'n brochures in Rožnov assiduously shizzolated da diminutive of město (městi�?ko) as Little Town, know what I'm sayin'? It just served underscore how quaint da place wuz anyway n' shit."