On the cobbled corner
of Aksamitova and Kateřinská is the market place, the slow-beating heart of the city of
Olomouc. Neither glamorous nor picturesque, and certainly not rich, it is a regular,
functional hub that permits the exchange of basic green goods grown by the smiling
ruddy-faced, bucolic, pastoral folk from nearby villages for the necessary hard
cash from the scheming, cold-hearted urbanites. Ah, if only the farmers wore
smocks…
On sunny Saturday and Wednesday mornings the concrete tables are loaded with old wooden boxes of onions, blue plastic crates of potatoes and hurried newspaper placements supporting whatever was available for sale that day. No supermarket would even consider taking this produce, the quantities being so small and quality so variable, but on the principle that someone will want it everything is brought and most is sold. This being a chilly September, the usual large sun umbrellas are absent and almost all are wearing multiple layers and hats to keep out the cool, autumn air.
The honest Haná sons of the soil have always had a reputation as fat, well-fed farmers. Certainly the rich soils of this region have always allowed for a glorious expanses of all manner of crops and a failed harvest would almost certainly be put down to a very stupid or unlucky farmer. So fruitful are these parts that a few of the widespread allotments around the town may have provided such a wonderful abundance as to have entirely supplied the contents of one or two of the market stalls.
Garlic appears to predominate, closely followed by little onions, swedes, carrots and potatoes – the foundations of most local cuisine. Other notables are sweet little gherkins ready for the pickling, green tough-skinned peppers, fat tomatoes on the vine and decorative orangey squashes and stripey pumpkins. What’s missing are the caged chickens, honking geese and splashy barrels of fish, the sort of ‘living’ farm produce that would not have looked out of place in a medieval (or Hong Kong Chinese) market. Perhaps this is just as well.
Our crude un-attuned ears cannot differentiate between Czech accents of Bohemia and Moravia. We could make out the rustic pronunciations by some marketers of familiar numbers and nouns that we already recognise, but accentual differences must run along the lines of similar divisions of English. To Czechs a short sentence would confirm a singy-songy Plzen Bohemian, a slang-ridden Central or Eastern Moravian or even a Polishy Lach speaker (and the subtle differences even within these regions), but we do not and probably will never know which accent goes where: to us confused Anglický (English) we are no doubt as bewildered as a poor Czech taking a trip to Borough Market and trying to understand the difference between a Scouser, Geordie or Glaswegian stallholder! In fact, we have added into the mix our very own dialect – English Bedwetting Czech; wet, sleepy and always in need or bit of tender clearing up.
So our precious coins have been exchanged for bags of full-flavoured fayre: local fragrant apples, a large butternut pumpkin, as many local new potatoes as we could carry and even a large cauliflower fungus which will fall under a mountainous avalanche of local blue Niva cheese sauce before being placed in the oven. This Moravian life is tough and hard – someone’s got to live it.
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