Anabase Jaroslava Haška

Carnage by Sokal

2010-07-22T22:52:00.003+02:00

Abwehrkampf einer MG-Abteilung. Maschinengewehrabteilung II des Infanterieregiments Nr. 4
"Hoch- und Deutschmeister" auf der Höhe Gora Sokal am Bug, 20. Juli 1915.
Karl Friedrich Gsur.

Sokal is the first place where Švejk would have seen any fighting if he had ever got that far. In Karel Steklý´s film he actually arrives at the front and k.u.k forces are being shelled by the Russians. In this film which has been twisted towards comedy and slap-stick, Lieutenant Dub hides from the shells in a wooden shit-house. This scene has nothing to do with the novel, although some inspiration might have been drawn from Karel Vaněk´s continuation. So, with Švejk now finished, let us therefore return to what the author himself took part in and surely would have found place for in the novel. It is a tale of horror ...

From VÚA (Central War Archives), Prague. History of
the 91st regiment (author unknown).

Hašek and the 12th march batallion had arrived in Łonie near Gologory on July 11. They had left Királyhida on June 30 and were at arrival commanded by Oberleutnant Wenzel. At least until Sanok the transport was by train and thus corresponded precisely to the route described in Švejk. How they moved onward from Sanok to Lonie is less obvious, but we must assume that at least the final part of the 150 km trek was on foot. In Łonie the march battalion replaced the losses the 91st regiment had suffered during their advance in Galicia from early May onwards. The troops of the march battalion complemented field battalions II, III and IV of the regiment. Hašek was assigned to FBtn III, 11th company. The 91st regiment consisted of 4 battalions of which number II, III and IV were fighting on the Galician front. The 3rd field battalion was commanded by Hauptmann Sagner and the 11th Feldkompanie by Oberleutnant Lukas. Note the similarities with Švejk, but also how the author freely moved formations and people around to create his plot. In the novel the number of Švejk's march battalion is unclear, and Švejk's 11th march company seems to have its number and even some of its staff borrowed from Hašek's 11th field company, post Gologory. IR 91 was part of the 17th infantry brigade (IBrig 17) which again belonged to the 9th infantry division (ID 9). To complete the army Schematismus: this division belonged to the Armeekorps VIII which in turn was part of the k.u.k Second Army, the so-called Heeresgruppe Böhm-Ermolli.

Situation by the Bug on July 15 1915.
(from Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg).

After capturing Lemberg (now Lviv) on June 22, Verbündete forces soon soon reached the river Bug where they consolidated their positions. But by mid-July High Command had ordered a new offensive. The objective was to cross the river Bug, recapture the parts of Galicia that were still on Russian hands and push into enemy territory before the winter set in. Böhm-Ermolli ordered the 9th infantry division (they had been fighting by Gologory) to move north behind the lines into positions by Kamionka Strumiłowa where he planned an attack across the river Bug towards Radziechów (now Radekhiv). The division reached the area on July 17 after breaking up from Lonie on July 13. It was during this march they on July 16 passed Żółtańce and had a two hour Rast north of town, near the railway station. This break was however too short to provide material for the final chapter of Švejk, so it is likely that the author simply picked this spot from the map and filled in with facts (and fiction) from elsewhere. Otherwise his description of the fighting along the Bug is remarkably precise. After a few more stops the regiment arrived by Obydów on July 19 and it was from this spot they were to cross the Bug. They even started to build a bridge but were hampered by heavy rain. The attack was planned for July 21.

In documents in the Central War Archives Hašek is listed as Zugsordonnanz, where his duty as a messenger was to connect the squads within his company. This is a function he also assigned to Švejk, but at a much earlier stage. Here we have one of several indications that the author mixed a number of facts, people and experiences from this time in the 11th Field Company into Švejk's time in the 11th March Company.

Description of the situation by Sokal on July 20.
(from Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg).

Further north by Sokal, units from the First Army had in the meantime crossed the Bug and a bridgehead was established on the eastern bank of the river. Amtliche Berichte from Vienna show that the battle by Sokal had been raging at least since July 16 when the Bernardine monastery on the western shore of the river had fallen. On July 18 German and Austrian troops crossed the river, occupied Sokal the strategically important Gora Sokal and dug themselves in around the town. Russian commander Brusilov however soon recognized the vulnerability of the enemy bridgehead and ordered counter-attacks to destroy it. Gora Sokal (trigonometrie 234, 237 and 254) was recaptured by the Russians on July 20, and Paul Puhallo, commander of the First Army, realized how serious the situation was and asked for assistance that same day. This was to provide decisive for the fate of IR 91. With the complete 9th division they were ordered northwards to strengthen the bridgehead and General Böhm-Ermolli had to abandon his plans for an offensive towards Radziechów. Instead the Second Army were left to "clean up" the area west of the river Bug.

The situation in Sokal on July 23,
the day the 91st regiment arrived.

At 4:30 in the morning of July 21 the 91st regiment left their quarters near Obydów where they had spent the last two days. Two days of arduous marching awaited them. They marched through Mosty Wielkie where they met Reichsdeutsche units, an event which might have inspired Hašek's description of German troops in Švejk. The weather was very warm those days after weeks of heavy rain. In the evening of the 22nd they arrived in the Sokal area and on July 23 Hašek's III. batallion was amongst those who replaced German troops south of Sokal by Poturcyza. With the newly arrived reinforcements, a renewed attempt to capture Gora Sokal was planned, and it duly started in the afternoon of July 25. Heavy fighting continued for the next few days and the losses were terrible on both sides. In name lists, around half the names on the 11th Field Company have been ticket off as either verwundet, vermisst or gefallen. Amongst the casualties were three out of the four company squad leaders (Zugsführer), only Kadett Johann Biegler came through it unhurt. The 91st regiment managed to reach Kote 234 on the 26th, but Russian counter-attacks pushed them back and July 28 and 29 were black days. The numerical superiority of the enemy started to count. IR 4 (Hoch und Deutschmeister) had to give up Kote 254 and IR 91 had to withdraw to a new line of defense further north by Babiniec. The k.u.k forces were in a desperate situation. Losses were huge, half the 91st regiment were either killed, wounded or missing. Fortunately for them the Russians unexpectedly started to withdraw on July 31.

Sokal and surroundings on a k.u.k military map from
1910. The contested kote 254 is clearly visible.

The Russian pull-out had little to do with the achievements of the k.u.k forces by Sokal. The foe was still controlling Kote 254, but events further north dictated the outcome. German forces had broken through (general Linsingen), and the Russians decided to withdraw to the river Ługa for fear of being outflanked.

Several of the officers who later lent their names to characters in Švejk were present at Sokal: Oberleutnant Rudolf Lukas, Rechnungsunteroffizier Jan Vaněk, Kadett Johann Biegler, Oberleutnant Wenzel, Hauptmann Vincenz Sagner. Some of them had striking similarities with their counter-parts in the novel, and they may or may not have been pleased when their names appeared in Švejk! Another vaguely obscured real-life model was Feldkurat Jan Evangelista Eybl, called Ibl in the novel.

On August 2 IR 91 moved to Żdżary 15km to the north and spent nearly four weeks in the reserve there. Hašek was from August 1 promoted to Gefreiter (lance corporal). On August 18 he and many others were decorated for bravery demonstrated during the battle by Sokal. According to eye-witness accounts by Rudolf Lukas and Jan Vaněk (Večerní České Slovo, September 1924) he had single-handed captured a large number of Russians. These were men who were glad to leave the war behind anyway, so at best Hašek “guided” them into captivity.

Sources:

Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg, Band II, Teil I
Das Infanterieregiment Nr. 91 am Vormarsch in Galizien. Machine-written document from the Central War Archives (VÚA). Prague.
Jaroslav Hašek v revolučním Rusku. Jaroslav Křížek.

Marching on without Švejk

2010-07-20T20:54:00.148+02:00

“With the Bezirkshauptmann we always used to say: Patriotism, fidelity to duty, overcoming one’s self, those are the real weapons in war! I am reminding myself of it especially today when our military troops will in foreseeable time cross the borders.”

In an abandoned vicarage in Klimontów, these final passages of the Švejk novel were uttered by the perennially moronic Lieutenant Dub, a caricature of a Czech monarchist, albeit one with a certain position in society. His final words makes one think of Samuel Johnson’s famous sound-bite: “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”. Whether Hašek here was building up to a Johnson-like ridicule of patriotism in general we will never know. The likelihood is that it was the Austrian patriot in particular he mocked, not the dis-united patriots of (the rest of) the world. Hašek was himself a Czech patriot but was not adverse to shitting in the nest of other patriots (or in anybody's nest for that matter).

After this abrupt and tragic end of Švejk it was time to wonder: What is the likely direction the novel would have taken if the author had lived on? Hašek did leave some clues. The advertising posters for the first instalment of Švejk reveals that the plot was also to take place in Russia during the civil war, so we can safely assume that Švejk would continue to follow his creator’s journey, more or less accurately. Another important indication is the farewell scene in Királyhida between Švejk and Vodička. Here it is clear that the author intends his hero to return home safely. An even more direct statement is found in the introduction to Book One. Here Hašek writes that “Nowadays, you can run into a shabby man in the streets of Prague who himself has no idea of the significance he actually has in the history of the great new era”. So Švejk had obviously returned. But where apart from Prague did the author intend his hero to appear? There is only one other place that is mentioned explicitly: Sokal. This is stated both in the chapter header “From Bruck an der Leitha to Sokal” and also later when the soldiers are skinning the “unskinnable” cow in Liskowiec (chapter Marschieren Marsch). This is, however, only part of the story; the pure geographical direction the plot. Just as important (or even more so) is: Who would have been at the receiving end of the authors biting satire hereafter? He had almost left his bête noire Austria-Hungary and there were still nearly three more volumes planned ...

Naturally Sokal was to become my next stop although I didn´t follow Hašek´s route in detail. That would have meant quite a cumbersome detour via Holohory to Kamianka-Buzka and several smaller places the soldiers stopped at when walking from Holohory to Sokal between July 11 and July 22 1915. The battle by Sokal raged from July 15 to July 31 and Hašek's regiment arrived in the region on July 22 (more on the battle itself in the next blog entry). The route is described in some detail in Jaroslav Krížek´s Jaroslav Hašek v revolučnim Rusku, but I didn't have the information available at the time.

Ivan and Maria Strilets.

Instead of trying to retrace too much of this chequered journey, I did a short-cut. From Lviv´s Автостанція 2, I took the by now familiar mini-bus route 80 km north to Sokal. Along the roads there were signs to a few places which readers of Svejk might recognize: Rava-Ruska, Velyki Mosty, Kamionka Buzska and Sokal itself. When I arrived in Sokal that baking hot afternoon I even managed to jump off at the wrong bus-stop. But with remote assistance from Munich (and a huge phone bill), I found my destination in the end. It was Petruševska 47 and the good people receiving the visitor there were Ivan and Maria Strilets. This was my third visit to their home. The first was in 2004 on my make-shift Švejk-trip. Their house is on the southern outskirts of town, right by Sokal Hora where some of the fiercest fighting took place in July 1915. I even had a room with a view across to the former battlefield. Although the name suggests a mountain, it is actually a low hill which reaches 254 metres above sea level. The fact that I was staying in this particular house had everything to to do with Pavel Gan who I had visited in Munich back in early May (see More important than Lonely Planet). Maria and Ivan are in fact his parents in-law. The lady in Munich who had guided me there by phone was their daughter Larissa.

Sokal hora

Sitting there watching cooling rain-showers sweep across Sokal Hora, it was time to ponder the improbable chain of events that led me to this spot on earth in the first place. These are important events as they also (partly) explain why I’m doing this six-month trip at all. I don't remember exactly when I got it into my head to do a Švejk-trip, but I recollect how I was inspired by maps in Cecil Parrott’s translation of Švejk. Preparing for the trip in 2004 I set about locating the spots I found on Parrott’s map. This proved to be an enormous challenge, particularly in Galicia. I was at the time unaware of the misspellings in the novel, and I knew little about name changes that had taken place since. Places in the Ukraine (names written in Cyrillic) further complicated the issue. I started off by Googling, but without much luck. Still, the omnipresent search-engine led me to the web-sites of Zenny Sadlon (zenny.com and svejkcentral.com). I sent Sadlon an e-mail and although his geo-awareness didn’t extend to Galicia of 1915 he kindly forwarded what was to prove an immensely useful e-mail address; that of Pavel Gan. I wrote to Pavel and although I didn't get the specific geographical information I asked for, I got a lot more: photos, the story of his own research on Hašek and an invitation to visit his wife and in-laws in Sokal during the course of the journey. So I did, and this invitation indeed had a lot to do with my stay at Petruševska 47 now in July 2010. It was also from Larissa and Pavel I heard that the Hašek family had taken over Česká koruna at Lipnice. On hearing that I decided to pay the venerable hostelry a visit. Without that visit I would never have been invited to the 2008 Hašek-conference, and would never had got the inspiration to carry out this journey. The circle was completed.

Pavel Gan by Sokal hora, a few years back

Pavel Gan also has another connection to Sokal. The following information is extracted from his book “Osudy humoristy Jaroslava Haška v říši carů a komisařů”, (epilogue) where he explains how he got so captivated by Jaroslav Hašek. Gan’s father was born in nearby Borjatyn and was a serving soldier in the k.u.k Army. Just like Hašek he was a one-year volunteer, but apart from that his career took a different course. He was loyal to the Dual Monarchy to the very end, and Gan puts in a good word for Austria-Hungary in this section. According to Gan his father and his fellow Ukrainians were far better off than in Imperial Russia where a decree from prime minister Stolypin (1910) stated that no Ukraine or Ukrainians existed. Instead there were was the interesting entity "Little Russia", which was incidentally inhabited by “Little Russians”. It should be noted that the term Little Russia was commonly used at the time, even by Ukrainians (JH). Gan also describes the Dual Empire’s enlightened rule of law which compared favourably to both contemporary and future regimes in the region. After the war, Gan’s father emigrated to Czechoslovakia, where Pavel was born in 1933. Due to their Jewish roots, the family had to move several times from 1938 to 1945. Gan’s interest for Hašek started in the fifties during his studies in Brno. One of his main themes is how the communist authorities filtered information about the author to make him fit the image of a good communist. Gan has himself dug out a lot of information that contradicts this view. This is evident both in his book and also in the papers he has published.

The two days in Sokal were spent walking around town and not the least eating! I felt I never had the slightest chance to even get slightly hungry. Maria complained I was too skinny and when I was starting to get full I heard the the words “ješč” and “davaj” and I understood that I was supposed to be hungry still, and had to make it good by another portion of vareniky, salat and kura.

The ruined synagogue

I had plenty of time to visit the former synagogue where IR 91 had their HQ in July 1915. Nowadays it is a sad sight and another chilling testimony to the Holocaust. Of interest is also the Bernardine Monasterry which now serves as a prison. On July 16 1915 k.u.k forces captured the monastery, an event which was reported even in official Berichte from Vienna. Kote 254, the summit of Sokal Hora, is still there of course. The hill is mainly scrub-land and was a very peaceful spot early that July morning in 2010. It was hard to imagine that this was hell on earth exactly 95 years ago, a carnage which killed and maimed thousands of young men, mainly from Vienna (IR.4 "Deutschmeister") and Bohemia (IR.91 "Papageienregiment"), not to mention the Russian 8th Army. Jaroslav Hašek was amongst the lucky ones who survived, but unfortunately he didn't lived long enough to tell his story.

Meta-text about a meta-text

2010-07-18T21:10:00.001+02:00

Every major literary creation produces secondary literature which in sheer volume often surpasses the original text many times over. These meta-texts (text about the text) can roughly be separated in two categories: interpretation and fact-finding. The first discipline is generally carried out by literary experts whereas the second is more the domain of historians, both professional and amateurs. I consider myself belonging to the latter group and I have spent endless hours digging into the historical and geographical facts and pseudo-facts on which backdrop Jaroslav Hašek created his epic satire. The result is a web-project which is far from finished. The database will in the end contain over 800 geographical entries and nearly 600 biographies on real as well as fictive persons. Švejk also contains other items that could be categorised: literary references, food and drink, ethnic groups, military terms, obsolete terms, historical events, just to name some of the possibilities.

Literary historian Antonín Měšt'an

One of my most important sources for my web-based “factography” on the novel Švejk was written by Antonín Měšt’an of Universität Freiburg in 1983 in connection with the 100 years anniversary the of author's birth. It is an impressive study titled: Realien und Pseudo-realien in Hašek's Švejk. It filled out many of the holes in my own data, and also gave valuable insight into the novel's misspellings, and how it could be fruitful to start working from the facts given about a certain item, rather than using the written name as the starting point.

Hans-Peter Laqueur had then already made me aware of another of Měštan’s studies, Ještě jednou o Švejkovi. in: Proměny (Washington) 19 (1982) Nr. 1, 25-28. With this paper Antonín Měšt’an provides a detailed study on the chronology of The Good Soldier Švejk. Although the paper also covers other themes, I will spend the rest of this blog entry commenting Měštan's analysis of time-related aspects of the novel. I hope this blog entry can complement Měšt'an's study.

Accuracy of quotes

As much as I had appreciated Realien und Pseudo-realien, the bigger was my disappointment with Ještě jednou o Švejkovi. It starts off worryingly as early as the summary of the plot: at times it seems that Měšt'an hasn’t read the book properly. There are a surprising number of mis-quotes, for instance that Bretschneider led Švejk directly to the Salmova ulice police station, and that the regiment walked all the way from Palota to the front. A further problem is that many historical facts of significance have been overlooked, leading to the erroneous conclusion that the plot in Švejk is chronologically consistent with historical events.

From Sarejevo to Mödling via Střelecký Ostrov

The analysis works its way from the few dates quoted in the novel: 20 December 1914 and 23 May 1915 and also draws on cited and verifiable historical events that run parallel to the plot. Amongst these are 28 June 1914 (Sarajevo assasination) and 29 July 1914 (declararation of war on Serbia). Up to December 1914 the study is convincing. Still it could have been noted that Dr Bautze had already served 10 weeks when Švejk appeared at Střelecký ostrov, and we could from that assume that he was called up in October 1914. Another odd timing discrepancy occurs (unrelated to the plot): Obrlajtnant Witinger ran 40 km Vienna-Mödling in 1 hours 48 minutes, a pseudo-marathon record that has yet to be broken.

Wendler and Lukáš

Hašek moved the events at Klosterhoek back at least
four months.

The next date is December 20 1914 when Lukáš and hop-trader Wendler have their conversation which involves an impressive array of references to places, breweries, battles and real historical events. Lukáš informs Wendler that Liman von Sanders has been appointed commander of the Dardanneles army. This only happened later, in March 1915. Wendler then reels off the names of places related to battles where breweries have been destroyed: Klosterhoek, Coimbres, Woevre, Niederaspach, Lamarche, Mulhouse, Vosges. Official war bulletins from early April 1915 all mention these places. My assumption is that Hašek simply copied the names from newspapers or other material he had at hand, mixed them into the pot and freely moved the events back a few months. It seems unlikely that he remembered such details 6 years after: details from Wendler's desperate tirade are almost word for word identical to weekly war summaries printed in Národní Politika on April 4 and April 11 1915. There is another anomaly in this part of the novel. Wendler exclaims: "What about San Giuliano? Is he asleep or what?" Count San Giuliano died on October 16 1914 so he was clearly “asleep”. Was this a deliberate pun by Hašek or simply careless use of facts?

Mishaps on the train

On the train from Prague to Tábor there is a further chance of hooking the plot up to real life, which Měštan fails to notice. Lukáš reads in "Bohemia" about the German submarine 'E' which has great success in the Mediterranean. Here he would have discovered that there where no German U-boats in the Mediterranean in 1914, and if there had been any they would have been called something starting with 'U' and followed by a number (Hans-Peter Laqueur).

Anabase

Švejk was in Putim twice on his anabasis.

The "Švejkova budějovicka anabase" has no reference to concurrent historical events so there is no problem whereas to when it started and ended. The problem is more it's duration. Měštan concludes that our hero walked 200 km (Jaroslav Šerák estimates 160). I did a retrace of the route in 2010 and there is no way that it could have been done in 72 hours as Měštan concludes. It is possible to walk 67 km in 24 hours of course, but Švejk also slept in the Schwarzenberg shep-house and spent a long time at Putim gendarmerie station. Back in 2010 my aching feet made me painfully aware of Hašek's disregard for time and space. Měštan's three day estimate is logical based on the description in the novel, but he and Hašek have ignored the physical limitation of Švejk's undertaking. Nor does he note that the route described in the novel does not correspond to what Švejk later claims during interrogation. The departure from České Budějovice seems to be related to a specific event: there is talk about the execution of Josef Kudrna, which happened on May 7 1915. This indicates that the author already has aligned Švejk’s journey with his own. Hašek left for Királyhida on May 9. As we shall see this chronological “alignment” was briefly cancelled in Budapest. Radko Pytlík also mentions this anomaly in his book Kniha o Švejkovi. Měštan fails to notice any of this.

The War Grave Commission

Siedliska

The next discrepancy between the timing of the plot and historical events takes place in Budapest. The date here is exactly given: May 23 1915 and Italy has just declared war on Austria-Hungary. The company were given post-cards with war grave motives from Sedlisko (Siedliska) instead of the promised 15 deka of Emmental cheese. The war cemeteries are made by the "shirker one-year volunteer Scholz" (Heinrich Scholz). The snag is that the cemeteries at Siedliska didn't exists at the time. Siedliska had just been liberated, and the war grave commission was only instigated in November 1915. The post-cards may have been printed even later, probably in 1916. This is another example of Hašek not bothering with aligning his "realia" with reality.

The long trip to Sanok and Marschieren Marsch

In Sanok it is reported that they are 150 km behind the lines which stretch from Brody to Bug and onwards to Sokal. This was the situation at the front in early to mid-July, not the end of May. So somewhere between Budapest and Sanok five weeks have disappeared without a trace.

Not exactly the Galician flat-lands.

Onwards from Sanok the timing impossibility from the anabase repeats itself. To start at Sanok 17:30 and arrive in Liskowiec (Liskowate) the same night is physically impossible for anyone but a marathon runner. The company had horse-pulled carts, the roads were bad, they could not possibly have done it like the novel describes. (Also, they had been sitting on a train for about a week and had to get used to marching again). A further note of interest from Liskowiec is that the cherries are ripe, very unlikely at the end of May. This chapter also contains anomalies with respect to geography. There is talk of the "Galician flat-lands with mountains to the south" just after Sanok, but the area is actually very hilly. The soldiers are said to have followed a stream down to Liskowiec, but the village is right on the watershed. The catholic vicarage didn't exists, at least not around 1890. There is also a reference to a zamek (chateau) in Krościenko, but none seem to have existed. This opens the speculation that the chapter may have been moved not only in time but also is space. Jaroslav Křížek claims that Hašek's company actually took this route, but there are some questions that still need to be answered. Did the author actually take inspiration from his experiences further east in Galicia where the landscape is flat with the Carpathians to the south and get the geographical detail for the chapter from a map? To further support this hypotheses it should be noted that in "The good soldier Švejk in captivity", the 12. march battallion go all the way to "Sambom" (Sambor) by train. This version is actually more credible as the author presumably had less material available when he wrote it and thus relied more on his own experiences (and memorry).

Švejk captured

Švejk can not possibly have been in Przemyśl on June 3 like Měštan concludes. The city was on Russian hands until that very date. He has also ignored the report from Przemyśl that Švejk was captured on “the 16th this month”, presumably meaning 16th of June. The latter date could have been possible, the area around Felstyn (Skelivka) was reconquered already in mid May.

Did Hašek intend to let Švejk catch him up?

When preparing the wretched cow in Liskowiec it is clear that the plot is going to catch up with the real world at Sokal, i.e from July 22. Hasek himself arrived at Żółtańce on July 16. We must assume the Švejk and his author by now are "synchronised". One of the chapter headers also read "From Bruck an der Leitha to Sokal", a further indication of the intended direction of the plot.

Conclusion

Antonín Měšt'an attempts at analysing the information of the time sequences in the novel is appreciated but far from convincing. He concludes that the plot is logical and coherent from a chronological point of view, which is clearly not the case. This conclusion further cements Hašek's reputation as an author who paid extreme attention to accuracy and historical facts. His reputation in this respect is probably excaggerated, something that Cecil Parrott pointed out in his his book "The Good Soldier Švejk and the short stories": Hašek wrote carelessly and hardly bothrered to proof-read his own manuscripts. My main impression is that Hašek didn’t care much about chronology at all, and that Měšt'an fails to notice this. The plot is hooked up to specific dates only three times, whereas there are around eight hundred geografical references throughout the novel. This speaks volumes about the author's priorities. Hašek would surely also have ridiculed Jomar Hønsi and other meta-text authors who tend to interpret his satirical tour de force as more of a historical document than it really is. Analysing people and places in Švejk is difficult enough, attempting the time-line can only partly make sense. There are just too many contradictions. Still Antonín Měšt'an's paper is an interesting contribution to the studies of the "realia" behind Švejk.

Orange flags

2010-07-17T18:22:00.185+02:00

This blog-entry is off-topic. It refers to events that took place in Western Ukraine during WWII. An excellent introduction to this part of history appeared in New York Times in 1992. Jaroslav Hašek never lived to experience the OUN/UPA underground fighters, but from his time in the Red Army he would have been familiar with NKVD’s predecessor, the Cheka. In the final chapter of Švejk, Hašek touches on the ethnic conflicts in Galicia which were later to lead to the tragedies described in this blog entry.

A mystery solved

Василь Пазиняк in 2010.

One morning in July 2010 I sat down with Vasyl Pazynyak (Василь Пазиняк) who I had met six years earlier in this same city, in Lviv. That morning Vasyl took me to a mahasin, bought some horse-meat and we sat down in the garden of a pub behind my hotel to enjoy the meat and a few Ukrainian Staropramen. Six years ago I had taken part in a very special celebration, and for six years I had been in the dark where I had been that day in 2004. Now the answer was revealed, finally. The place was called Pyriatyn (Пирятин), a tiny village near Rava-Ruska (Рава-Руська) by the Polish border. Sixty years ago an atrocity had taken place in that village. For nearly six years I had searched the internet for information, browsed maps, asked experts, all in vain.

August 19th 2004

Пирятин memorial chapel.

That date is imprinted on my mind forever. I was on my first Švejk-trip and was spending a few days in Lviv. I had been put in contact with Vasyl and Anna Korol who both had been busy most of August 18, showing the tourist their city. I didn’t know their language, so it was a mostly limited to a visual experience. It was mentally exhausting to try to concentrate and listen to a language when most of what was said was guesswork, but I still appreciated the generosity and friendliness. It was also clear that I had been invited to some happening the next day, unknown what. I duly turned up by the Львівська обласна рада (Lviv Regional Council) the next morning. Dr Pazynyak was a council deputy and I was led to a chauffeur-driven white Volha limousine where we all took our place. Off we went out into the unknown. I was dressed as a tourist and suddenly became acutely conscious of it, sitting in my shorts and sandals in an official limousine from Lviv oblast, being transported at the expense of Ukrainian tax-payers. After about an hours drive we took off onto a minor road and ended up by a small chapel in an opening in the pine forest. I still didn’t know where I was, but judging by the number of people there (and how they were dressed) it was an official and solemn occasion.

Religion and politics

The place was called something like Pyriatyn and people in national customs appeared everywhere. Blue and yellow Ukrainian flags were flying and to my surprise there were also many elderly men in uniforms. Several other flags were waved, and particularly conspicuous was a red and black one. Then there were orange banners decorated with for me incomprehensible slogans. In the scorching heat a religious service got under way (I assume it was Greek Catholic). I understood that it was a special event, as there were tears in the eyes of the old babušy and the uniform-clad veterans. I was told that the men in green were patrioty and that the black and red flags was that of UPA, another unknown for me unknown entity.

After the service ended there were speeches by politicians, first Vasyl and then a deputy from the national parliament in Kiev. The deputy soon became agitated and I picked up the the words kriminalny banditsky klan. It was by now clear that the religious service had metamorphosed into a political gathering. The orange banners appeared in numbers and I was explained the meaning of the slogans, the most common one was Tak! Ющенко (Yes! Yushchenko). Who the latter was I still didn’t know but it was obvious that the criminal gang of bandits was the regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev, and that this Yushchenko who we were saying Yes! to was an opposition politician and an altogether cleaner man. The rest is history but I didn’t know the significance of it at the time …

Vasyl speaking by Пирятин, August 19 2004.

As the speeches ended, another transition occurred. The Горі́лка (vodka) flowed, huge amounts of food appeared and people were sitting in groups in the forest and singing songs about “Ukrainske lesy”, “Naše Ukraina”, and “Volyn”. An older man, also called Vasyl, ended fully in the grip of patriotism and horilka, to such a degree that he stepped onto the tomatoes and eggs on the blanket in front of him, declaring his love for his dear motherland. The Ukrainian hospitality which I since have learned to appreciate was on full show. The guest was treated like a king even though a lady wondered why he was so “nirepresentantny” dressed. In the forest there were groups of people enjoying themselves, eating, drinking and singing. A man told me that drinking mead would make you mad, make you sing and even make you fart. For me as a first time visitor to the Ukraine it was an experience of a lifetime.

I still had things to ponder; it wasn't clear to my why a religious service and political gathering was held in such an unlikely place. That it had to do with events 60 years ago I had grasped, but not exactly what. During the service the grim faces and the tears in the eyes of the old babušy and dědušy said more than a thousand words. Some terrible tragedy must have happened on August 19 1944. Amongst the people there were survivors of an atrocity, almost all of them had lost relatives, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters.

Ignorant tourist dragged into politics.

We were soon taken to a banquet in the village hall, and for I while I feared that I would drown in a sea of horilka (vodka) and hospitality, but thanks to copious amounts of food and pickled gherkins I survived. There were more speeches and Vasyl presented the unlikely guest from Norway, and induced me to hold a short speech. I was petrified, standing there nirepresentantny dressed, but obliged. I thanked my hosts for the hospitality and was given a hint that I ought to round it off with a few choice expressions: Slava Ukraini, Za svobodnu Ukrainu a za Yushchenko. I had no problem in praising a free Ukraine of course but I still didn't know who this Yushchenko who I brought a toast to was...

The return of NKVD

The list of victims.

The whole day had been a genuinely moving experience and there in the village hall I finally understood why we were there. On the wall there was a exhibition commemorating the tragedy that took place 60 years ago on this day. The Red Army had driven the enemy out of western Ukraine and Pax Sovietica was reintroduced. But not before the NKVD-troops following in the rear of the regular army had performed their “clean-up operations”. That meant punishing anyone who was suspected of co-operating with the enemy, whether it be the Nazis, the Ukrainian Insurgence Army (UPA) or even the Polish Home Army, Armia Krajowa (AK). The village didn’t know what horrors were in store for them that day. The men were rounded up and executed, branded as counter-revolutionaries and bandits. Only those who were out on the fields survived. The number of victims totalled 68. This was to teach UPA-sympathizers a brutal lesson and it is just one of many atrocities NKVD-troops committed during the re-conquest of western Ukraine.

Banderovtsi

UPA veterans at Пирятин, 2004.

Even there in the village hall I didn’t know what this organisation UPA with it’s black and red flag was, an organisation who is obviously held in high esteem in Western Ukraine even today. On my return home I started to investigate who the people with red black and red flags were. Slowly a rather complex and sinister picture appeared. The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), was created as a reaction to Polish repression and discrimination during the inter-war period. They carried out acts of sabotage and assassinations, both against prominent Poles and moderate Ukrainians. The aim was a Ukrainian nation state. The Polish reaction was heavy-handed; collective punishment hitting whole communities, an act that further fuelled animosity between the two peoples. OUN obviously were in conflict with the Soviet Union as well, but were less effective against the more ruthless Stalinist regime. After the Soviet invasion of Galicia in September 1939, the OUN leadership, headed by Stepan Bandera fled to Kraków and for the next two years they co-operated with Nazi Germany.

The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 led to another twist. Bandera and ONU declared an independent Ukraine, but were immediately arrested and deported to Germany. Bandera himself spent the next three year at Spandau prison and in Sachsenhausen. The Nazis would not tolerate a rival centre of power and Ukrainian nationalism was brutally suppressed. In 1943 UPA, the armed wing of the Bandera faction of OUN, was formed. Armed resistance against the Nazis became widespread, but Banderovtsi were also carrying out massacres on Poles in Volyn and Galicia. There were armed encounters with Armia Krajowa, who in turn killed many Ukrainians. Czechs were also amongst the UPA victims in Volyn, so were many Ukrainians. The Polish question is perhaps the darkest chapter in OUN's history. It’s members also took part in persecution of Jews, although the organisation also had Jewish members. It adds up to a tragic and confusing picture, with shifting and opportunistic alliances, where your enemy’s enemy is your friend, but a friend who the next day may have turned into en enemy.

Polish victims of UPA at Lipniki.

In 1944 the Red Army drove the enemy out of the Ukraine and NKVD troops were left fighting UPA, inevitably killing civilians in droves like they did in Pyriatyn. From now on UPA again co-operated with the retreating Germans. They also started to work with their arch-enemy Armia Krajowa against the even greater NKVD evil. There could have been no clean hands in this tragedy, which has some similarities with concurrent events in Yugoslavia. The outcome was by now given, whoever UPA aligned themselves with. The organisation was slowly liquidated by Soviet and Polish forces, but scattered groups were active as late as the early 1950’s. The final chapter was written in 1959 when Stepan Bandera was killed by the KGB in Munich. His grave is still there.

OUN had no natural allies, as none of the powers at the time shared their goal of an independent Ukrainian state. The Bandera group still has few sympathisers outside theUkraine and certain emigrant circles in North America. Bandera and his followers are a highly divisive force in the Ukraine, where he by many in western Ukraine is regarded a hero but is equally reviled in the Russian speaking Eastern and Southern Ukraine. One of the last acts of former president Yushchenko was to declare Bandera a hero of the Ukraine. This happened in face of protests both in the Ukraine and abroad. A court even declared the nomination illegal. His successor Viktor Yanukovych revoked the nomination soon after he came to power.

Lviv, sixty-six years later

GULAG, the fate of millions, including Vasyl's relatives.

As I was sitting there with Vasyl and having pin-pointed the place where we went that hot August day in 2004, he told me about the fate of his father. When the archives were opened in the 1990’s Vasyl finally found out. His father and other family members had been arrested and deported to Siberia. Their crime was that they were kulaks, they might have had one cow too many to be classed as worthy peasants and prospective model Soviet citizens. Thus they landed in the category “class enemies”. Whether the arrest had happened after the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 or on the return of the Red Army five years later wasn’t clear to me. Their destination was a village by the town of Zima in the Irkutsk region. They journey had taken one month, on the carriages was written “Ukrainian bandits” and the wagons were pelted with stones and whatever was at hand for the on-lookers at the stations. They had been away for 10 years. Vasyl had visited the village by Zima recently and had met many chorosyoe ljudi (good people) there, emphasising that moskali were as much victims of Stalin and Beria as anyone else. We were soon joined by another member of the delegation to Pyriatyn in 2004; Dr. Anna Korol. I was even invited to her hospital but soon got tired of worn corridors, pretty nurses, and sick people and went back to my favourite spot Hasova Lyampa to do some work with my dearest friend, my Asus net-book.

Moskali

In the afternoon I met Vasyl and Anna again for a meal in a most unlikely place. Opposite the town hall we went through an unmarked door and there was a soldier in UPA uniform asking if I was a moskal and communist. “No”, I said, “I am a Norwegian spy”. Then he brusquely asked for the haslo (password). I had been told earlier by Vasyl what to expect and obliged with Slava heroii!, Slava Ukraini! and Smrt moskalam. Hailing the Heroes, the Ukraine and declaring ‘Death to the Muscovites’ did the trick. A book-reel opened and we were let into the hideout cum restaurant in the basement. One the menu were interesting items like jazyk moskala (tongue of a Muscovite) which was an enormous sausage. The guest could also have ordered drunk carp-looking moskal and a wider assortment of highly political dishes. This theme restaurant is called Криївка (Kryivka), a term for an underground bunker.

Kaiser dreimal hoch

Franz Joseph I, portrait in a cafe in Lviv.

That sausage with the unlikely name rounded the day off. I had enjoyed myself yet again in Lviv but also had a few more things to think about. In retrospect the fall of Austria-Hungary proved to be a disaster for this part of the word, a disaster it has only recently recovered from (some would say it still hasn’t). Skoropadskyi, Piłsudski, Stalin, Khrushchov, Brezjnev, Gorbatchov, Kuchma and Yushchenko: Long live Emperor Franz Joseph I! By the amount of Habsburg memorabilia and nostalgia found around Lviv it seems that quite a few are ready to go along with that archaic slogan.

Today the wounds between Poland and Ukraine have healed considerably. When Bandera was declared Hero of the Ukraine the Polish government diplomatically referred to it as an internal matter. Voices from Russia, Jewish spokesmen and even the European Parliament were less conciliatory. Poland and the Ukraine are soon to host the EURO 2012 football championship together. One of the host cities is Lviv...

Konec Švejka

2010-07-17T00:00:00.344+02:00

“Konec Švejka” is Czech for “the end of Švejk”. It was an end that was never meant to be, but sadly happened already in Klimontów. Jaroslav Hašek had planned the novel in six volumes, but had just about started the 4th when his untimely death put his pen to silence forever. It is obvious that he still had a lot to tell his readers, and it is a great loss for admirers of his masterpiece that he never managed to complete it. We can only assume that he intended to more or less follow his own route, and fit in a mosaic of his own experiences as he had done to great effect so far. In fact he had done enough already to secure his hero world fame, and the novel now ranks as the most translated book written in Czech ever.

From the K.u.k military survey map from 1910.

Jaroslav Hašek was terminally ill when he dictated the last chapters of Švejk in his house at Lipnice nad Sázavou. We should therefore not be surprised that there are a few geographical mysteries towards the end. The Klimontów where the novel ends can not be traced. Places with that name existed, but in parts of Galicia far from here. His description of Żółtańce seems more accurate, and from this it is generally assumed that the Klimontów in question was Kłodno, which is located 3 km east of Żółtańce. Another discrepancy occurs when he describes Uciszków, Busk and Derewlany as being to the west and then there is the final mystery: according to the Austro-Hungarian Military Survey Map from 1910 there was no railway here, although Hašek explicitly states that Švejk arrived by train. This latest enigma was solved when Evžen Topinka, chairman of Česká Beseda in Lviv, confirmed that the railway was opened in 1910, and extended north to Krystonopol (now Červonohrad) in 1914.

At this stage we must assume that the Good Soldier and the author’s journeys have caught up, even time wise: that the lag of more than a month which had existed since the end of Book One now was cancelled out. Somewhere between Budapest and Felsztyn the author let five weeks disappear without trace. Chronological accuracy was not as high on Hašek's agenda as geographical precision. Between Sambor and Żółtańce the12th march battalion of the 91st regiment took a route which is not described in Švejk. When our hero was taken prisoners by his own troops they were looking for billeting at Stara Sól (this is also mentioned in the novel), and then continued via Sambor and Szczerce (now Щирець) to Gologory (now Гологори) where they replaced the losses the 91st regiment had suffered the week before. Hašek arrived with the 12th march battalion and joined the 3rd field battallion, 11th field company on July 11. Then the whole brigade turned sharply northwards and arrived in Żółtańce on July 16 1915 (VÚA archives, Prague).

Zhovtantsi uniate church

On a scorching hot July day I set off for Avtostanitsja II on the northern outskirts of Lviv to take a minibus 30 km north-east to Zhovtantsi. The name of the place of course has changed since the era of the Dual Monarchy when Polish was the main administrative language of the region. I opted for the frequent minibuses as there are only two trains a day on this line, and even at inconvenient hours. The bus ride was quick and other passengers helped me get off at the right place. The heat was so intense that I sought refuge in a pizza cafe where I had a dubious Pizza Zhovtantsi. But the air conditioning more than made up for the miserable lump of dough and the even more depressing topping.

Zhovtantsi welcomed the visitor with a gleaming new church. I have never anywhere seen so many new churches as here in the Lviv oblast. The contrast to the general decay is striking, and I many times asked myself: where does the money come from? Filling in the numerous pot holes seems a much larger task than building hundreds of beautiful onion domed churches. Zhovtantsi can hardly be called a town. There is a post office, a church, a school and that's about it. The houses are spread out, the centre is little more than a crossroads with the mentioned buildings.

Velyke Kolodno

After my pizza delight I set out into the heat again, and walked towards Velyke Kolodno which is what Švejk's final stop is generally known as today. This is also a track our diligent soldier took, he had first asked about the whereabouts of his marškumpačka in Żółtańce but there he was directed to Klimontów. I crossed the railway line, just as my predecessor had done, and there was the highlight of Velyke Kolodno, the now ruined former Roman-catholic church, pitcuresquely set on a hill beyond a small lake. In the novel Hašek lets the officers have a Schlachtfest in a vicarage, which had been empty after the Greek-catholic vicar had been hanged in a pear-tree in the garden of a school by the returned troops of Austria-Hungary. He had been accused by a Polish teacher of collaborating with the Russian occupiers, totally groundless. Behind all this was Polish-Ukrainian ethnic strife and a stolen hen. The rank and file were quartered in the school, the only decent building in the village.

Before my proto-type Švejk-trip in 2004 Pavel Gan sent me a picture of the vicarage and I set out looking for it. It was to no avail. All the larger buildings in the village appeared to be of a newer data, including the school. Around the Roman-catholic church there was nothing obvious, it all seemed to be post-WW1. The ruined church was actually built in the 1930's. I walked on and saw another church, a gleaming new one. The builders were stunned that some tourist had come to this corner of the world, and they were not aware of the connection between Švejk and Kolodno, although they of course knew him and his author. The church was pravoslavna (i.e. Russian Orthodox) so this wasn't it either. I gave up, sat down for a beer in a mahasin which served draught beer, and concluded my mission on the tracks of Švejk. I phoned my friends Richard Hašek and Jarolsav Šerák in Prague and Dutifully Reported that the first part of the journey was absolved.

Former vicarage in Zhovtantsi

I also rang Pavel Gan to verify excactly where the mysterious vicarage was. To my great surprise he directed me back to Zhovtantsi. I was puzzled because Hašek clearly located the final scene to Klimontów, so I hastily concluded that Pavel hadn't read Švejk properly. That 91st regiment actually had a pig slaughter party in the vicarage, is mystification by the author. The regiment only had a two hour break here on July 16 1915. Nor do I know if the story of the executed Greek-catholic priest is true.

From Synek edition 1930, with Karel Vaněk's continuation.

Vaněk completed the remaining 3 parts of the novel, but this

piece is regarded inferior and has rarely been translated.

Whether Jaroslav Hašek invented the episode with the priest or not is beside the point. Injustices like these could have happened, they did happen and the author may just have shifted time, place, people and circumstances. Together with his satirical genius this method of collage was at the heart of his master creation, later to be become famous as Švejk. There is in this novel to my knowledge not a single person, name, place or historical event taken out of thin air. Most of is derived from his own unusual experiences in life. Exaggerations abound of course (Bretschneider could not have been eaten by his own dogs), but by and large the descriptions in this novel relate to tangible points in history, geography and literature. And not to forget human life, human stupidity, and inhumanity, including the senseless slaughtering of innocent people for some political aim.

Švejk survived the madness by using has wit, just as his creator did. Their survival left the world with an unforgettable satirical novel which inspired this tourist/web-master to spend six months on their tracks. The first part of the odyssey was solemnly concluded with two Stare Misto beers in the only cool place in Zvontantsi, on an ubearingly hot day in July 2010. I am sure Jaroslav Hašek would have approved. At this time 95 years ago he was was here, and he and his fellow sufferers had worse things than heat, bumpy roads and the flies to contend with...

The pearl of Western Ukraine

2010-07-15T19:43:00.001+02:00

The Colonel was also smiling and then issued these orders: “Prepare for Švejk a military fare-card via Lvov to the Zóltance station, which his march company is to reach tomorrow, and issue to him a new government-issue uniform from the warehouse, and 6 crowns and 82 pennies in place of the mess for the road.” (from Švejk, translated by Zenny Sadlon).

As mentioned in the previous blog entry: Lviv (Львів) hardly merits a stop because of it’s significance in Švejk. It is mentioned eight times, but as can be seen from the above quote: the plot never actually takes place here. The Good Soldier quickly passed through on his way from Vojutyči to Žovtanci where he re-joined his company, eager as he was to serve his emperor until his body was torn to pieces. But as stated in my ‘Motivation’ for this journey: this trip was not all about one theme and in beautiful Lviv I allowed myself a pause on my trek. That said; Lviv also served as a perfect base for a day-trip to nearby Žovtanci where the great novel ended due to Jaroslav Hašek’s untimely death.

By the time Švejk passed through Lviv the city had already changed hands twice. On September 6 1914 it fell to the Russians after the collapse of the k.u.k army in Galicia. There was little fighting and war damage as the Austro-Hungarian forces hurriedly abandoned the city. The scenario was similar on June 22 1915 when the Central Powers returned. Again there was little fighting in the city itself and the Russian’s hadn’t started to apply the scorched earth tactics they used later that summer.

Lemberg erobert

Wien, 22. Juni.
Amtlich wird verlautbart:
Unsere zweite Armee hat heute nach hartem Kampfe Lemberg erobert.

Der Stellvertreter des Chefs des Generalstabes.
v. Hoefer, Feldmarschalleutnant

This was my third visit to Lviv and will not be the last. It is a city which feels Central European despite the Cyrillic alphabet and visible remnants of Soviet times. Still many things have changed since Austrian rules ceased in 1918. At the time it was a multi-ethnic city made up mainly of Poles, Ukrainians, Jews and Germans. The Poles were the largest ethnic group and maps from the era often show the city named as Lwów. The German name Lemberg also appears, mostly on older maps. The Russian name Lvov for obvious reasons became wide-spread after the Soviet Union grabbed the area in September 1939. This is also the Czech name of the city and obviously the one Hašek used.

Testimony to Lviv's Jewish past

During the interwar Polish rule, the ethnic diversity of the city was maintained although Polish dominance became more pronounced at the expense of the other nationalities. WW2 and it’s immediate aftermath turned everything upside down in this part of the world. The relatively enlightened Habsburg rule made way to the more nationalistic Polish rule, but worse was to come. The Holocaust tragedy is well known, but less known are the mutual massacres and ethnic cleansings Polish and Ukrainians subjected each others to during the same period. This left Lviv a predominantly Ukrainian city although Russians and other former Soviet nationalities still make their mark.

Arriving on an early morning train from Sambir, I found myself in a for me totally unknown place, the “primiski voksal” (suburban station), which I had no clue where was. Fortunately I immediately discovered that it was next door to the main station. From there it is a half hour walk down to the centre and with a heavy back-pack and 30+ degrees it was tough. I had not arranged any place to stay, and the first hotel I found was nice and expensive, so I walked on, increasingly budget-conscious. Very central, very ugly and very cheap was Hotel Lviv, a perfect choice it seemed. It reeked of dreary "socialism” in every corner; from the grumpy staff, the creaky lifts, the general shoddiness and even the “minder” on the ground floor. But with a perfect location and miniscule rates it served its purpose. Without hassle I got a hot and stuffy room on the 8th floor with a perfect view of “stare misto”, the old town. As it goes I regard hotels as places to sleep and nothing more.

The old town in Lviv is a delight, and I spent my time sightseeing, and being on-line in some excellent cafés and pubs. One of them was “Hasova Lampa” (Гасова Лампа), with good beer, inventive design, good rock music, decent food and a relaxed atmosphere. The music was clear and loud, particularly in the toilets. Slightly pricey but there was no sight of any Soviet surliness on any face. It seemed to be popular with students. Another favourite was “Bar Dominik”, but this one was without Wi-Fi so I slipped into deep thinking and sublime beer instead The “Černihivske bile” wheat beer is as good as it’s model Hoegaarden, a pure joy, a reason for any beer lover to go to the Ukraine. Both brews are incidentally owned by ABInBev. Big companies don’t necessarily make crap beer, big can also be beautiful. That said said, ABInBev does make some incredibly poor brews too. Due to my natural politeness I shall refrain from mentioning any particular brand. But if you are curious, here is a clue: one of them is named after the city which is mentioned most often in my favourite novel...

With Vasyl and Švejk

Not to be forgotten: Švejk is well-known in Lviv, it is the only place in the world with TWO statues of him. One of them is on a bicycle, a world which is hardly mentioned at all in the novel. The other statue is of him sitting, and he has little in common with the figure known from Josef Lada's drawings. This soldier is slimmer and less of a caricature. That said; Jaroslav Hašek only ever saw one drawing of Švejk, and this one was totally different from the small and chubby figure that spread across the world later. In 1925-26 Lada made a series of drawings for the newspaper České Slovo and it was those who have become associated with Švejk ever since. Translator Zenny Sadlon and scholar Martina Winkler are amongst those who argue that Lada's drawings have cemented Švejk's reputation as clown. For people who have read the book properly, this should be less of a problem. It ought to be completely clear that this is no comic strip, it is a novel about human stupidity and surviving it all. And much more...

Lviv has undergone marked changes since I first visited in 2004. A lot of repair work has been done and the city also hosts a few football games during Euro 2012. This has led to much needed investment in infrastructure. The abolishment of visa requirements has drawn the tourists, and this gem of a city deserves every tourist it can get!

Švejk back with his company

2010-07-14T15:43:00.090+02:00

Sambir railway station.

The unfinished Book Four of Švejk deals with the good soldiers return to his company after his ordeals in Przemyśl. After a narrow escape from the gallows, he was escorted back to the brigade HQ at Wojutycze near Sambor (now Sambir). Here he had the dubious pleasure of reuniting with his adversary Lieutenant Dub. Another old acquaintance, Cadet Biegler, also reappeared. He had had a tortured journey from the cholera wards in Tarnów, stopping at all (the no doubt smelly) railway toilets along the way, to get rid his “cholera” germs.

My own journey in 2010 again had to adapt to political realities, and that meant disregarding Švejk’s route back to his company. I had to return to the Ukraine via Medyka and Šehyni, and then by minibus down to Sambir, changing at Mostyska. Crossing the border again went smoothly; there was no three-hour wait like it was when I first visited the Ukraine in 2004. Leaving the EU, I was in an ambivalent mood; I don’t mind bus travel, but the Ukrainian maršrutky are not for those who believe in the positive effects of fresh air. The bus setting off from Šehyni for Mostyska was a prime example. The temperature soon soared and a Czech-speaking Pole with a 100 kilo suitcase resolutely grabbed a screw-driver to break open a window. It was a huge relief for everyone on board who weren’t afraid of a slight waft of air. The bus onwards from Mostyska was less crowded and the trip could even be classed as comfortable.

In Sambir I was directed to the towns hotel, right on the rynok. It was comfortable enough, and the staff were welcoming. When he saw my passport the receptionist even related from his ordeals in arctic Norilsk from the time of the Soviet Union. It was getting very hot now and might have thought that I was already missing my own latitudes and climate. Самбір itself was quite pleasant with a large square as a centre and focal point. The railway station is modern and this is where I set out for Wojutycze (now Воютичі) from, after having enjoyed a few good Stare Místo draught beers at the station. On the train I soon became a curiosity, both between the staff and the other passengers. After a few minutes they called out for Vojutyči, and off I stepped, in the middle of a field. There was no station building and not even a sign so this is a place I would never have found without help. I walked along the tracks into the large village.

On the way to Vojutyči.

I found it odd that the “Eiserne brigade” (Iron Brigade), the unit to which the 91st regiment belonged, would have set up HQ here in this small place. The 91st regiment were heading for Sambor when Švejk got lost and the historical fact is that Sambor also for a while even housed the divisional HQ. I didn’t even see any buildings in Vojutyči that would have been natural candidates for any army offices. Still, Hašek wrote a satirical novel, not a historical reference work, so a degree of mystification and inaccuracies should be accounted for. It could also be that Vojutyči was larger than it is today; the events described in the novel took place before the disastrous wars, population displacements and genocides of the 20 century decimated Galicia.

On this trip I have discovered that the author was far less accurate with facts than I had previously thought. There are numerous spelling mistakes and some place he mentions are not identifiable at all. That said, the amount of details he DID get right is still impressive, despite being seriously ill when the wrote the latter parts of Švejk. The unexpected shoddiness does not detract from the greatness of the novel unless you read it as a fact-file rather than the satirical master-piece it is.

Another author, also familiar to readers of Švejk, knew this area and reported from events very closely related to the theme of the novel. Ludwig Ganghofer reported from the front in Galicia in May and June 1915 and in early June he visited Przemyśl and Sambor. The latter had been re-conquered already on May 15 but the Russians had defended Przemyśl until early June when it finally surrended. Ganghofer had a totally different perspective than Hašek. He was a German nationalist and a personal friend of Kaiser Wilhelm. Still that didn’t make him an outright bigot and in his “Die Front im Osten” he throws glowing reports not only on the victorious Central Powers but also on the local population, particularly the female part of it! So deep down he must have found the Rusyns and Ukrainians far more attractive than his own Bavarian stock and even today one could safely agree with his observations! On June the 1 he relates from a stay in Sambor as a guest of Austrian staff officers, just before the final assault on Przemyśl is about to start.

Jaroslav Hašek arrived in Sambor in early July 1915 and at this stage the Russians had already been pushed beyond the river Bug. The 91st regiment had been badly decimated during fighting by Gologory and Hašek was one of those filling the ranks, getting ready for the next round of slaughter. At Gologory he joined the 11th march company (11.7.1915) and in this respect his own story differs from the one he created for Švejk, who had joined the company already in Királyhida. Švejk had also started the journey to the front around May 22 1915 whereas the author himself only left on June 30.

I only spent one night in Sambor. It was hot, and the mosquitos were a nuisance and very early the next morning I set off for Lviv, the attractive centre of Western Ukraine. It is just about mentioned in Švejk but such a beautiful city can’t be ignored just because it doesn’t feature in a certain novel! Švejk only changed trains in Lviv, and the major part of the plot from Wojutycze onwards concentrates on his adversaries: Lieutenant Dub's and Cadet Biegler's common auto mobile trip to the front...

Manewry Szwejkowskie

2010-07-13T13:50:00.508+02:00

Cyclists setting off for the tour of the ring of
fortifications around Przemyśl.

Przemyśl was the stage for one of the scariest episodes of Švejk's odyssey on the way to the Galician front. Taken prisoner by his own troops in Felstyn, he had been escorted to the recently recaptured fortress city on the river San and faced summary execution. He was even given spiritual consolation by the venerable Father Martinec. This was how obvious his fate seemed at the time. He was only saved by the intervention of the duty-conscious Major Derwota who managed to convince his blood-thirsty superiors that they at least ought to establish the culprits identity before they strung him up.

All this must have happened some time in June 1915. Przemyśl had fallen to the Russians on March 22 after a long siege. The 110,000 strong garrison of the huge fortress complex surrended after having literally been starved out. The city and the fortress remained in Russian hands only for a few months; on June 3 the forces of the Mittelmächte recaptured the city. This was all part of the Gorlice-Tarnów offensive which was eventually to cause the Russian "strategic withdrawal" which left all of current Poland in German hands. Galicia was recaptured in it's entirety and the front was established (mainly) on Russian territory for the rest of the war.

Szwejkologs of Poland, united.

It had always been clear to this avid follower of Hašek that Przemyśl was to be a key stop on the route. I had even spent a day in the city on my "mini-Švejk" trip back in 2004 and had liked it. Przemyśl sits prettily on the river San and has an attractive old core with an impressive number of ecclesiastical buildings. The city is small and easily negotiable on foot. Another attraction is the ring of fortresses, an enormous conglomerate of steel and concrete which even today is a landmark. Some of the fortresses offer fine views of the surrounding countryside, even as far as the Ukraine.

During those July-days of 2010 I was back in the realms of the Latin alphabet before my anticipated 10 week disappearance into Cyrillic incomprehension. I had incredible luck with the timing of the visit. Richard Hašek had informed me just a few days earlier that I absolutely should try to be there from July 11-13. These were the dates of the annual Manewry Szwejkowskie, the largest Švejk-related happening anywhere on the planet and now arranged for the 13th time. Jaroslav Hašek is immensely popular in Poland, perhaps even more so than in his homeland, where there exists a certain ambiguity. And nowhere else are his admirers better organised than in Poland. Richard himself has been to the manewry three times and he told me that he has a few hundred personal acquaintances in Poland alone! How he keeps track of them only Richard and the Good Lord knows. These excellent connections between the authors grandson and Poland now came to benefit me greatly. I was put in contact with a certain Marek Chodań who introduced me to the inner circle of szwejkologs where I was immediately welcomed and taken care of, even announced in public on the square!

The arrangement itself was extensive. Cycle trips around the fortresses, bands on the square, music, film and grill party at Fort XVI "Zniesienie", guided city tours, a lot of piwo, events involving local businesses etc. The organizers sported fine k.u.k uniforms and many visitors were similarly dressed for duty. I didn't have that privilege, but in the summer heat it might have been just as well.

There were visitors from all over Poland: Kielce, Gdańsk, Warsaw, Kraków, Cieszyn and a few more. The group from Cieszyn spoke Czech and also performed a few of the classic songs mentioned in Švejk. Cieszyn is right on the Czech border, it is logically the same town as Český Těšín. After the break-up of Austria-Hungary in 1918 the town was split between the two nascent states of Poland and Czechoslovakia. The group from Gdańsk were a colourful lot and even included Carol Dixon, a teacher of English from Bristol. It meant that I for the first time since Austria could speak a language which I was reasonably familiar with. This was a privilege I rarely enjoyed on much of this trip, and certainly not from this point onwards. Foreign visitors were few, but included a brass band from Lviv and a stray Norwegian.

I found my new friends in Poland an extremely welcoming lot, despite my limited ability to communicate with them. The manewry was such a good experience that I am seriously thinking of going down to Przemyśl again in 2011 just to relive it. I also realised that I had done very little serious research on Švejk in the days of the manoeuvres. Some spots mentioned in the novel I just forgot to ask about. It regards the city baths and a wine-bar called Vollgruber. There is also a mention of a statue of a former mayor Grabowski which is just as unclear who was. Hašek himself seems generally quite muddled about this city, and it's unclear if he ever went there. Radko Pytlík devotes a whole chapter in his book Osudy a cesty Josefa Švejka on whether Hašek visited Przemyśl or not. He concludes that he could have been there; either on one of his wanderings in Galicia as a young man, or after the battle of Sokal at the end of July 1915. He could also have dropped by during his company's march to the front in July 1915, although this unlikely. So there is still work to be done for some dedicated Švejkolog!

People in Przemyśl are in two minds themselves. We were taken on a fine walking tour to a spot where it's believed that Švejk's lice-ridden dungeon was. The location is not pin-pointed by the author, so the former prison in Ulica Franciszka Smolki 13 is simply a theory. Still, the site was worth the visit. Dark and dingy, it has been converted to flats, albeit not exactly in the luxury category. The tenants were very understanding of the partly uniform-clad visitors...

Fortunately someone had figured out that the this visitor's grasp of Polish was minuscule so I was unexpectedly accompanied by German-speaking Halina Stadnik whose profession is Stadtführerin (Tourist Guide). A very pleasant and well-informed tourist guide she is too, and thanks to her I got a lot of information that otherwise would have got lost in a plethora of consonant-ridden Polish syllables. The siege of Przemyśl in 1914/15 was a hard time for the population and the mostly Hungarian garrison. Halina told me that two cooks had been hanged after it was revealed that they had made goulash from human meat. On the other hand general Kusmanek, the commander of the fortress, lived relatively comfortably, at least he had a descent villa, now the home of Ing Bank. After the fall of Przemyśl, Hermann Kusmanek von Burgneustädten spent the rest of the war in Russian captivity. On his release and return to Vienna he was court-martialled for treason, but acquitted. He who one day was hailed as the lion of Przemyśl had suddenly become a traitor...

On the Sunday Marek Chodań took me on a tour to some of the fortresses. The mass graves are enormous, and the lists of names on those marble plates have no end. Every name printed there has once been a human being, a person with his own history, his own value. These countless soldiers didn't try to get their names into the history books as the idiot Herostratus did; forced as they were to fight for whoever sent them to the slaughterhouse of Przemyśl, whether it was Kaiser Wilhelm II, Kaiser Franz Joseph I or Николай Александрович Романов.

Smugglers and pot-holes

2010-07-09T12:37:00.025+02:00

Švejk registering his fellow Russian prisoners in Dobromil.

Švejk's march towards the front took an unexpected turn when he reached the village of Felsztyn. An escaped Russian soldier was having a bath in the local pond just as our loyal Austrian soldier surprised him when looking for a place to billet his company. Faced with such a fearsome enemy, the Russian understandably legged it, stark naked and totally helpless. Our hero investigated the Russian uniform diligently and then decided to try it on. At that very moment, a patrol of Hungarian soldiers arrived and Švejk suddenly found himself in captivity, arrested by his own army.

In June 1915 there was no border to cross and no formal obstacles to face. Since 1945 Galicia has been split between Ukraine and Poland, so recreating Švejk's journey nowadays would mean breaking border regulations. On July 8 2010 I set off from Sanok to Ustrzyki Dolne to take the train onwards to Khyriv on the Ukrainian side. At the platform I encountered a phenomenon I hadn't come across in Poland so far: fat, ugly and vulgar women. These features are not normally associated with Polish women, who in general are anything but fat, ugly and vulgar. Even though I was not too familiar with their language, I still noticed that their vocabulary was strikingly similar to that of Polish workers on Norwegian building sites; consisting mainly of the word kurwa. The men on the platform were no less vulgar, so I wondered what kind of "tourists" these were?

Disgusted passenger on the wrecked Ustrzyki Dolne train

On boarding the train I had another surprise. The carriage was wrecked, seats ripped loose, litter was floating, and I got a very uneasy feeling. I have seen a lot of vandalism over the years, but this looked more like a war zone. A passenger asked me to take photos, so Norway could see what kind of bandits these were. I did, and soon a border guard appeared and escorted me into the tidy police carriage. I believe they did it to make my journey more comfortable, otherwise they would surely have asked me to delete the pictures. The guards were very helpful and even led me past the immigration queue and into the Ukraine. The passengers were also very curious and friendly. If they were Polish or Ukrainian I don't know. It is even possible that not ALL of them were smugglers.

When the train arrived in Khyriv (in 1915 Chyrów), there was frantic activity. Screwdrivers appeared and the "passengers" were suddenly busy dismounting the carriages inventory. From everywhere cigarette boxes appeared and it became clear why the carriage was in such an awful state. The Polish guards had left at the border, so now only the railway staff remained. They all turned a blind eye. Six years ago I had seen something similar at the Užhorod - Nižné Nemecké border crossing. A girl sitting next to me had more stamps in her passport than the most distinguished globetrotter, but she only had two kinds: a Ukrainian and a Slovak. It was clear then, and is still, that the EU eastern border leaks like a sieve.

Khyriv station.

In Khyriv I even found accommodation in a motel, quite unexpected. It was good value although the girl on duty was the most grumpy and unhelpful cow I had come across so far on the trip. I had more luck when trying to change money. The cash machine at the bank didn't work, but a nice lady escorted me to a "mahasin" where I bought some hryvni.

Khyriv was not an uplifting introduction to the Ukraine. The streets were little more than a collection of pot-holes and the place had the air of a society going to seed. Derelict or shabby buildings were the rule, as is normal in places with a declining population, a problem common to most of the former Soviet Union. The gulf from relatively wealthy Poland appeared huge, and in many ways this was worse than what I have seen in so-called "third-world" countries in South America.

Felsztyn, the village where Švejk was captured,has from 1945 been called Skelivka and the good people of Česká beseda in Lviv have erected a statue to the Good Soldier. A fine monument it is, modelled on Josef Lada's Švejk. I took a minibus the 7 km to the village and had a quick look. It was another poor and sad place, and the statue's backdrop was the shell of a building and some other derelict houses. A man back in Khyriv had suggested I walked there along the railway line, but I correctly figured that the minibus would be quicker, despite all the pot-holes.

The next morning a jumped on a train to Dobromyl, a train that hardly moved. Dobromyl station was another shell, overgrown, and smelling of shit. The only living being there was a goat feeding on the diverse vegetation along the crumbling walls. Only the sign saying Добромиль was new, a striking contrast. The other passengers tried to persuade me not to go to Dobromyl, but I insisted that the road is always forward, something I had learnt from the Good Soldier. A babuška got very upset when I didn't listen to her advise and she waved angrily after me. I walked the 3 km into Dobromyl centre, carrying my dirty and wretched backpack. Dobromyl was the same story of gloom but the churches were well kept, often with new and gleaming golden domes.

I was determined to carry on to Przemyśl via Nyžankoviči, like Švejk did in the transport of Russian prisoners, but encountered an unpleasant obstacle. A policeman came up to me and asked what I was doing in town. "I'm following Švejk", I said, wearing a t-shirt from U kalicha. Then he demanded my documents, and I was getting a bit edgy, having heard stories of corrupt police. The constable was fine man though, but he gave me some unwelcome news: there was no border-crossing at Nyžankoviči so I had ended up in a blind alley! Finally I understood why the old lady thought I was utterly hopeless. The policeman even told me to get on the 11:25 maršrutka to Mostyska and a helpful crowd made sure I got on the right path.

Dobromyl

I had time for two excellent Stare Misto live beer in a tiny and welcoming mahasin, and then had the dubious pleasure of getting rid of them in the wooden facilities next door. There was no need to ask where they were; they were signposted by an outlandish stench.

The minibus was another spectacular experience. When I got there I noticed it was packed, and I thought; "Bollocks, I won't fit in there". They waved me on still, the backpack was passed in through the drivers window and placed upside down between the legs of a lady sitting next to the driver. I was placed on the platform by the door and thought for a second that we would drive off with the door open. That was not to be though. We were squeezed in there and those of us near the door had to step off every time someone was getting on or off.

The pace was slow because the pot-holes prevented any sort of momentum. Fortunately people started to get off in the nearby villages, so it was becoming almost agreeable in there. I was kindly offered the front seat after the lady with my backpack between her legs got off. The rest of the journey to Mostyska was a breeze. Then there was another minibus to Šehyni (Шегині) on the Polish border. The minibuses have their own etiquette; the system of payment is based on trust. Passengers pass money forward to the driver, on a larger bus it can pass through 5-10 hands. The system appears primitive, but it works. It is also very practical on a crowded bus, as it makes boarding go quicker. The driver doesn't have to leave his seat, and payment takes in effect place when the bus moves. It is fare more efficient than clever technological schemes used on public transport in some countries in the west.

I crossed the border back to the EU on foot. Again the Polish border guard guided me past the queue, and I wondered what I had done to deserve such good treatment? If this was the general rule, I'd happily spend my next life travelling in and out of Poland. From Medyka into the city of Przemyśl, it was a just a short bus trip and I holed up in a cheap and disgusting place in ulica Kopernika, getting ready for the annual Manewry Szwejkowskie. My position was far better than Švejk's; I arrived in my own clothes and there was no court-martial threatening me. In fact I was about to experience on of the absolute highlights of the whole trip.

Marschieren Marsch!

2010-07-08T19:42:00.245+02:00

Švejk acting forcefully in the City Café in Sanok.

In 1915, Švejk and his company's stay in Sanok was brief but eventful, and as usual the Good Soldier played an important part. So did his arch enemy Lieutenant Dub but for less heroic reasons. After arrival the latter took upon himself to inspect the town's numerous houses of ill repute and check that the men didn't slither into debauchery. In the meantime the company was ordered to march onwards towards Sambor already the same afternoon. The Reichsdeutsche Hannover-regiment had required the gymnasium where the 91st regiment were supposed to be lodged and no Austrian dared stand up to their fearsome commander. By now Dub still hadn't returned and Švejk was entrusted with the delicate task of finding him. So he did with ease, in a secluded room upstairs in the City Cafe; dead drunk and in the company of the alluring Miss Ella. He was dragged out, loaded onto the sick cart, and thus started the march towards the front in a way that would not have impressed his Emperor.

In 2010, back in the editorial offices of Pod Vihorlatom in Humenné, Anna Šimkuličová had rung Bogdan Strúż at Sanok Town Hall and announced my arrival in Sanok. When asked where I was going to stay I had to general amusement responded: "Where Dub stayed" (I could not remember the name of the hotel, and couldn't have pronounced it even if I had).

When I arrived in Sanok on July 4 I immediately went to the former City Cafe. Not to look for Lieutenant Dub or seeking and amorous encounter with Miss Ella, but to sleep in the now very decent Hotel Pod Trzema Różami. The staff were the friendliest I had come across in any hotel so far on the journey. The were definitely no chambres séparées, and the WiFi connection was excellent. The hotel is located right in the centre, five minutes walk to the pretty rynek (Market square), and even closer to the sitting statue of Švejk in the main shopping street. Down a little side street there is the pub U Szwejka, decorated with motives from the novel. Otherwise it was an ordinary pub, the beer was disappointing and the service off-hand.

Sanok rynek at night

The next day I went to the Town Hall to see Mr Strúż and was given a warm welcome. He took me off to a café for lunch and then picked me up after by the local skansen. By now he had collected a ton of material for me: maps, leaflets and two books, one of them he had written the introduction to himself. It was on Podkarpacija and I accepted it with mixed feelings: if I was given more heavy books like this I would sink when crossing the Volga.

It struck me how polite Bogdan Strúż was. He constantly addressed me as 'pan'. Only a few days later did I discover that this doesn't only mean Sir as I had thought. It found it strange that everyone called me Sir! It is also the Polish polite form of you, similar to Czech vy, German Sie and French vous. But by all means, I appreciate people who treat me politely!

I now had to start the march towards the front and set off on foot along the river San and across the mountains towards Tyrawa Wołoska. I soon realised that Hašek again was way off with his timing. The company were supposed to have marched here from Sanok in an afternoon, which is quite impossible. The route describes also seemed odd, it would have been much easier to march along the river San towards Ustrzyki Dolne and to Sambor from there. When I was walking up the scenic mountain road a car stopped and asked where Sir was going. Sir's iron will-power and steely determination suddenly evaporated and he accepted the lift. It was starting to rain...

Bogusław Iwanowski at work.

In Tyrawa Wołoska I had a look around the small village. There is little more than a church, a few shops and the ruins of a stately mansion, the dwór. One of the naked columns now supports a storks nest. The history of the dwór was written on placards beneath. Tyrawa Wołoska had been attacked and burnt by UPA guerrillas as late as 1946.

A far bigger attraction was the gallery of Bogusław Iwanowski, a unique artist of wood-carving. When I approached I noticed a number of the wooden sculptures so typical of the region and in the garden was a man busy working on a huge trunk.

Iwanowski greeted the stranger by downing the tools and showing him round the gallery and even offering Sir a glass of home-made śliwowica. One series of sculptures depicted the life of pope John Paul II from childhood to the Vatican, another show inter-war president Józef Piłsudski, and many more which have pure religious motives. Others are political and show scenes from the sufferings Poland had to endure during the totalitarian rule imposed by their two powerful neighbours. It is said that Poland can be compared to Jesus Christ; crucified between two bandits. This was definitely the case in 1939 but things have now fortunately changed for the better. Still these events, and many previous, have left deep traces and it is no exaggeration to say that Russians and Germans are universally disliked, often hated. The Katyn massacre and Stalin's refusal to aid the Warsaw uprising in 1944 further added to the antagonism towards Russia. Not to mention the following 40 years of Communist rule.

Švejk's trail continued along the road to Przemyśl and two kilometres up the scenic valley lies the village of Berezka. Due to a series of co-incidences I ended up here on my trip in 2004. I was ill-prepared back then and arrived in Tyrawa Wołoska without having any idea how small it was. I went to the village cafe to ask for accommodation and was told there was none, but one of the guests offered me a bed for the night. It was early afternoon but the piwo and wódka was already flowing, the mood was exuberant, and every other word was kurwa.

Jomar and Jurek, 2004.

We all went up to Berezka and after copious amounts of wódka, gherkins and sausages everyone fell asleep. In the evening there was another visit to the cafe and more piwo. Grand-dad Jurek told me how he in 1968, as a conscript, was forced to take part in the Warsaw-pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Poles occupied the border areas and he was sent to Ostrava. His opinion on this was crystal clear; his narrative when describing the invasion contained an unusually high count of the word kurwa. After more vodka we both agreed that we were dobry człowieki (good men). How that conclusion was reached none of us could remember the next day. I woke up early and had to move on, but not without another session by a little sklep by the road. When I reached Przemyśl I was still semi-sozzled and immediately bought a bottle of Perrier so I could brush my teeth in the city park; using excellent French lemon-tasting mineral water. It was astoundingly refreshing after all the wódka and piwo.

Flashback to 2004, a goat and a wonky shit-house.

In July 2010 I knocked on the door of the same house in Berezka. A lady opened and it was the mother of Janus who had invited me to stay in 2004. She was washing and tidying the house as the family had recently moved to Sanok and they were trying to sell it. There was no goat in the garden anymore but the wonderfully tilting shit-house was still standing. I had used it once back then and had feared that farting too forcefully could make the whole thing collapse in a pile of floor-boards and shit.

Further up the valley I decided to call it a day, but not before having a meal at an unlikely fish bistro in the middle of the forest. It was little more than a shack but ryba was good. I misread the bus timetables back to Sanok, but fortunately I got a lift soon after. It was the lady who owned the fish-shop and I arrived safely back in Sanok, and started to prepare the next leg to Krościenko. I eastimated the distance to 25 kilometers so would be quite a long walk.

Rainy Liskowate.

On July 7 the rain poured down so I dropped the walking project altogether, bought a good umbrella and caught a bus to Liskowate, a village Hašek called Liskowiec. This is the place where the 11th march company bought the skinniest cow in the Dual Monarchy from the Jew Nathan, and were still skinning it many days later.

Liskowate is small and in the awful weather it was difficult to appreciate the village. I reached the wooden church through the wet grass and managed to take some pictures from under my umbrella. The parasol also served me well on the five km walk down to Krościenko. This place is bigger and quite drab despite the scenery. I took the bus to much more cheerful Ustrzyki Dolne and after a few good Leżajsk piwo at the station cafe I continued back to Sanok. By now it had finally stopped raining.

Ustrzyki Dolne is now a tourist destination and appears quite wealthy. In 1950 it had some good luck. The Polish government "requested" a territorial exchange with the Soviet Union, wanting to part with the coal-rich Chervonohrad region by the river Bug and instead get a pretty but otherwise useless chunk of land around Ustrzyki Dolne. Stalin of course benevolently accepted, he was usually more interested in coal than in nature and prospective tourism. Of course the Polish request originated in Kremlin, just like the three Baltic states in 1940 had "applied" to become members of the Soviet Union. In retrospect it has been to Ustrzyki Dolne's benefit: if the land swap hadn't taken place it would surely have remained a poor Ukrainian backwater. Chervonohrad is now a post-Soviet, worn-down, heap of concrete and rust. So Stalin did Poland a favour after all…

Across the Carpathians

2010-07-04T10:23:00.163+02:00

The mountain passes in the Carpathians had been fought over through the winter of 1914/15 but after the Gorlice-Tarnów offensive started in May 1915, the Russian army was forced to withdraw. It is in this setting Švejk's 11th march company arrives in a Łupków-pass which still bears traces of the recent fighting. Švejk's laconic comments about the enemy's abandoned night potties provokes Lieutenant Dub to the degree that he pulls his pistol. The Reichsdeutsche Brandenburger-regiment has already erected a memorial to their dead, made from melted-down Russian guns. Further down, by Szczawne and Kulaszne a Red Cross carriage has been riddled with bullets and derailed. The occultist cook Jurajda asks naively if things have gone that far that it is allowed to shoot at a Red Cross train. Švejk philosophically retorts that there are many things that are not allowed that still can be done.

Friendly people from Kraków.

The Łupków pass was on July 3 2010 a strikingly peaceful and idyllic place. After catching the afternoon train from Medzilaborce I changed trains at Łupków, and continued to Nowy Łupków. There I asked an unsteady local for a place to sleep. For once I was in a place where I was not sure if accommodation could be found. He pointed me back to where I came from, and said I had to walk three kilometres. Almost immediately I caught up with a nice couple from Kraków. They were going in the same direction and said there were two choices. One of them was Agroturystyka Szwejkowo, and the name alone determined my direction. After four sweaty kilometers I found it, right behind Łupków station at where I had changed trains just before! It was a happy anabasis though, and Szwejkowa was cheap, simple and adequate. Back in Medzilaborce I had read that Łupków only had 22 inhabitants, so not wonder I had given up finding accommodation there!

Švejk trail

It is a beautiful area. Not that the mountains are that high or spectacular, but the views across the Bieszcady are fine and the air fresh. The region is popular with walkers, and on the train up I landed in a carriage full of Czechs who were to follow the Szwejk trail from Komańcza down towards Sanok. They took a keen interest in my undertaking and the raritá from the north was given a souvenir to carry, although a light one. The south eastern corner of Poland and adjoining areas in the Ukraine offers a unique cycling and walking route. Szlak śladami dobrego wojaka Szwejka, the only one of it's kind in the world. The track starts in Łupków and follows Švejk's route all the way to Velyke Kolodno. Along the route there are green Švejk signs and yellow posters with quotes from Švejk relating to the location.

The next day I took the excruciatingly slow train down to Szczawne-Kulaszne station and walked the 20 km to Zagórz, where I caught a train on to Sanok. Apart from the heavy backpack, the walk was a pleasure. There are fine views of the Beskidy mountains and the villages are tidy and well kept. It was a Sunday, so I had to suffer for a while without food, but finally in Czaszyn I found an open sklep (shop) where I got hold of some food.

UPA flag

This area was until 1945 mostly populated by Ukrainians but the ethnic cleansing after WW2 left the villages depopulated. The Russian-orthodox church in Szczawne and the Greek-orthodox in Kulaszne are still there. They are well kept, a sign that the wounds are healing. It is still a chilling thought that even during the fight against their common enemies, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany; Poles and Ukrainians massacred and expelled each other in huge numbers. The death toll reached hundreds of thousands. The main protagonists were the Polish Armija Krajowa and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, UPA. Both were originally resistance armies fighting against Nazi and Soviet occupation but they soon found other targets. As if they didn't have enough enemies, elements within these organisations at best turned a blind eye to the genocide of the Jewish population, and worse, actively helped the Nazis. And at the same time being busy killing each other. The ethnic cleansing was completed after the war, now by direct government support. There are very few Ukrainians left here now, and conversely few left of the pre-war Polish population in the current Ukraine. I will write more on UPA when I reach the Ukraine.

Ruffled feathers

2010-07-01T08:02:00.190+02:00

The World War: our army withdrew from Lvov. Národní Politika on the disaster in Galicia in 1914.

By the time our hero Švejk arrived in the Laborec valley in late May 1915, the war itself had been mentioned in the novel many times, mostly in conversations and anecdotes. In Chapter 7, where Švejk is called up to serve in the army, Hašek reports the disasters Austria-Hungary suffered in the first month of the war. Later he lets obrlajtnant Lukáš convey a more positive and less realistic view. This is during the famous conversation with hop-trader Wendler, who was despairing because of the loss of hop markets and also the behaviour of his wayward wife Katy. During Švejk's stay in Királyhida, soldiers who had already been to the front reported on the problems the k.u.k army faced both in Serbia and in the Carpathians. Now as the 11th march company of the 91st regiment moved up the Laborec Valley, the reader gets the firsts descriptions of actual war destruction. Still no Russian was in sight so it is clear that the enemy had been driven out.

General August "Totenkopf" von Mackensen.

It is therefore time to attempt a short summary of the historical events between the outbreak of war and early summer 1915. In August 1914 the German army had acted quickly to attack Belgium and France and for a while they threatened to reach Paris like they had done in 1870/71. The attack on Belgium drew the British Empire into the war. Although this had little effect at this early stage, it was still important because the Central Powers now faced an Entente who was superior both in production capacity, manpower and other resources. Therefore the Central Powers were relying on winning the war early, as they correctly feared that a war of attrition would benefit the Entente. However, by September, it was already clear that they had failed. The Russian Empire mobilised much quicker than expected and two Russian armies invaded East Prussia. Although these were destroyed at Allenstein and the Masurian Lakes it took the pressure off France who with help from the British managed to stop the German advance at Marne and recapture some ground. The war in the west now entered a stalemate that would last until 1918. The belligerents dug themselves in and the phase of trench warfare began.

Austria-Hungary, in which army Švejk served, was in trouble from the outset. Historian Norman Stone comments: The Austrian General Staff took everything into account, except reality. The mobilisation was a mess of indecision, orders and counter-orders. On the other hand, the fast Russian mobilisation took them by surprise. Troops going to Serbia now had to be directed east, resulting in havoc on the railways. At the heart of these dispositions was the powerful Chief of Staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, the very man who was the most ardent campaigner for "preventive" war-fare against Serbia.

The k.u.k army hanging Serbian civilians

An attack on Serbia on August 12 1914 was quickly repelled by the experienced Serbian army. In Švejk these events are often referred to in stories from the front told in Királyhida, particularly by the ill-tempered sapper Vodička. Although the k.u.k army briefly captured Belgrade in December 1914, Serbia still held its ground in the early summer of 1915. The attack on Serbia was followed by systematic atrocities, "to teach the Serbs and their sympathizers within the Empire a lesson". This pattern repeated itself also in the east where the Rusyn population was regarded similarly unreliable. These atrocities are regularly woven into the novel by Hašek.

On the Eastern front things went even worse. By mid September Galicia had been overrun by Russian troops, who were now threatening Kraków and had reached the Carpathians. The losses were huge; the Dual Monarchy lost 25 per cent of her officers in the first month of the war. One of the reasons for the scale of the losses was the officer’s fabulous head-gear and splendid uniforms. These were great for pomp and parades but easy targets for Serb and Russian riflemen and machine-gunners. The army soon had to ditch the feathers and equip their officers with less conspicuous headgear. It is estimated that Austria-Hungary lost 1.2 million in killed, wounded and missing up to January 1 1915.

Civilians in Galicia 1915 (Tore Mentyjærvi)

They winter battles in the Carpathians are also regularly mentioned. The Russians pushed through the Dukla pass and the Łupków pass. Medzilaborce and Humenné were both captured. Hašek describes war damages as far south as Trebišov. During the winter of 1914/15 there was a real danger that the Russian Army could break though onto the plains of Hungary and threaten the very core of the Empire. After these setbacks, the Austro-Hungarian army increasingly had to rely on assistance from Germany and further Russian advances were thwarted. Still, as late as March 22 1915, there was a major setback; the strong fortress of Przemyśl surrendered after having been starved out.

The offensive in which Jaroslav Hašek took part
(richthofen.com).

In early May 1915 the situation changed dramatically in favour of Germany and Austria-Hungary. At Gorlice-Tarnów the Germany Army, commanded by the capable August von Mackensen launched an offensive which led to a Russian collapse. Further operations pushed them away from the Carpathians, forced them to withdraw from Galicia and in the summer they decided to give up Poland to shorten the exposed front. It is during this offensive we find Švejk moving up the Laborec Valley, crossing the Łupków pass and marching towards the front from Sanok. By September 1915 the front had stabilised more or less along the Austro-Russian border. Judging only by Hašek's narrative it is difficult to grasp the scale of the Central Powers’ victory; Jaroslav Hašek was a very reluctant participant in it.

Despite Italy's entry in the war against their former allies, 1915 was a black year for the Entente: The Russian army had been badly mauled and their munitions and supply problems were cruelly exposed. The Anglo-French operations against Turkey failed, Bulgaria entered the war and in October Serbia finally succumbed after German and Bulgarian forces came to the aid of the hitherto unsuccessful Austro-Hungarian army. The Serbian resistance still commanded the admiration of the above-mentioned August Mackensen who led the final offensive; he ordered a monument to be erected in honour of the enemy he had just defeated!

Švejk never saw the year out. By the time the novel finished due to Jaroslav Hašek's untimely death, the 11th march company had reached the river Bug and by studying the text and relate it to historical events we can time the arrival to early July 1915. Švejk incidentally never got involved in the fighting and he was meant to survive, to be back at U kalicha at 6 o'clock at night, after the war.

Up the Laborec valley

2010-06-30T14:38:00.068+02:00

The Laborec valley near Brestov.

Švejk's journey through Upper Hungary went along the Laborec Valley, in the far east of current Slovakia. Former Upper Hungary was in fact almost identical to current Slovakia and was ruled by Hungary for more than 900 years. The Czech, Slovak and Rusyn part of what from 1919 was to become Czechoslovakia had never been a united territory until that year.

The Laborec Valley still has a large Rusyn minority and also a large gypsy contingent. The Rusyn language is close to Ukrainian and during WW1 the Rusyns were, apart from the Czechs, considered the least reliable of the Dual Monarchy's subjects. They identified more with their Russian "adversaries" than with their Emperor and King. This is reflected in Švejk when the author describes how the Rusyns in Humenné were treated by the Hungarian state police after the Central Powers had re-conquered the area from the Russians in May 1915. The scenes from the Laborec Valley also include the first impressions of war damage, from Trebišov up the valley to Medzilaborce. I will get back to this in an imminent entry which purely covers the events on the Eastern front from the outbreak of war until July 1915. At this time Jaroslav Hašek had reached at the front by the river Bug and Švejk would also have been there if the author had been able to finish his classic.

The points along the route in Slovakia mentioned by Hašek are Lastovce, Trebišov, Michalovce, Humenné, Brestov, Radvaň and Čabyna. As the author most probably based his description on military maps from before the war (with Hungarian place names), the names, translated to Czech, are often bungled but still recognisable. This is the assumption of Antonín Měštän and sounds plausible.

I started off by walking from Sátoraljaújhely across to Slovenské Nové Mesto and in ten minutes I was in Michal'any where I back in 2004 had a few wonderfully tasty and hallucinogenic Gemer Pivo. The beer was so outstanding that I instead of continuing to Trebišov, my sense of direction got muddled, and the misfortune happened to me that I ended up on the train back to Nové Mesto.

The brewery in Rimavská Sobota has since been closed and the label is now owned by the Heineken group who brew it somewhere else. Nowadays the exquisite flavour and hallucinogenic effect is a distant dream. Have you ever noticed those features in a Heineken? Still Heineken make some good beers in Slovakia, where they have a large market share. Zlatý Bažant can easily compete with the best Czech beers and Kelt and Corgoň are also excellent. The other big player is SABMiller with it's Šariš. Some of their Czech beers are widely available and popular (Pilsner and Kozel). Still the Slovaks have not fully adopted the Czech beer culture despite 70 years of co-habiting. There are few if none of the classic hospody of the Czech Republic, and electronic receipts are used in place of the famous Czech paper tab.

I walked the 3 km from Michal'any to Lastovce. The village is quite extensive, with a sizable part of the population being gypsies. The station is tiny, little more than a concrete shack full of flies and dozy passengers. I stumbled across a tiny but pretty pub where the owners let me in for an excellent Corgoň desítka despite it being two hours before they officially opened! It was an excellent welcome to Slovakia which Hašek would have enjoyed. The next stop was Trebišov, who welcomes the guests with an ugly and dilapidated station. Unfortunately the town fits the picture, a collection of dreary socialist constructions strung out along one central street. I was only too well aware of the fact that this was only the first of several towns and cities of this type that I would visit in the next few months. There was still a noticeable difference from most places I had been to in Hungary; there was more bustle and it appeared altogether wealthier. The same could be said of Michalovce and Humenné.

In Michalovce I decided to watch Slovakia-Netherlands in the station cafe. Here the station was impeccably clean and modern but that was of little comfort as someone stole my camera while I was busy supporting his national team (he surely wasn't Dutch). Some might conclude that this misfortune happened because I was in "gypsy country". To that I can add that my fellow football fans in the cafe all seemed to the decent, white, patriotic Slovaks, proudly supporting their nation.

Petr Tymeš, Petr Procházka and Josef Švejk

A few days before Richard Hašek had put me in contact with the local český spolek in Humenné and two of them welcomed me at the station, carrying huge Pentax cameras. The brave soldiers were Petr Tymeš and Petr Procházka and I was driven to the improbably named Hotel Alibaba. I had stayed at this high-rise monstrosity in 2004, then it had the more appropriate name Hotel Chemes, associated with the chemical plant which by 2010 was out of business. Humenné station was also the scene of the famous episode where Švejk saves his obrlajtnant from embarrassment by gulping down a whole bottle of "cognac" in one go.

In many ways Humenné is a typical purpose-built "Soviet" town; a mix of ugly high-rise, good town-planning and bankrupt industry. All is not gloom though: the central Námestie Slobody is a pretty enough pedestrian area and the local Skansen (open-air museum) is well worth a visit. The surroundings are pleasantly green and hilly like the rest of the Laborec valley. The town can also pride itself on the first Švejk statue in the world, erected in 2000. Since then a number of Švejk-statues have popped up; in Sanok, Przemyśl, Skelivka, Lviv, Kolodno, Omsk and St.Petersburg. When will the greatest of all Czechs be similarly honoured in his own homeland?

On the second day I went back all the way to Lastovce to retake all the photos I had lost the day before. This time I walked through Michalovce and it was not the grey communist town I had expected, it actually was far more agreeable than Trebišov. In it's attractive main street there was even a Švejk-pub but it was too early to visit it, and now my photo-activities had priority.

In the editorial offices of Pod Vihorlatom with
Marián Šimkulič and Anna Šimkuličová.

The stay in Humenné was a delight, not least because of the welcome I was given by the český spolek members. Petr Procházka even invited me along to the editorial offices of the local weekly, Pod Vihorlatom, where he is employed. I was interviewed by editor Anna Šimkuličová, not without language-difficulties, and was also told the story of how the Švejk-statue came into existence, and about various Švejk-arrangements, often in co-operation with enthusiasts in Poland and Hungary. There had been big arrangements, and celebrities Radko Pytlík and Richard Hašek from far-away Prague had taken part. I was given a tour of the Skansen by Jarmila Bříská, český spolek chairperson and teacher at a local college. The showed me around the Skansen, which has a good collection of wooden buildings from the region, amongst them one of the typical wooden churches.

On the third day the the two Petrs saw me off by the Švejk-statue on the station and took some more pictures. On the station premises alone there are four pubs, two of them are named after Švejk and they open at 6 in the morning! This is so workers can get the best possible start to the day when arriving to town from the surrounding area. Both serve excellent and fresh beer, the Kelt and Zlatý Bažant is a delight.

Further up the valley, visits to the small places of Brestov nad Laborcom, Radvaň nad Laborcom and Čabiny were compulsory stops. I managed Brestov and Radvaň on the way to Medzilaborce, walking between the first two with full equipment. On this sunny day in June 2010, it was hard to imagine the devastation Hašek describes. Green hills, green fields, peaceful villages and the clean Laborec river were images far removed from the horrors of devastated landscapes, rotting bodies and ravens going for the eyes of the dead.

I stopped in Medzilaborce for two nights, visited Palota up by the Łupków pass, and then traced back to Čabiny. The first was strenuous because in Budapest my friend László Polgár had given me a Diet Coke bottle of Hungarian moonshine and I had dared to sample it the previous night. The result was considerable physical unease and slight mental disruption. These sufferings lasted almost the whole day, even the 12 km walk down from Palota was no cure. Only the pleasant atmosphere and good Šariš in the pub in Čabiny restored my self-perception as a fundamentally sane person. My optimistic outlook for the next 4 months also returned.

Andy Warhol in Medzilaborce

Medzilaborce is another dreary town with high unemployment rates and depressing architecture. The population is mixed Slovak, Rusyn and Gypsy and there are even some signs in Cyrillic letters. Orthodox churches are found all over the region. The main attraction of Medzilaborce is the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art. I didn't visit it this time but had done so in 2002. It is a huge museum for such a small place and the art inside is modern indeed. Back in those days I got so confused with all the modernity that I on my way out mistook the baskets labelled respectively "špinavé" and “čisté" for artistic creations. I even took pictures of them, thus recognising their importance in the world of art. Then I discovered that they were baskets for plastic shoe-covers; the words simply meaning "dirty" and "clean". Philosophically speaking I must have had certain problems in separating art from utility, and maybe also literature from reality. Maybe it's all one big Whole, so I was perhaps right after all? Warhol himself was actually born in Pittsburgh in 1928, but his parents had emigrated from nearby Miková in the years before.

Medzilaborce and Poland is separated by the Łupków Pass. The crossing was opened for railway traffic again in 1999, but services have since been cut back and now there are only trains at weekends during the summer-season. I just managed to watch the first half of Germany's mauling of Argentina before setting off across the Carpathians. Diego Maradona may be God to some people, but "La Mano de Diós" seems by now far too shaky to hold the steering-wheel of the great Argentinian football nation.

Good trains and soggy fields

2010-06-27T11:01:00.137+02:00

Plaque at Sátoraljaújhely station

Švejk's journey through North-Eastern Hungary in May 1915 was an on-going story of waiting for the promised goulash. The journey is not described in detail, and only in Sátoraljaújhely is there any development: the goulash and the potatoes are finally distributed. The stay in Sátoraljaújhely starts with a description of how honvéd hussars abuse a group of Polish Jews. Then another conflict erupts between Švejk and Dub. The idiotic lieutenant claims that destroyed weaponry is Russian even though it clearly has the inscription Wiener Neustadt. Then Švejk pulls an insanely long anecdote for Lukáš to the effect that the obrlajtnant makes the following comment: "I’m coming to the conviction that you don’t respect your superiors at all". Lukáš was getting to the core of Švejk; how would a through-and-through anti-authoritarian writer create a figure that would genuinely respect his superiors? The trip through Hungary also illustrates the bungling of logistics in the k.u.k army. Hašek hardly exaggerates in his description of affairs; historians can point to even more incredible stories! To be fair, this type of mess was not a uniquely k.u.k problem; it happened in all armies, particularly the Russian.

A fine Honvéd Hussar

This may also the moment to explain the term honvéd, which occurs repeatedly. This word is known to all football fans of the older generation, and readers of Švejk will be familiar with it. The term simply means Home Guard and is an equivalent to the Austrian and German Landwehr, and Norwegian Heimevernet. In English literature, the term "territorial army" is also used. The honvéds were in fact much more than a home guard, they took actively part at the front and was an integral part of the army. The term honvéd hussar refers to the cavalry of the home guard. Honvéd still exists and is now in effect the Hungarian armed forces.

The football team Honvéd referred to above was the famous 1950's team that provided players like Ferenc Puskás and was almost identical to the national team that crushed England twice in 1953 (7-1, 6-3). They miraculously failed to win the World Cup in 1954. How Hungary for such a short period shot to the top of world football is a mystery. Obviously there was a lot of talent, but the single-minded concentration of resources in one club would also have played a part. There were parallels to this scheme in the Dynamo Kiev of the 1970's and the Dynamo Berlin of the 1980's, but none of these were as dominant as Honvéd and Hungary. The football club Honvéd still exists but is not a major force any more, not even domestically. CSKA Moscow and Soviet Ice Hockey in the 1970's is perhaps the best comparison to the Honvéd football team of the 1950's.

The nearest I came to see a honvéd hussar was the sight of two statues by the entrance to the military history museum in Budapest. But now, it's time get rid of the smell of horse-dung and get back to the diesel odours of the MAV locomotives. From Hatvan I set off early to continue my station hopping. The first stop was Kal-Kápolna, a place which is not mentioned in Švejk, but which Jaroslav Hašek mentioned in a poem. It distinguishes itself with arguably the ugliest railway station in the world. It is so hideous that only the Central Committee could have designed it. I missed out on the compulsory sör at this stop, because the only place open was a stinking dive with totally pissed gypsies. Enjoyment is an integral part of beer-drinking, but here I couldn't envisage this being the case.

Tracks by Tiszalúc

Füseszabony was more cheerful, and it is also a bigger place. There I finally indulged in a good Sopronyi. At Miskolc, which Hašek calls Miškovec, it was time for a meal. The station was clean and modern as befits the third largest city in Hungary. The city never saw any fighting during WW1 but was hit by a terrible cholera epidemic.

There were still three hops to go. Trains are good and frequent along this route so I normally had an hour at each station to nose around and enjoy the symbolic beer. Tiszalúc, the stop after Miskolc, is tiny. Hašek mixed it up with Tiszalök, which can be easily verified by looking at the railway maps. The station "facilities" here were so disgusting that I instinctively clenched my nose, backed out, and performed my smaller bodily needs outside.

Mezösombor is another small place, but here I had to walk into the village centre as the station was more or less out in the fields. There are three small churches in town which all look the same. I had my beer in a bar where I was regarded as biggest curiosity since the Ottomans were driven out. The people in the bar were very friendly and I regretted not knowing more than those ten words of Hungarian. "Nem tudom" was used all to often. As I moved further east, the damages from the recent floods were noticeable. Many fields in the Tisza valley were still under water. The railway line had also been damaged, so the last part of the trip to Sátoraljaújhely was by rail replacement bus service.

Sátorljaújhely and Sátor

Sátoraljaújhely was the final stop in Hungary, and this border town was already familiar to me. I stayed here on my mini-Švejk trip in 2004. At the station there is a plaque commemorating the Good Soldier Švejk. Sátoraljaújhely is a pleasant if unspectacular town, set below the Sátor mountain. Sátor means tent and the name of the town is literally "New town below the tent". After the treaty of Trianon the town was split and the part on the eastern side of the small river was given to Czechoslovakia. It was simply a move to give Czechoslovakia direct railway access to Zakarpatia (ceded to the Soviet Union in 1945). The population here in the Semplin region was then almost one hundred per cent Hungarian. The town is closely associated with Lajos Kossuth, the hero of the 1848 revolution and struggle for independence from Austria. Moreover it is the birthplace of two famous porn stars.

The hotel where I stayed in 2004 had gone out of business, so in the end I asked some men outside a bar if there were places to sleep. There was, and a drunk man showed me the way, incredibly without any trouble or verbal diarrhoea (which I wouldn't have understood anyway). The pension was cheap and friendly, so thanks to my inebriated benefactor! The next day I walked over to Slovenské Nové Mesto, the part of town ceded to Czechoslovakia in 1921. At the Hungarian side of the border there is a Trianon monument, and in the Slovak station someone had replaced the Slovak names on the railway map with Hungarian ones. Sandbags from the floods were still laying around, and the water levels must have been incredible. The whole lower part of the two towns had been under water.

Švejk and Hašek are very popular in Hungary, despite the authors general animosity toward s the country, or at least it’s officialdom. He is still not as hostile as he was towards the Austrians, and lets Švejk exclaim that some Hungarians can't help being Hungarians. My problem in Hungary was entirely my own: I don't know the language, but in this I'm not alone. If it hadn't been for László Polgár and his friends in Budapest, it could have been a very lonely nine days in the footsteps of Švejk. The practical things work though, many people know some English or German, so the tourist is not totally lost. I was impressed by the trains, a lot faster and more comfortable than their Czech and Slovak counterparts and equally cheap. The highlight in Hungary will still be the days in Budapest, meeting a lot of people with the same interests as myself and otherwise enjoying the beautiful Hungarian capital.

Still no goulash

2010-06-25T17:10:00.004+02:00

In May 1915 the 91st regiments 12th march batallion's onward journey from Budapest was fraught with difficulties. The field kitchen had been left behind in Királyhida and supplies were scarce. This hit the gluttonous Baloun more than anyone else, he often ended up stealing food from his superior, obrlajtnant Lukáš. He had now become his putzfleck (servant), after Švejk had been promoted to company Ordonnanz (messenger) by obrst Schröder after his heroic deeds in Királyhida. His promotion was much to the horror of Rechnungsfeldwebel Vaněk.

The train stopped at station after station, but the promised goulash was only dished out in Sátoraljaújhely. Švejk had in Hungary become the arch enemy of reserve lieutenant Dub, a Czech but still the price idiot of the k.u.k army. As a loyalist he is mercilessly pilloried by Hašek who he lets Švejk routinely and effortlessly outwit him. The professional officers also despise him, primarily because he is a pillock, secondly because he is a civilian.

I set out from Budapest intending to stop at every station mentioned in the plot, and I think I succeeded. I also intended to have a beer at every stop, and failed narrowly. Not that it was a big loss; Hungarian beer is a step down from the quality I had become accustomed to in the Czech Republic and Austria. It's adequate but nothing more. Sopronyi is probably my favourite.

My first stop was Isaszeg, a place which might have been meant as Išatarčsa, but we don't know. Then I went to Gödöllő and took the HEV to Kistarcsa. HEV was the worst train I'd been on so far; slow, rattling and sprayed with graffiti (and so were the stations). I was dragging my backpack with me and didn't even stop for a beer to celebrate Švejk's "stolen" hen. Back I went to Gödöllő, the summer residence of Sissi. The grand station was built especially for the Hungarian Queen and in Budapest it was even arranged so that she could travel through the city directly from Vienna. The old station is now used as little more than a toilet and her Royal Highness would not have approved of the odours.

With Czech cyclists at Hatvan station

I then continued to Aszód which was just a break on a bench, the station bistro was closed. It was getting late when I got to Hatvan so I decided to stay overnight. There the station bistro was open so I could finally enjoy a sör. At the palyaúdvar bistro a pleasant surprise waited: a group of happy Czech cyclist from the Liberec region entered and the tone was set. They had never met a švejkolog before, and certainly not a Norwegian one. They had cycled from Košice down through Slovakia and Hungary and already had a week behind them, plagued by mosquitoes after the recent floods. I was treated with pivo and in an upbeat mood I went looking for a place to sleep. It looked grim but with help from two German-speaking young ladies I was directed to Újhatvan where the comfortable Panzio Koruna was my salvation. It was already 11 pm.

The trains on this routes were excellent, on level with the Austrian ones, and indeed of the same make. On the other hand Hatvan’s extremely subdued atmosphere was striking, very similar to most places I had been to in Hungary during the last week. The country was suffering a severe economic crisis at the time, which even a tourist without a degree in economics could notice. Not being an economist I couldn't even explain it. Maybe Hungary didn't stick to the advise of the economists at OECD, IMF and the World Bank? Closed shops abounded, the level of activity was low, and the railway toilets smelly.

Bohemists in Budapest

2010-06-24T16:53:00.137+02:00

The Hungarian Parliament

Budapest is another important city on this trip and it features much more in Švejk than Vienna does. Švejk's march company spent around 48 hours here, waiting for clearance to carry on towards the front. Their stay can be dated exactly; they were in Budapest when Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary, so the date was May 23 1915. It is clear that the plot is set on and around a military railway station in (or near) Újpest on the northern outskirts of the city. Still it is not explicitly stated where the station it was.

The whole setting might have little do to with Hašek's own stay in Budapest, which was over one month later. Particularly the fact that Ferencvaros was the principal military station in Budapest suggests extensive mystification and there are other snippets in Švejk that don't correspond to reality. Hašek was also probably locked up when he was here so his otherwise clear view might have been impaired. That said, during times of war, other railway stations surely would have been used, particularly for transit transports like this one. Even Radko Pytlík doesn't know where Hašek really was, but writes that he left for the front via Rákos. This station is on the main line towards Hatvan it so doesn't exclude either Újpest, Rákosrendezö, Ferencvaros or any other candidates. The records of the 91st regiment could possibly shed light on the matter,

Interviewed by Radio Kossuth

In the novel, the departing scene from Budapest is when sergeant Nasáklo is left behind at the station in "Išatrača", haggling with a prostitute. First, there is no place called Išatarča and if it is a misspelling of Kistarcsa (as the Hungarian translation assumes) it still doesn't add up. There was no railway station in Kistarcsa in 1915, so could Hašek have meant Isaszeg? Kistarcsa (or Isaszeg) also plays another role: Švejk was accused of stealing a hen here, and had done so by walking from the military station. This is even more confusing because he was supposed to have walked there, stole the hen, and was brought back in an hour! Whatever combination you choose is impossible.

Budapest is also the place where one-year-volunteer Marek re-joins the company and assumes the position of Battallionsgeschichteschreiber, a duty he fulfils admirably by writing the glorious history of the battalion, in advance! This is just what Hašek himself did! Cadet Biegler disappears from the plot as he is left behind in a cholera clinic after his excessive enjoyment of cream rolls and cognac, muddled up with dreams of military glory and the stench of hajzly.

The magazine "Bohemia"

I arrived at Budapest Keleti on June 21 2010. There was a lot of building activity around the station so it was as messy as Wien Südbahnhof, if not worse. My panzio was only 2 km away and it was no problem to get there on foot. The days in Budapest was spent sightseeing, watching football, going to the Military History Museum and most importantly; spending time in the company of the bohemists of Budapest, headed by László Polgár. He has already featured in my blog entries from Lipnice and Prague. The Hungarian bohemists publish their own magazine Bohemia and from the name it's obvious that the magazine is dedicated to all things Czech, whether it be beer, literature or other forms of culture.

At Söröző Ferdinand in Pest they serve good beer from Benešov including sedm kuli, named after a famous remark in Švejk. It had never tasted this dark beer on tap before and it tasted good. At Ferdinand it also happened that I was interviewed by Magyar Radio, in a language not my own and with the promise of getting airtime in August, dubbed into Hungarian. Thus I might never know what I actually said. László Polgár had also arranged a meeting with another group the day after, at Bem söröző, over on the Buda side. Some of them spoke good Czech, a few others were busy learning. I was actually given a lot of help in my "fact finding" in Budapest, particularly the old railway maps turned a few assumptions upside down. Thanks again László, you are my friend forever!

Another important task was a visit to the Military History Museum high on the hills of Buda. This excellent museum complements its sister institution in Vienna by focusing from the Hungarian side and it also has a revealing section of the economic consequences of the war. The pictures of church-bells being collected and melted down for military purposes tells more than a thousand words. I also got acute toot-ache when I saw a vivid picture of a Feldzahnarzt and his terrified clients. But if you’re destined for the slaughterhouse I guess toothache is a minor matter.

Éljen a Király! László Polgár and
our King Ferencz József I.

The consequences of the war were disastrous for Hungary. The Treaty of Trianon which came into effect in 1921 deprived Hungary it of 71% of her territory and 65% of the population. Millions of Hungarians were left as subjects of other states, and the treaty caused resentment which is simmering even today. Trianon squares and Trianon monuments are found all over the country. In the aftermath of WW1 there were also wars with Czechoslovakia and Romania. In 1919 there was a short-lived soviet republic led by Béla Kun., with a resulting civil war and terror.

Needless to say I had a great stay in Budapest, and every evening there was time for a beer or two with László Polgár. The last night I was even shown round the library of the Czech Embassy where he works as a librarian every Thursday, and rounded off at Ferencz József Söröző which was only right and proper.

The next day I did a few visits to strategic places like Újpest and Rakospalota before paying Kistarcsa a brief visit on the HEV suburban railway, via Isaszeg and Gödöllő. By now I was already on 11th march company's route towards the front, but not sharing their desperate wait for their goulash. They were hungry after only getting 10 deka Emmental cheese and a few post cards with motives from war cemeteries.

Literary shit-houses

2010-06-22T12:59:00.104+02:00

Stink wie a' Haizlputza,
wie a'bescheißena Haizlputza.

Cadet Biegler's dream on the way to Budapest reveals some of the difficulties facing translators of Švejk, so during the train journey to Budapest it was time to ponder these. Švejk is regarded a novel that's impossible to translate; the dual-level Czech language has in itself few parallels abroad. There are further factors like the unique multi-cultural mix of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the huge number of geographical, literary and historical references, the snippets of foreign languages the author inserts, more and more as the novel develops. A further complication is the authors intended and unintended errors in the foreign language. How do translators address these challenges?

One choice would be to keep much of it in the original language. This approach runs the risk that the target audience wouldn't understand it. Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian, Finnish and Swedish translations use this method to varying degrees. The second approach, used by all three English translations (and many other), is to translate nearly all of it. The penalty here is that the original variety and colour is lost. Obviously there is no ideal solution, although I would personally prefer the original text left in there, supplied with footnotes. However, not even this is always possible. How does, for instance a translator deal with the word bešprekung, used by Švejk? It is an adaptation of the German Besprechung (meeting). How can this be conveyed in for instance English? There are many instances like this throughout the novel.

I have consulted five translations during my work on Švejk, and in some cases all of them struggle. An example is the word Haizlputza which appears during Cadet Biegler infamous dream on the way to Budapest. Putzfleck Batzer exclaims, after discovering that Biegler has shitted himself: Stink wie a’ Haizlputza, wie a’ bescheißena Haizlputza. This expressions is only one of the many that has caused translators immense problems. I don't know of anyone apart from Grete Reiner who got it right (and she only had to correct Hašek's errors), as she was doing the German translation. First there are misspellings by Hašek. Secondly, the phrase is not in (High) German but Bavarian, so what does this mysterious and no doubt smelly word mean? The correct spelling is Haislputza, so let's lift the etymological toilet lid and seek the smelly truth somewhere down there.

A splendid Hajzl from Šumava

The first syllable Haisl is straightforward; it is the Bavarian variant of the German diminutive Häuserl, literally "little house". In fact it often means toilet, deriving from the times when outdoor wooden shacks served as toilets. The Czech language has even taken up the word in the form hajzl, although the meaning is not "little house" any more. The second syllable -putza indicates cleaning, so it is easy to jump to the conclusion that this is something (someone) that cleans toilets. However, a source from St.Johann near Wörgl in Austria suggests otherwise: Haislputza : (m) feines Heu, das früher als Toilettenpapier-Ersatz verwendet wurde. We still can't be 100 per cent sure that the meaning of the word in Böhmerwald (now Šumava) was the same as in Tyrol, but it very likely was. The author might not necessarily have picked up the expression from just that area, he knew people from all over Austria and a comparison between the novel Švejk and his earlier writing suggests that he mixed “facts” quite freely.

In other words, it was thin grass that earlier was used instead of toilet paper. It is also a male noun, something that's far from intuitive. From this it follows that the translation to British English could be something like (on the level of vulgarity Batzer used). Stinks like an arse-wipe, like a shitty arse-wipe.

The problems the translator faces is thus on multiple levels:

He must have noticed that Batzer was from Kašperské Hory. This is stated directly by the author, so that’s the easy part.
He must know that the dialect of Kašperské Hory (at the time Bergreichenstein) was was a variety of Bavarian, i.e not High German.
He must be aware of Hašek's errors. Two are minor, one is significant: bescheißen doesn't make sense in the context used (zu bescheißen means to cheat/deceive).
He must finally be able to translate from Bavarian to the target language.

Finally a comment from Hans-Peter Laqueur on Reiner's correction of Hašek:

Reiner did correct Hašek here, and she was right to do so: In German, also in any local dialect, you'd never spell "Haisl" (= diminutive of Haus, in Bavaria and Austria synonymous for toilet, latrine) with a "Z". And "shitted-up" is "beschissen" (passive). "Bescheissen" (active) is a common slang word for cheating. And it is "stinkt", not "stink".

Now, imagine a novel of more than 200,000 words, sprinkled with slang, dialects, sociolects, foreign languages, thousands of factual references, literary quotes and it's understandable that no translation I know of took less than three years to complete. Still some translators have done an overall good job, even though they failed to clean their shit-house properly.

Cryptography in Pannonia

2010-06-20T12:41:00.073+02:00

Győr

On June 30 1915 Jaroslav Hašek set off for the front after having tried to escape the inevitable by going into hiding for a few days. Needless to say he was transported in the Arrestantenwaggon. Although his journey largely corresponded to Švejk's own, there is a difference: already from the call-up by the army there is a lag in time between Hašek and his literary creation. Švejk and his 11th march company left Brucker Lager around May 22. There is another minor discrepancy; Hašek joined the 11th march company only after they reached the front on July 10th. This was after the 91st Infantry Regiment had been decimated during fighting at Holohory (Gologor) in early July 1915.

In 2010 the journey from Bruck to Budapest was easy and comfortable and there is very little to report. The Pannonian landscape is flat and featureless. I made a stop in Mosonmagyaróvár, which where the 11th March Company had it's own brief halt. At the time the station was called Moson, it only changed names in 1937 after the merger of the towns Moson and Magyaróvár.

The border crossing at Nickelsdorf-Hegyshalom was my own first meeting with the so-called Eastern Bloc back in July 1985. Little did I suspect that I would be back here under such circumstances 25 years later! At the time I had probably heard of Švejk but had little idea who his author was. In those days there was passport control, visa control, cabin control, enforced currency exchange, you name it. The number of uniformed personnel was bewildering and it took ages to get through. Still Hungary was even in those days no big culture shock, it partly felt as a scruffier version of Austria. It's lightweight communism made it in many ways similar to the west, the major problem for a tourist was the language. Nowadays you pass the border without noticing, at times even the ticket control was missing. But the language hasn’t become any easier!

Ludwig Ganghofer, a personal
friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

The next stop for Švejk was Győr, an attractive city which merited a two-day stop-over. It was also the scene of one of the classic sequences of the novel: the hilarious ciphering blunder involving Ludwig Ganghofer's novel "Sünden die Väter" and Cadet Biegler’s resulting dream on the way to Budapest. The striving Adolf Biegler had humiliated Captain Ságner in front of the officers by revealing the ciphering blunder and was severely put in place afterwards, to the degree that he stuffed himself with cream-rolls and filled up with cognac. The result was devastating and his dreams were horrendous and it ended in a most unappetizing calamity. The whole section reveals the author's amazing grasp of historical facts, we must assume he used Otto's Encyclopedia. He includes details of the history of cryptography, albeit with a few blunders, and the description of the Battle of Leipzig seems to be taken straight out of a text-book.

After Győr, I stopped in Komárom on the Danube, a place mentioned as part of the route but there is no further description of it. I walked, with my backpack, over to Komárno on the northern bank, i.e in Slovakia. In the times of Austria-Hungary it was one town, but has from 1920 officially been split with the Danube as the border. The train station is right by the Danube. I took the opportunity to dump my smelly sandals and buy myself a pair of brand new Slovak ones before walking back to Hungary. It should be noted that this part of Slovakia is nearly entirely Hungarian-speaking although everyone also speaks Slovak (with a Magyar accent).

The final leg to Budapest went smoothly, the trains were excellent, on level with their Austrian counterparts. This was a stark contrast to the worn and graffiti-smeared stations. MAV, the Hungarian Railways, seem to have prioritised rolling stock above station maintenance. That makes for a smooth journey, but not for an aesthetic delight. Thus it happened that I arrived in Budapest with new sandals and in a much better shape than Cadet Biegler.

Small, fat and ugly

2010-06-19T13:00:00.063+02:00

Maria Theresa in 1750, 33 years old.

Švejk only spent a very short time in Vienna, where he very emotionally got reunited with his obrlajtnant Lukáš. Hašek describes how the atmosphere in early summer 1915 is starting to get sour. The catastrophic losses the k.u.k army suffered in 1914/15 and the endless stream of dead and wounded pouring back from the two fronts was already having an impact on the public mood.

The railway station mentioned in Švejk was most likely Wien Südbahnhof, which only last year got razed to the ground to make way for a new Wien Hauptbahnhof. Despite the Austrian capitals relatively minor role in the novel, I decided to spend five days in Vienna. As capital of Austria-Hungary, the great city was just too important to ignore. Vienna is mentioned many times in the novel, and Schönbrunn, the Imperial summer palace, also features. The stay in Vienna was only partly dedicated to the theme of the journey; the FIFA world cup had started and got more attention than Hašek. I was also visited by my good friend Arvid Langeteig, and we could enjoy many good Austrian beers whilst watching many mediocre football matches and listening to the vuvuzela all day. We were in other words normal tourists in a big city. Again I had the opportunity to converse clearly and coherently in my own dialect, a privilege I would probably not enjoy again until late October.

Franz Ferdinand's uniform from Sarajevo 1914.
The lethal bullet penetrated near the collar on the left side.

Arvid informed me that the venerable Queen Victoria was regarded as small, fat and ugly, and judging by pictures and paintings, she indeed was. In fact she was probably even uglier than she was portrayed, as most visually challenged rulers are regularly "glossed over".

A century earlier another fat and ugly monarch ruled Vienna and the Habsburg Empire. She was Maria Theresa, who despite not being a picture postcard was an astute ruler who introduced reforms of lasting importance. The Empress was one of the so-called enlightened despots, a term often used to describe her and Prussian king, Friedrich the Great. Their educational reforms paved the way for progress in Central Europe in the centuries ahead, and the legacy is still noticeable today in the form of high levels of education in both Germany and most of the territories of the former Austrian Empire. Maria Theresa was also a master of arranging strategic marriages, seven of her eight daughters were victims of such dealings. This was a strategy the Habsburgs were experts at; expansion by marriage rather than warfare (which they were less skilled at).

Schönbrunn.

During our stay in Vienna, a visit to Schönbrunn was compulsory. It was a wet and miserable day so we didn't have the benefit of seeing the fabulous garden. Still the palace has enough splendour to offer. Schönbrunn was built as a summer residence by Maria Theresa and the Empress herself features regularly in the exhibitions. So does Franz Joseph I who was born here and also died here. His bedroom is on show, and the pre-recorded guide tells how His Highness got up at four in the morning, spent some time praying and then started work. He was a workaholic and his habits spread through the civil service and eventually the whole Empire. In parts of the former empire these work hours still prevail; anyone who has been to the Czech or Slovak republic will have noticed this and the Austrians are not late starters either. His private toilet is also exhibited and Švejk would obviously have commented on this. It actually features in a conversation in the Schwarzenberg sheep-shed during the Budějovická anabase and that conversation is definitely Majestätsbeleidigigung!

The popular Empress and Queen "Sissi" also features; and as opposed to Maria Theresa she was not fat and ugly at all. She died tragically in Geneva in 1898, stabbed by anarchist Luigi Lucheni, an event mentioned early in the very beginning of Švejk. The good soldier also took note of the many personal tragedies the Emperor and King suffered. When Franz Joseph was told of the murder of his estranged wife he tersely commented: "Nichts wird mir erspart". A lasting impression from a museum like Schönbrunn is the extreme luxury the rulers allowed themselves, obviously by pilfering their own peoples (and others). The Habsburg's were of course not alone here, and they were surely not the worst, which in itself says a lot!

Škoda 38 cm howitzer.

A second museum of relevance to my Hašek-theme was the Heeresgeschichtliche museum, which as the name indicates deals with army history. As opposed to Schönbrunn photography was allowed, and several megabytes were used. The entrance features the hall of the commanders and many of the names known from Švejk are there: Alfred Windischgrätz, Eugen von Savoien, Ernst von Laudon and Johann Radetzky. The latter was the Czech aristocrat Jan Radecký who is supposed to have said: "let's be Czechs but keep quite about it"", a phrase attributed to Senior Lieutenant Lukáš by Hašek! Radtezky is often mentioned in the novel, a whole field mass by Feldkurat Ibl is attributed to him. Needless to say Hašek's ridicule is merciless here. The principal architect of the WW1 disaster, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf is also on show, together with various Habsburgs. One of the major items in the museum is the car Franz Ferdinand was driven in when he was killed one June 28 1914. His uniform is also exhibited, complete with bloodstains and the hole were the lethal bullet from a Belgian-made Browning penetrated.

Franz Ferdinand himself had quite radical political views; he advocated federalism which would have put the Slav nations on equal footing with the Germans and Hungarians. Whether this would have been enough to save the Empire is an open question. Still there were relatively few, even amongst Czechs, who advocated a break-up of the Empire before 1914. Tomáš Masaryk only changed his position after the war broke out. Had had actually himself been a representative in the Austrian parliament before 1914.

Both world wars obviously feature in the museum, and the WW1 collection has an amazing display of artillery which seemed all to be from Škoda. Particularly massive is a 380 mm howitzer. The monster weighs 80 tons, and was used on the Italian front. The Czech heavy industry played a crucial role in arming the k.u.k army. After the split-up of the Empire, Czechoslovakia inherited 60% of the industry and became on of the top 10 industrial powers of the world and also one of the wealthiest. Already before the war the Czech lands contributed 25% of the tax income of the Empire. This disproportion between contribution/population numbers and real political influence caused a lot of resentment amongst Czechs, and contributed to the fact that Czechs (apart from Rusyns) were probably the least loyal of all k.u.k subjects.

Hofburg, the Habsburgs main residence.

After admiring all these magnificent field commanders and huge howitzers we were close to suffering from Stendhal's syndrome and needed a beer down at the homely Puntigamerhof, right opposite the giant hole in the ground where the Wien Südbahnhof used to be. This beisel was to become our second home after the affordable albeit idiotically named Austria Trend Hotel.

Vienna is of course a great city to visit apart from the agenda of my own trip. With its grand palaces, parks, cathedrals and museums it has plenty to offer. It is also a vibrant, modern, and multi ethnic city and one of the cleanest around. Vienna's beisels offer a unique and affordable atmosphere for eating and drinking but if you need an Irish pub or a Döner Kebab, that's also possible.

Kudějologs in Olomouc

2010-06-16T13:18:00.041+02:00

Hostinsky pivovar Moritz. Michal Giacintov to the left.

Matěj Zdeněk Kuděj was one of Jaroslav Hašek's best friends and in 1913 and 1914 they travelled extensively together. Kuděj was a notable writer in his own right, but little known abroad. He was also a keen traveller, and spent a few years in North America. His knowledge of English allowed him to do translation work; Kuděj is the man behind Tarzan in Czech! I readily admit I haven't read a word of what Kuděj has written, and haven't read a line of Tarzan either but would still like to report on a unique hospoda in Olomouc: U Kuděje. It is owned by beer-expert, haškolog and kudějolog Michal Giacintov.

Those of you who read my earlier letter from Lipnice nad Sázavou might recognise his name, he was one of the two k.u.k Soldaten who had travelled 200 km to meet me! We got on very well back then and I was invited to visit Olomouc and decided that a detour from Vienna was within reach. After bidding farewell to Oddny and Jan in Vienna, I caught the Zagreb-Warsaw express from Wien Simmering to Břeclav and then a local train to Olomouc. There I was picked at the station up and spent two enjoyable days visiting the Giacintov family.

Olomouc, Horní náměšti

U Kuděje is indeed a remarkable pub. It features beers from small breweries only, one of them the local Pivovar Moritz which Michal partly owns. Despite being a traditional hospoda it draws many young people and is non-smoking. This pub is unique: it brings together good beer, good atmosphere, mixed clientele and good air quality. However much I love Czech hospody the latter two elements are often missing! A visit to the brew-pub Moritz was next, another classic and very popular spot. The beer was, needless to say, good. We also went to a heavy-metal concert at the local Jazz Club. I am sure Matěj Kuděj would have approved.

Michal with daughter Emma at U Kuděje

Olomouc is a beautiful city, seat of the Archbishop of Moravia and it was also the Habsburg's retreat in times of trouble. This is where they spent their time during the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683. As a result the city is surrounded by a ring of fortresses, 17 in all. Until recently they were used by the uninvited socialist brother from the east, but are now partly converted to museums. We did a tour of the local Skansen and Fort 14, beset by mosquitoes after the recent floods and a week of tropical heat.

Near the Archbishop's palace Michal pointed at the barracks built by Maria Theresia, right next to it! It was a blatant provocation by the powerful Empress, the enlightened despot who would not tolerate a rival centre of power. We also visited another micro-brewery Svatováclavské, sat down with the owners for an amiable chat and a beer in midst of the deadly rivalry! The evening was rounded off at the classic U Kuděje with a slide-show about Czechs in the Romanian Banat, near the Iron Gate on the Danube.

As for Hašek and Olomouc, there is little to report. The city is not mentioned in the novel at all, the nearest we get to it is Archbishop Theodor Kohn. He was of Jewish origin and suffered because of this, a fact mentioned in Švejk. As for myself and Olomouc, I'm very grateful for having had this opportunity to visit the city, although it could be considered "off topic". So, if you ever go to Olomouc, make sure you visit U Kuděje and Pivovar Moritz.

Surprise in Eisenstadt

2010-06-13T07:00:00.014+02:00

An unexpected bonus during the stay in Bruck was a meeting with Klara Köttner-Benigni, writer, historian and journalist. I had come across her name briefly in a book by Radko Pytlík, but was not aware of the magnitude of the work she had done on Jaroslav Hašek, nor of her many other activities. In connection with the UNESCO-sponsored 100th anniversary of Jaroslav Hašek's death in 1983, she did an extensive study on Hašek and Švejk in Austria. She also took part in a Hašek-conference in Dobříš in 1983 and has twice been awarded the Jaroslav Hašek price. Her study turns about every stone there is to turn on Švejk's stay in Austria and I relied heavily on her work in the previous blog entry "Švejk in Királyhida".

Listening attentively to Klara Köttner-Benigni

Friedrich Petzneck and I were invited to Eisenstadt to met her and husband Walter Benigni one afternoon, but unfortunately Herr Petzneck couldn't go because he had just had an eye-operation. I jumped on the train and was met at Eisenstadt station by the Benigni couple. The destination was a cafe where I was treated to beer and food, and to use a cliché: time flied. Köttner-Benigni is now a lady in her early eighties and physically quite frail but her mind is still razor-sharp. It turns out that Hašek was a theme she dealt with only temporarily, she had and has many other interests. Her particular focus was always on the Slovak nation, she has been over there more than 300 times. She was also a pioneer environmental campaigner; in 1975, a planned bridge project across Neusiedler See was stopped, partly on her initiative. This made her a public enemy for a while, not dissimilar to Henrik Ibsen's Dr. Stockman. She has also chaired the Austro-Czechoslovak Friendship Association, which also made her suspicious in the eyes of the Austrian authorities. It was clear that Köttner-Benigni is a person out of the ordinary, a fearless lady not to be messed with (as Austrian authorities and others have found out).

Article in Burgenlãndische Heimatblãtter in 1983

In 1983, she and Konrad Biricz, a local historian from Bruck, collected material for the study on Hašek and she could also tell a story from Radko Pytlík's visit in Bruck in 1983. In those days going abroad was not that easy for Czechs and he was accompanied by the cultural attaché of the Czechoslovak embassy in Vienna. The "minder" was a nephew of Vasiľ Biľak, chief ideologist of the Communist Party. The Austrians authorities of course knew who he was so was refused entry to Brucker Lager! Pytlík on the other had was considered harmless enough to be allowed in. After the 1989 revolution, Köttner-Benigni lost contact with Pytlík. I was grateful to receive a heap of books and material on Hašek in German, most of it I have never seen, and which would now be nearly impossible to get hold of (it was published in former East Germany).

Köttner-Benigni also told me of an encounter with author Lars Amund Vaage, who also takes an interest in Slovakia. I then mentioned Czech writer Ladislav Řežníček who has written a book named Bjørnson a Slovensko. The writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørsnon is held in high regard in Slovakia due to his support for the Slovak cause against Hungarian oppression in the later decades of the Dual Monarchy. Köttner-Benigni didn't know of Řežníček or his book, which was published this year in connection with the 100th anniversary of the authors death. Clearly there are experts on both Slovakia and Bjørnson out there which ought to get in contact with each other!

Day-trips from Bruck

2010-06-13T00:00:00.070+02:00

NB! This is a more or less pure travel entry and covers day-trips to Bratislava and Neusiedler See.

Bruck and der Leitha with it's good railway connections is ideal for trips into neighbouring Slovakia and Hungary, as well as to Neusiedler See. These destinations are only half an hour away and Vienna still only around an hour. We set aside time for Bratislava and Neusiedler See, as I would be going to Vienna the week anyway and Oddny and Jan would go there whilst I was either sleeping or involved in some haškology.

Bratislava. Michalská ulica.

Bratislava is mentioned in Švejk but by it's former name of Pressburg. In 1914 the city was part of Hungary and known as Poszony. It had even been the capital of Hungary during the time the Ottoman Empire controlled Buda and Pest. In 1914 it was a multi-ethnic city; inhabited by Hungarian, Germans, Jews and Slovaks. The latter were actually a minority, only 20% of the population were Slovaks. With the creation of Czechoslovakia this changed. In 1919 the city was renamed Bratislava to to honour the brotherhood of Slovaks and Czechs. The city became increasingly dominated by Slovaks and Czechs as many Hungarians and Germans left. WW2, Holocaust and the following expulsions of Germans left the city predominantly Slovak although some Hungarians still remained.

Oddny and Jan. The Danube and Petržalka in the background

Our first day-trip was to Bratislava via Petržalka where the train from Austria stops. Situated south of the Danube, Petržalka is an enormous mass of paneláky, i.e. apartment blocks. It is not a pretty sight and for these tourists it only served as a stop to catch a bus into to the centre of Bratislava. The Slovak capital has now become a popular tourist destination and rightly so. Its old town has been brushed up and is pretty, although set on a much smaller scale than Prague. Bratislava was quite a contrast to the rather ossified Bruck. The latter seems to have gone to sleep for ever, whilst the former is coming alive after being dormant for 50 years or more. No wonder that Bratislava and Bruck are different though, one is a national capital, the other a provincial town.

Crossing the border is a dream nowadays as there are no controls and no hassle with changing money. Slovakia introduced the Euro from 1/1-2009. Back in Petržalka the men had a few pivo for under 1 Euro, but Oddny wasn't impressed with the inglorious setting of wrecked benches, concrete slabs and high-rise buildings. And then there were "these men drinking pivo". I could assure here that these men were just my thirsty Slav brothers, but I have to admit that they were far from being the aesthetic highlight of the trip.

Cyclists in Burgenland

Our second day-trip was of an entirely different nature: cycling from Bruck to Rust along the Neusiedler See. This shallow lakes, only 1.8 metres deep at the most, straddles the border of Austria and Hungary and the area is popular for cycling. The lake is mentioned in Švejk, more precisely by Vodička who had one of his many fights with the Hungarians here. The first major point after Bruck is Parndorf, a town partly inhabited by Burgenland Croats. There are a few Croats signs around, notably on the Town Hall. In Croat the towns name is Pandrof. Parndorf is an unusually drab place by Austrian standards; with it's wide avenues, low houses and lack of facilities for pedestrians and cyclists we had a feeling of having entered an American suburbia. This was further underlined by the existence of a shopping mall! Down by the lake we got back into Austria though; wine-growing villages like Breitenbrunn and Podersdorf are invariably pretty, and prettiest of them all is Rust. The latter is a major tourist attraction, famous for its many storks. The nests are visible on the chimneys all over the town.

Stork in Rust. Photo Oddny Ringheim.

It was a very hot day, the town square in Rust was totally deserted, no-one were sitting outside. We had a meal at the micro-brewery, unfortunately the beer was disappointing. The trip here had been tough, not only did we have the heat to contend with but also the wind against us. We decided to cycle to the railway station in Schützen am Gebirge, and take the train home. Unfortunately there was a bus replacement service from Neusiedl am See, so we got eight "bonus kilometres".

Margaret Thatcher once reported that "we have become a grandmother". Back in Bruck we learned that we had become uncles and an aunt to Jakob Hønsi, born precisely when we were admiring the marshes of the Neusiedler See. The news was celebrated in the beautiful garden of Schlosskeller Prugg with appropriate quantities of Gösser for the men and Holundersekt for the lady. Hardly have cold and tasty beer come in handier than on this hot summer day in Bruck an der Leitha. And I am convinced that Holundersekt was appropriate too.

Švejk in Királyhida

2010-06-12T19:15:00.180+02:00

Vodička

Jaroslav Hašek dedicates almost three full chapters to Švejk's stay in Bruck an der Leitha and Királyhida, in fact one eight of the novel was set here! He also spent nearly two months by the Leitha himself; or more precisely; in the exercise grounds of Brucker Lager. He mentions many places in the two towns: the camp, the Konservenfabrik (Meat canning factory), Schloss Prugg, the Zuckerfabrik, a photo pavilion and many other places inside the Lager. But more surprising is the mention of places that either seem to be pure inventions or more likely fragments of muddled-up facts. The attentive reader of Švejk will in Book One and the start of Book Two have noticed Hašek's accurate, nearly scientific use of facts when creating the backdrop to his novel. There are very few, if any errors in the chapters set in Bohemia and I was expecting this exactness to be the case also in the rest of the novel, including the chapters set in Bruck and Királyhida.

Whilst discovering that many of the larger and well known institutions in the the twin towns on the Leitha are accurately described, I was surprised that not a single one of the cafes, pubs and brothels he mentions could be located with certainty. This statement is based on conversations with Friedrich Petzneck, documents by Wolfgang Gruber and not least a thorough study done by Klara Köttner-Benigni and Konrad Biricz in 1983. Hašek’s descriptions may fit with actual places, but the names don't (or vice-versa).. The street where the famous episode with Gyula Kákonyi happened, Soproni utca, actually existed but nobody lived there, it went right through the camp! Kákonyi had already appeared in "The Good Soldier Švejk in captivity", written in Borispol in 1917, but then he let him live in Poszony utca, another non-existent entity. This supports the assumption that "facts" from Bruck have to be taken with a pinch of salt. In Švejk, the ill-tempered sapper Vodička mentions a fight with Hungarians in a village called Pausdorf. This is place nowhere to be found, the author presumably meant Parndorf.

How could it be that the until now so accurate author suddenly became muddled? Firstly, he was forced to risk his life for an authority he despised and it's understandable that the hated Bruck. He probably couldn't care less about sticking to reality. This is underlined by the fact that he grossly exaggerated the seamier sides of Bruck. There were at the time five official brothels in the twin towns, and surely some un-official ones, but Hašek described the twin towns as "one giant brothel". The description he gives of the Meat Canning factory is also blown-up. In fact it was a fairly descent establishment, although the standards might have dropped after the war broke out. The stench he described was probably from a slaughtering yard behind the plant.

A second factor to consider is possible translation errors. In the novel, names of pubs and brothels have been translated to Czech from German or Hungarian by the author himself. Hašek's German was apparently very good but not perfect, his Hungarian much more limited. An example is "U bilé růže" (At the White Rose) where Hašek description corresponds nearly 100% to the cafe-cum-brothel Zum Weissen Rössel. There was even a Czech waitress Růženka working there (Pytlík). On the first floor there was indeed a Mannschaftspuff (brothel for the lower ranks) so it all fits except the name. My assumption is that the author simply mistranslated Rössel as rose, whereas in fact it should be horse. Today the building houses a innocuous Pennymarkt.

A study by Antonín Měšťan from the Hašek-conference in Bamberg in 1983 reveals these limitations in Hašek’s language and Jan Berwid-Buquoy also makes notes on similar translation difficulties. In the chapter Hašek in Deutschland from his book, he found that hardly any of the names Hašek uses in his stories from Bavaria in 1904 are correct (but nearly). The reason for this is logical. Hašek probably didn't see all these names in writing. Anyone who has been to rural Bavaria will understand that even a genius like Hašek would struggle with the local dialect, and I can assure readers that he would have had similar problems in Bruck! Of further further interest: Pytlík and Měšťan' reveal that Hašek didn't only rely on his memory; he often used War Calendars, Otto's Encyclopedia and maps. But in the case of Bruck and der Leitha and Királyhida he doesn't seem to have used either.

One day I was given a private tour of Brucker Lager by Wolfgang Gruber and camp commander Truppenübungsplatzkommandant Oberst Reinhold. It was very interesting although very few of the buildings from 1915 exist anymore. The wooden barracks in Neuer Lager where Hašek stayed, were demolished shortly after the war. The Photo Pavilion is also history, and so is the Hauptwache where Švejk and Vodička would have spent time in the arrest. The oldest existing building is the Offizierscasino, which is mentioned explicitly in Švejk. The rifle range is also old, and still active. I have not been in a military camp since 1981, and life there seemed very relaxed. There can be no comparison between the officers of the current Austrian Bundesheer and the types that Hašek described.

Brucker Lager, Mannschaftsbaracke.

Hašek obviously grossly exaggerated the stupidity of the officer class in the k.u.k army, but he touches on an important fact that historians also observed (John Kenneth Galbraith was one of them). All sides in WW1 suffered from widespread incompetence in their higher military ranks. These leaders ordered millions to march straight against the enemy's trenches, without ever getting out of the stalemate. There are only few examples of good commanders: Mackesen, Brusilov, Foch to name a few. Hašek directly touches the core of this problem, despite his exaggerations. Many officers became officers because of their family ties and connections rather than their ability. So the Kraus von Zillerguts are by no means picked from thin air, despite the caricatures and exaggerations in Švejk!

In a previous letter I have mentioned two film versions of Švejk, with Rudolf Hrušinský and Heinz Rühmann as Švejk respectively. I raised my misgivings about both films for different reasons. The third an latest attempt on a movie was done by ÖRF (Austrian Broadcasting) in 1972 and 1976. It was an ambitious 13 part TV-series with Fritz Muliar as Švejk. Interestingly Muliar also had a role in the Rühmann film, but a minor one. The TV-series were partly shot at Bruck Station and I got hold of some photos from the event. I have not viewed the series myself so instead I will let Hans-Peter Laqueur give his opinion of it:

Part 1-6 is o.k. Except for the end of part 6, when Švejk arrives at the front and gets involved in a battle it is very close to the book. The parts omitted (inevitable when making 6 hours of film out of the whole book) are sometimes disputable, but this first serial probably still is the best film production of the book available.

Part 7-13, produced a few years later, is not so clear. Parts 7-9 have a plot based on some other stories by Hašek as well as on the "Ur-Schwejk" stories of 1911, and filled up with Švejk's anecdotes not used in the original serial. Unmotivated re-appearances of Otto Katz (who takes the part of his predecessor Augustinus Kleinschrodt) and of Bretschneider (in spite of the fact that he had been eaten up by the dogs he had bought from Švejk)!

Part 9 ends with Svejk being taken prisoner by the Russians while trying to "conquer" a cow (Ur-Schwejk again?). Parts 10-12 are about Schwejks osudy as POW, as far as I know not based on anything by Hašek, they are quite nice, Švejk, though hardly telling any anecdotes, is by far more himself, than in the first three parts of the second series. - The last part, Revolution, Bugulma, return to Prague again is rather disappointing, motives taken from the Bugulma-Stories and a "Happy End" in Prague: Oberst Schröder (!?!) welcoming the returning soldiers and finally a meeting at the Kelch at six o'clock after the war.

To summarize: I'd have been at least as happy with only the first two rather than all four DVDs.

Touristen an der Leitha

2010-06-06T13:15:00.035+02:00

Bruck an der Leitha Hauptplatz

The week in Bruck and der Leitha also had a purely touristic aspect. My sister Oddny and her husband Jan visited for the week. That didn't mean the we shared all activities; the two are keen marathon-runners, which I happen not to be. My sister is also a keen shopper which I also happen not to be. None of them have read Švejk, which I incidentally have done. Still there were plenty of thing we could do together; cycling, day-trips, eating, drinking and for me an another important factor: have a conversation in my own language without any worries about grammar or pronunciation. These six months on the rails and roads of the Eurasian continent would offer few such opportunities. Jan and Oddny are very relaxing people to travel with. There is no compulsion or expectation that we have to do do everything together, hence there can be no arguing.

When Oddny and Jan arrived at Bruck/Leitha Bahnhof on June 12th, 19:00 I had already been there for two hours, checked in and had time for a Puntigamer in a dive on the Bruckneudorf side of the river. The first thing that happened after we set off for the short walk down to Ungarsicher Hof, was that a man approached us and identified us as the tourists from Norway. It was Wolfgang Gruber whom I had contacted a few months back with questions about locations in Bruck/Bruckneudorf of relevance to Jaroslav Hašek. He had found out our arrival times by asking the hotel and was ready at the station. He drove us straight down to die Krone and even treated us to beer and Marillenschnaps to ensure the visitors had a good start.

In conversation with Petzneck and Gruber.

Wolfgang Gruber and his father-in-law Friedrich Petzneck are local historians and run the Ungarturm Museum. The next a half-day programme was arranged for us by the two gentlemen: a Stadtrundgang and a visit to the museum. Frau Elisabeth Gruber also joined so Oddny didn't have to suffer endless flows of regional history, haškology and tales about changing territories. What Jan thought I don't know; squeezed in between cake recipe's and the Austro-Hungarian Empire as he was. I'm sure he's suffered worse though.

The Ungarturm Museum is located in one of the former wall towers, and uses all floors for the exhibitions. It shows the history of the town from ancient times until today. There is a large section on the Double Monarchy and for a good reason. Bruck was the main military establishment in the Empire and received frequent visits from notabilities, including His Imperial and Royal Highness Franz Joseph I. I use the term Bruck here to mean the whole conurbation on both sides of the Leitha, to avoid having to repeat the intricate administrative details all the time...

The Hauptplatz offers a surprise, a Soviet War memorial complete with a red star. The occupiers quickly erected it in 1945, and after their withdrawal in 1955 it was left standing. There has been controversy around it of course, but as Petzneck pointed out; it is a part the towns history and should be respected as such. Opposite it is a memorial to the towns many victims of the bombing and fighting in 1945, and the list of names is endless.

Gasthaus Zum Grünen Kranz with Ungarturm.

Die Herren Gruber und Petzneck were well prepared for the question I had given them by mail. I was presented a list of all current and historical guesthouses in Bruck/Bruckneudorf, and crucially; a study by Klara Köttner-Benigni and Konrad Biricz on Švejk in Austria. And even better; Petzneck had contacted Köttner-Benigni who in turn invited us both to Eisenstadt. Sie sind unter den richtigen Leuten gelandet, Herr Petzneck commented, and he was absolutely right. This was more than I could have hoped for, although Konrad Biricz unfortunately had passed away a few years ago. I will write more on the visit to Eisenstadt later.

Kaiserlich und Königlich

2010-06-05T20:58:00.002+02:00

The k.u.k Dobbeladler

Jaroslav Hašek was transferred to Brucker Lager in Királyhida on May 10th 1915 and left for the front with his 12th March Battalion on June 30th. Brucker Lager was at the time the largest military camp and exercise ground in the entire empire and at it's peak up to 26,000 soldiers were located here. The camp was set up in 1867 to the east of the river Leitha, just behind Bruck railway station who until then had been the only institution of note that side of the river.

Robert Musil as k.u.k Offizier.

That year and the year before, crucial events took place in Kaisertum Österreich, the Austrian Empire. The short war with Prussia in 1866 ended in disaster, and the Hungarians exploited the situation to demand parity with Austria. This led to the 1867 Ausgleich which granted The Kingdom of Hungary full control of internal affairs. Only foreign policy and defence were left in common institutions. Head of state was still Franz Joseph I but from now on he was emperor only in the Austrian part of the Empire. He was crowned king I Ferenc Jószef of Hungary the same year. The armed forces, as a common institution, subsequently became Kaiserlich und Königlich shortened to k.k or often k.u.k. These terms will of course be familiar to readers of Švejk. Even though the good Czech soldier and loyal subject served his Austrian Emperor, he served in the k.k army. The abbreviation k.k also gave rise to the expression Kakanien, immortalised in Robert Musil's unfinished masterpiece Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man without qualities). The new political entity didn't even have a manageable official name. For years it was officially known as Die im Reichsrat vertretenen Königreiche und die Länder der Heiligen Ungarischen Stephanskrone. Informally it was shortened to Austria-Hungary, the Dual Monarchy or the Danube Monarchy. Hungarians must have me excused for not providing a translation...

The river Leitha is not a major river, being only 180 km long. Still, it's name got far more famous than it's murky waters merited. Leitha became the political border between the Austrian and Hungarian parts of the Empire. The two parts subsequently became known as Cisleithanien and Transleithanien. As the names indicate, this was seen from the Austrian side! Not that Leitha formed the border all the way, the Austrian domains of Galicia and Bukovina were east of Hungary and geographically the Carpathians was the most important divide between the Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary.

Cisleithanien in red

The 1867 Ausgleich affected Bruck an der Leitha dramatically. The eastern part with Brucker Lager and the railway station became part of Hungary, and with the policies of magyarisation the settlement east of the Leitha changed it's name twice: in 1898 it became Uj-Bruck (New Bruck) and in 1902 it was given the name Királyhida (Kings Bridge) which is so familiar to readers of Švejk. There was even in those times confusion on the naming and distinction between Bruck and Királyhida. Old Hungarian post-cards from Bruck are titled Királyhida and Hašek is himself muddled. Although he at one stage explicitly states that these are two towns, he at other times mixes them up.

After the Treaty of Trianon in 1921 the German speaking areas in Western Hungary were transferred to Austria and Királyhida became Bruckneudorf. A referendum left the main city of "German Hungary", Sopron, in Hungary, the rest became part of the Republic of Austria. That didn't mean that the towns got reunited as would have been natural from an administrative point of view (only the Nazis did this). After 1955 they ended up in different Bundesländer, Bruck in Niederösterreich and Bruckneudorf in Burgenland. In the meantime they had been part of the Soviet occupation zone. This administrative divide still exists and has some odd consequences...

Thus it happened that on June 5 2010 17:00, I arrived at Bruck and der Leitha Bahnhof in Bruckneudorf, and headed for Hotel Ungarische Krone, also in Transleithanien, which was to be my home for the next week. It is located right by the river, with an excellent view across to Bruck an der Leitha and Cisleithanien.

České Budějovice

2010-06-05T09:02:00.155+02:00

České Budějovice

According to my own estimates, the city of České Budějovice is the place which is mentioned most frequently in Švejk. Although our hero spent only three days here and never left the arrest, his prison-cell companion Marek recounts a lot from his time here. The one-year volunteer Marek is not just a random character in the novel, he is by and large a mouthpiece for the author himself and most of the details revealed by Marek are autobiographical. This includes the story about Animal World, a magazine which Hašek edited in 1910. He was sacked after it was revealed that he had invented new animals, like the sulphur-bellied whale! This hilarious story is left out of Paul Selver's English translation of Švejk from 1930 and also from Odd Bang-Hansen's Norwegian translation from 1958. Clearly not all translators of Švejk can be classed as haškologs...

Mariánské kasárny, now derelict.

The episode about using the Krankenbuch to escape from the barracks for entertainment in town is also authentic. Hašek was arrested after this incident, just like Marek. The author spent nearly three months in the city, as Einjahrfreiwilliger (one-year volunteer), a grade offered to recruits with higher education. Quite a few "experts" have from this concluded that Hašek voluntarily signed up for the Austro-Hungarian Army, then scratched their heads and pronounced it an enigma. This "fact" is propagated on many web-pages, including Wikipedia. It is of course rubbish, he was simply drafted. He arrived at the Mariánské kasárny soon after February 15 1915 to join the 91st infantry regiment. They left for the training camp in Királyhida on May 10 the same year. In the meantime he at least once tried to avoid departure to the front, and frequently reported maroder (sick). He was even threatened with execution...

My own arrival in the Southern Czech capital was on a wet and miserable morning. My Vietnamese umbrella blew to pieces so I had to buy yet another on from yet another Vietnamese. By now a large part of my wardrobe hailed from Vietnamese shops; socks, trousers, rucksack (ironically in American Army colours), and of course, Kč 30 umbrellas. I holed up in a tiny but practical place in Pechárenská ulice and set off for Tábor to pick up the books I'd left behind two weeks ago. It poured down all day so I didn't miss a thing.

The next day was spent in the merry company of Jan Veselý, a local Švejkolog and friend of Richard Hašek. We had enjoyed a decent number of Budvars and even visited the Jihočeské muzeum, the regional museum of South Bohemia. Then we had another few beers and it struck me that two people who didn't know each other at all had spent 11 hours drinking and talking, and time had flown. I don't remember how I got home, the autopilot must have taken control. I had agreed to meet Mr Veselý at the local beer festival the next day, but an audibly reduced Honza had other ideas (Honza is the Czech nickname for Jan, comparable to German Hans v Johannes). Instead we agreed to meet at a pub near his home, and his wife had prepared vepřo-knedlo-zelo for the guest, in their flat in Sídliště Máj. Their son, the punker Honza Jr was also there, appropriately asleep in the kitchen. We got on well and I could even listen to Black Sabbath whilst stuffing myself with the Czech staple dish. There was yet another trip to a pub, and my departure was delayed time after time due to the recurring requests for "one more for the road". This time I managed to keep my head above the foam of the Kozels, painfully aware that my departure was at 7:12 the next morning.

Earlier in the day I had traced some of the places associated with Hašek; a few pubs, a military hospital, the city square and a brothel. It must be added that these buildings mostly have other functions today.

Švejk and Marek in the prison-cell in Mariánské kasárny

The square is indirectly mentioned in Švejk, through a story by Marek on how he by mistake knocked the cap off the head of an artillery officer (also autobiographical). The square is one of the largest in the Czech Republic. It is impressive; the huge Samson fountain has prime position in the middle, and the arcaded houses make a pretty ensemble. The radnice (Town Hall) also catches the eye. In the surrounding old town there are several quaint streets, and the Malše river embankment makes a pleasant walk.

The square is now called Náměští Přemysla Otakara II, and has, typically for Czech squares, changed names several times according to from which direction the political wind has blown. It even had the inglorious name Adolf Hitler Platz for nearly seven dark years. The city had until that time been 50% German and 50% Czech.speaking. After the 1938 Munich-agreement, the Czech population was expelled and the Jewish population persecuted and ultimately liquidated. In 1945 the German population was expelled in the so-called odsun (transfer), a wave of ethnic cleansing that removed almost all of the three million Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia. The odsun was violent, particularly the so-called divoký odsun, "the wild transfer", which took place during the first few months after the end of the war. An estimated 20,000 lost their lives during the "transfer". In German the word Vertreibung (expulsion) is used, a far more appropriate word than the new-speak odsun, which oozes guilt, denial and cover-up. The expulsion of the Sudeten-Germans is contentious even today, but is gradually becoming less important. History can't be redone, and claims for compensation from the exiled Germans is effectively countered by: "What if we claim compensation for the damages caused by Nazi-Germany to Czechoslovakia?" Politicians both in Germany , the Czech Republic and Austria, have gone to great lengths to heal the wounds, although some have used the issue for their own vote-chasing gain: notably Jörg Haider and Miloš Zeman. The South Bohemian museum now dedicates a large section to the regions German past, a sign that times are changing.

Honza Jr, Honza Sr, Martin

To my surprise and delight both generations of Honza Veselý and his other son, Martin were at the station to see me off at 7! They had a spare rail-voucher that they tried to transfer to me, but to no avail. I was now heading for České Velenice, a town on the border with Austria which Švejk must have passed in his Arrestantenwagon, in the company of one-year volunteer Marek. The escort, a tormented corporal, was the target of Marek's and Švejk's incessant ridicule. On a bench in the carriage the gluttonous Field Chaplain, feldkurát Lacina, was snoring, belching and farting like Rabelais' Garagantua and even in his dreams shouted: More gravy! The situation was somewhat different this beautiful sunny morning in June 2010.

I crossed the border on foot, having had my last Budvar and walked to Gmünd where I took the train to Vienna and then on to Bruck an der Leitha. The train was a shock, it was so comfortable, smooth and fast that I realised that I had forgotten how comfortable rail travel can be. Not that Czech trains are bad; they are reliable but slow and the tracks are mostly from the era of His Highness Franz Joseph I.

This was the end of 32 days in the Czech Republic, the longest I'd ever spent in a country in which I for some strange reason feel totally at home. I have no family ties or any logical reason to feel at home there, so I can't explain it. Even after my first visit in 1988 I knew that I'd come back and after a few more visits I realised this was my adopted country, and I look forward to be back in October. Now onto Austria, another country I like visiting, although to a lesser degree.

Putim

2010-06-02T08:57:00.179+02:00

Putim

By May 31 I was nearing the end of the Budějovicka anabase. The walking had taken it's toll. When getting up from chairs people looked at me, wondering how such a relatively fit looking man moved round like a geriatric. In the mornings I rolled out of bed like a log, and in the evening my feet were swollen and and chubby like those of a toddler.

That morning I took the bus to Protivín to follow my hero to one of his many glorious moments; getting arrested at Putim, suspected of being a Russian spy. On arrival I took a detour to Krč u Protivína and photographed the house where authors mother, Kateřina Hašková was born. This was a place Hašek himself knew well from visits during summer holidays. Thereafter the path led through fields, forests and even past the enormous Talínský rybník, where I watched fish being caught, or rather, harvested. Fish-breeding is industry and South Bohemia is the centre of it all. The word fish-pond is misleading in these parts, many of the rybníky would be classed as lakes elsewhere.

Fishing out Talínský rybník

In Putim I immediately went to the municipality to ask about the facts behind Švejk's stay here. It turns out that there was no permanent gendarmerie station at Putim. It only existed during the periods of k.k manoeuvres and it had no fixed location. At house #41 there is a plaque, but this refers to the filming of Karel Steklý's Švejk here in the mid-fifties, and is not based on facts. The village pub was next door at number #42 but Hašek's name Na kocourku was probably invented. The man at the municipality said that the pub at no.42 didn't have a name at all. Today there is one large pub in the village, but in another location. U Cimbury has drawings of Švejk on the wall. Putim has become famous because of Švejk but is worth a visit on it's own right. Idyllically set by a lake and dominated by the Church of Saint Vavřinec. The panorama is well known in the Czech Republic, not least because parts of the film was shot here.

Wall painting from U Cimbury. Švejk being led to Písek

The Putim scene is one of the best known sequences of the whole novel and Karel Steklý's film exaggerates the role of it. He even adds his own stuff, twisting Švejk towards comedy. Although the film is enjoyable, it does Švejk a disservice; the satirical elements are mostly lost. If you've only seen this film and not read the book you would probably have missed a lot of what Švejk is about. The same could be said of the German film released in 1960. Although Heinz Rühmann is good as Švejk it is overall tame stuff and even more distorted than Steklý's film. Anti-religious sequences have been totally ignored, could you imagine Švejk without feldkurát Otto Katz? Still both films have contributed to Švejk's fame and Steklýs version is still regularly shown on Czech television. Perhaps the subtleties of Švejk is impossible to convey in a film? Although both films have good actors there's something missing. For entirely different reasons both film directors have left out or distorted essential elements of the novel. One had to toe the line of the Party, the other seems to have chosen not to offend his catholic viewers.

The final leg of Švejk's anabasis took him from Putim to Písek, escorted by a gendarme. As often happens in Hašek's stories, there was an intermezzo in a pub and Švejk in the end had to escort the gendarme to the Bezirksgendarmeriekommando in Písek. This scene is exploited to the ridiculous in the Steklý film; the policeman is brought to the station in a wheelbarrow. For me these last kilometres were less of a problem. I couldn't resist a stop in a roadside hospoda but still arrived in Písek every bit as steady as Švejk did.

Bezirksgendarmeriekommando in Písek

I now had a day spare and used it to seek out Ražická bašta, immortalised in Hašek's stories about his grandfather and also mentioned in Švejk. Armed by a map Radko Pytlík had given me and supported by a digital version from Jarda Šerák. I took the bus back to Putim and walked from there. To cross the river Blánice I even used the railway bridge, not without trepidation. Fortunately no trains arrived, and some of the local trains are so slow that I could have run away from them anyway. I think I found the spot, now a total wilderness. The Ražice dam doesn't seem to be used for fish-farming anymore. People might be asking themselves; what the hell was in those pictures I took there? To be honest, I'm not completely sure but I took them just in case.

This concluded my walking anabasis in the Czech South. I estimated that I had walked around 200 km in these 8 days, and was looking forward to less strenuous exercises, happy to arrive at my Regiment in České Budějovice, the South Bohemian metropolis that all roads lead to.

Deserters and tramps

2010-06-01T08:47:00.064+02:00

Schwarzenberg sheep-shed (Josef Lada).

After having spent the night in a hay-stack by Putim, Švejk left his company of deserters one early winter morning in 1915. He had been given the advice “vyser na svýho obrlajtnanta” but loyally decided not to "shit on his Senior Lieutenant". So he continued his tireless quest to re-join his regiment, still convinced that he would somehow reach that Budějovice.

I took the train to Ražice early one morning and continued in the steps of my hero. By now Švejk had met a tramp who was eager to help the "deserter" and who gave him all sorts of advice. Four hours walk south of Štěkeň they headed for the Švarcenberský ovčín, a sheep-shed belonging to the aristocratic Schwarzenberg family. It is not known exactly where this was. Radko Pytlík thinks it was somewhere near Skočice and judging by the topology around there he is probably right. If the description in Švejk is accurate it would have been somewhere to the south of the village, near Dub.

The day was wet and cold so I decided to let sheep-sheds be sheep-sheds, there was no way I was going to crawl around in the forest looking for a needle in a hay-stack. Instead I headed directly for Skočice which is also mentioned in Švejk; famously by the poor old woman Pejzlerka, who when interrogated at the police station in Putim exclaimed: Panenko Marie skočicka! The Virgin Mary of Skočice is still there; as the name of the church and even physically as a roadside shrine!

Panenka Marie Skočická.

It was a shorter leg this day, 20 km at the most. I rounded it off in Protivín, a town Švejk avoided but I decided would be a convenient stop. It is a railway junction with frequent trains back to Písek. It is also the home of the Platan brewery, known for its good jedenáctka. Otherwise the town has few attractions, being more functional than pretty. Walking along asphalted roads in grey weather is not much to write about, therefore this short letter.

The attentive reader, particularly those who have seen the map in Cecil Parrott's translation, might have noticed that my own route had by now deviated considerably from Švejk's assumed route. I have not touched places like Horažďovice, Strakonice, Volyně, Dub and Vodňany. Why? They are not part of the narrative at all, they are only places that Švejk later claims to have been too. Visiting these places would also have added nearly 100 km to the anabasis, the detour to Horažďovice in particular would have been hard work. So Švejkolog's of the world, excuse me...

Bucolic backwaters

2010-05-31T08:40:00.112+02:00

In the days before Internet became widespread I was dependant on guidebooks, and the Rough Guides were my favourites. The language was fresher and more direct than that of their competitor Lonely Planet's and they were less likely to fill up their eating and drinking section with "Irish" and expat pubs. The Czechoslovak Rough Guide written by Rob Humphreys was always with me in these parts from 1991 onwards. It was a feature in this book that made me aware of Jaroslav Hašek and led me to Bebington Library to borrow Švejk. A writer described as an anarchist, prankster, beer-drinker, dog-breeder and red commissar surely must have been out of the ordinary. So it proved and since then I've never looked back.

The Rough Guides tend to be written in a laconic style, my birthplace Vik i Sogn was described as a "half-hearted village" by the Sognefjord, Kirkenes was so far away that it seemed to be falling off the edge of the earth. Žatec was a scruffy medieval affair (when I visited in 2006 it was not scruffy at all, it's an attractive town), and South Bohemia was a bucolic backwater. I admit I had to look up the word bucolic when I read it first time, so please feel free to Google it!

In the mud of these bucolic backwaters I was still waddling about in late May 2010. After the previous days hard but rewarding walk I took the train back to Radomyšl and continued towards Švejk's haystack in Putim. I had an off-topic agenda in the morning, a visit to the Jewish cemetery in Osek where Franz Kafka's grandfather, Jakob Kavka, is buried. He was a butcher in the village, kosher even. It was Heřman Kavka (Hermann Kafka), the writers father, who moved to Prague and also germanised the name, which in Czech means Jackdaw.

I set out towards Osek along a track which Milan Kovařík had showed me the day before. As it happened the track was far from kosher and to avoid having to wade through the mud, I took another route. In the end I missed the cemetery altogether. I got pissed off, and decided to leave Kafka to kafkologs. As I was getting sore in unmentionable parts I soon made compromises on Švejk's route, leaving out Putim for now and heading straight for Štěken. It was a Saturday, and only the Vietnamese shop was open, and there I found no suitable remedy for my troubles. I decided to head for Ražice where there at least were trains back to Písek.

The walk was pure purgatory, and I made a stop in a large pub in Sudoměř. There I bought a Jan Žižka T-shirt, and sat down for a beer. Opposite me appeared a man which appeared to have escaped from ZZ Top, a biker with long hair and an appropriate beard. We struck up a great conversation, he was also a fan of Hašek. Jindřích Brichašek bought me a glass of vodka for the road, I returned the compliment with a pivo, and promised to send him a post-card from Bugulma. The final 6 kilometers to Ražice went better; beer and the vodka work against many ailments.

Back in Písek I looked for remedies for my troubled rear. I had insecticide, toothpaste and sun lotion available. I decided to apply Nivea Sun Lotion. On the bottle was written Sun Factor 10. Never in the course of human suffering has the sun factor been of such meagre importance.

A grumpy farmer

2010-05-30T13:54:00.116+02:00

Švejk had both good and bad encounters on his wanderings in the Czech south. Just before Vráž he had met a kind old babička who gave him bramborovka, a kind of potato soup. She also gave him advice on which villages to avoid and which were safe, assuming he was a deserter as he walked round in his military greatcoat. She also gave him directions to her brother in Radomyšl, a certain farmer Melichárek who lived in Dolejší ulice behind Floriánek. Švejk in the end went there, but was given a could shoulder by a farmer who took him for a deserter and didn't want to have anything to do with him. Švejk set off again and ended up sleeping in a hay-stack near Putim, in he company of three real deserters.

Pond between Čížová and Malčice.

In the morning of May 28 2010 I set off early to continue Švejk's anabasis from Čížová. At 7 in the morning I bought some buchty in a bakery and had my breakfast on a bench in front of the Municipal House. Čížová is a neat village, set on a slope and offers a fine panorama of the countryside to the south.

My next goal was Malčice where Švejk went to a pub to buy kořálka. This took me along the new motorway to Prague, which is not yet opened. The construction workers allowed me onto it, so I had all the lanes to myself. I didn't find any pub in Malčice, the nearest I came was a community hall which wasn’t open this early in the morning. The village is quite small, although larger than Květov.

Then I took a gamble; to avoid having to turn south again along the motorway I set across the fields and followed some tractor tracks. Two farmers sitting on their Zetors advised me and it all turned out well. The tracks were wet and mucky and I passed the largest dung-heap I've seen in my life (and raised on a farm I've seen a lot of muck). I then got onto a cycle track, and finally by Holušice on to an asphalted road. I must have looked quite forlorn, because close to Sedlice a Mercedes pulled up and an elegantly dressed elderly lady, wearing a ridiculous hat, offered me a lift. I politely turned down the kind offer, not because of the hat, but because Švejk used his feet and so would I. In Sedlice I had a deserved lunch and two excellent Strakonice desitky before continuing towards Radomyšl. Sedlice is a likable small-town, dominated by it's big church. There is no account in the novel about Švejk ever having been in Sedlice, but later he at least claims he went there.

Radomyšl

Radomyšl is likewise a quaint place. In 2005 it was voted South Bohemian "Village of the year" and understandably so. The church is again the main sight, but the old and narrow streets around it adds to the charm. When I arrived on the square the lady in the Infocentrum jumped on me like sergeant Flanderka jumped on Švejk in Putim, offering me all sorts of more or less relevant stuff. I was only interested in Floriánek and Dolejší ulice, and was at last pointed in the right direction. I asked again further down, even went to the radnice. Because it was election day there was very little help offered. I asked more people and a lady told me that the grand-daughter of the farmer Melichárek lived in town, but she wouldn't be in until 5pm. I gave the lady my e-mail address to pass on.

Floriánek

Finally I had some luck; an elderly man who was obviously interested in local history came up with the answers. Floriánek is actually a house, now derelict and recently bought by a foreigner. An officially dressed man walked past, overheard the conversation, and exclaimed that the "they" had stolen it! To judge by his age he would also have been an official when the party had a leading role. What would the Party have preferred, I wondered? The property falling into ruins or it belonging to a foreigner who would then have restored it by exploiting the local working class?

The local historian Milan Kovařík was very helpful, and needless to say we rounded off with a few pivo in the local hospoda. He told me that there are two Melichár families in Radomyšl, Hašek had slightly altered the name. The lady who I had given my e-mail address to again appeared and so did the busy-body from the Infocentrum. I must have caused some attention in town. It was all in all a fruitful day, and I decided to give my feet a rest and catch the bus back to Písek via Strakonice.

Milan Kovařík

Some 10 days later I was pleased to receive an e-mail from Ivana Síbková. She told me that her mother was born in 1915 and that in the same year Jaroslav Hašek had visited the family and was allowed to sleep over. Her grandmother even made him bramborovka. Her grandfathers name was Václav Melichár. So some of the story in Švejk is factual, although Hašek adapted it. Mrs Síbková doesn't know why Hašek put her grand-father in such a bad light. To that can be said that Hašek consistently used names of real people in his stories but that these often didn't correspond to the person he described. Kraus von Zillergut is a prime example. He was a class-mate of Hašek at the Commercial Academy, not a moronic colonel in the k.u.k army!

The question remains: what did Jaroslav Hašek do in Radomyšl in 1915? From February 15 to May 9 he was assigned to the 91st regiment in České Budějovice but Radomyšl is 70 km away. It is known that he went on walkabouts with his ingenious Krankenbuch, a story retold by one-year volunteer Marek in the novel, but this is something different. Could it have been an attempt to desert? In that case, parts of the Švejkova anabase might be autobiographical, and not purely based on memories from his childhood vacations in the south. Also there is no evidence that he visited South Bohemia in 1915 before he was called up.

To Čížová

2010-05-29T19:38:00.008+02:00

South Bohemia is mostly countryside and it often smells of pig-shit and other variations of dung. It even has a number of Country Clubs and I've seen the American Stars and Bars flying more than once. Still it is an attractive Central European region with little heavy industry, a cluster of medieval towns, numerous castles and many pretty villages and small towns. It is perfect terrain for cycling and walking, and walking is what I did, even more than I had anticipated, probably even more than Švejk did.

Usually Jaroslav Hašek was thorough when putting together the backdrop to his novel. This applied to geography, history, literary quotes and quotes from war calendars, encyclopaedia, but when it came to timing he was way off. Studies conducted by Antonin Měšťan and Hans-Peter Laqueur estimate the Švejkova anabase to 72 hours. This is however impossible. Not even a super-fit Marathon-runner would have done the 160 kilometres in such a short time, and in between Švejk spent time in pubs and at police stations. I set aside a week for the walking and it turned out to be no more than I needed.

After offloading my luggage in Písek I was finally getting to the core of Švejk's anabasis, trying to get to his obrlajtnant and his regiment whilst walking in circles around Písek. On May 26 I took the bus back to Zvíkovské podhradí and from here I continued in the steps of our anti-hero. Švejk might presumable have crossed the Vltava somewhere else, the Orlik dam has made the options limited nowadays. It was a wet and horrible day and again I got lost before I finally arrived in Vráž. There was no kind babička waiting for me with her bramborovka (potato soup). Instead I had to rely on the Country club. They were flying the Confederate Flag and much to my delight playing Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd. I stayed on for four good Budvars and continued towards Čížová in high spirit. My feet where in a bad state but the Budvar helped. Painkillers can mean many things. Whatever hallucinogenic put in front of me there and then would have been appreciated; no matter if it was for eating, drinking or smoking. Fortunately there was a bus back to Písek, so I didn't have to add the last 6 km to my Google-map. The pizza at Maestro Appetito beneath the imposing church towers tasted particularly good that evening.

Písek is another pretty Czech town. Kamenný most (The stone bridge) across the Otava predates the Charles Bridge in Prague by 100 years and is the oldest existing bridge in Bohemia. The town has two squares and a cluster of old streets. The surroundings are also attractive, green rolling landscapes dotted with quaint villages. But above all this is Hašek country. His mother, Kateřina Jarešová was born near Protivín, 20 km to the south, and his father Josef Hašek was from Mydlovary a bit further south. Jaroslav Hašek visited the region in his childhood and again in 1915. He uses his local knowledge both in Švejk and in the stories about his grandfather Antonín Jareš. His grandfather's rebellious attitudes influenced the young Jaroslav, something which is clear from the stories about the pond-warden Jareš from Ražice who stood up against the aristocratic landowners, the Schwarzenbergs.

Anabasis and archives

2010-05-28T20:57:00.060+02:00

The word anabasis hails from Greek historian, general, and writer Xenophon. It is the title of seven heavy volumes where he describes the arduous route back to Athens after a military expedition to Persia. Xenophon is also said to be the first historian to write a report form a battlefield. Obviously Jaroslav Hašek must have read Xenophon or at least been familiar with his work. Through his famous chapter, Švejkova budějovická anabase, Hašek immortalized the word anabase for Czech readers. If you ask an American, Englishman or Scandinavian what the word means, you would get a blank stare. If you ask a Czech, or for that sake anyone in the neighbouring countries he would probably mention Švejk and not Xenophon. Czech poet and legionnaire Rudolf Medek (who at times was a friend of Hašek) even wrote a work called "Anabase" (1927), the ultimate homage to the Czecho-Slovak Legions.

Hašek was a member of that organisation from 1916 onwards but quit in April 1918 after it was decided that they were to be transferred to the Western Front and fight under French command. British professor of literature, Robert Pynsent, has stated that Hašek's chapter in Švejk mocks the Legion's wanderings in Siberia. Similar speculation is equally categorically voiced by translator of Švejk Zenny Sadlon and Polish writer Antoni Kroh. The theory seems highly speculative, and none of the three gentlemen quote any sources. There is nothing in the text of Švejk to support the claims; the aim there is firmly the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Medek's work was published after Hašek's death so he has definitely not targeted him directly. Hašek and Medek met again after the war and were reconciled. Hašek already used the term in the short-story "Povidky z fronty" (September 25 1916), and at the time he was definitely not mocking the Legions. All of the above three fail to mention this highly relevant fact. Hašek may have had good reasons to poke fun at his former comrades but that doesn't prove that he did it. Some legionnaires might have felt offended, but again that doesn't prove that he intended it as a slur. The background for his use of the term "anabase" is probably a straight-forward reflection of his genuine interest in ancient history. References to ancient Rome and Greece are found all over the novel. The rest is for Dan Brown and his admirers to interpret, but it would still be interesting to get to the (presumably) common source of this "fact".

After settling in at reasonable Pension U Kloudů in central Písek for a week, my hands were free and my back-pack firmly stowed away. The pension had fast wireless Internet, essential to a traveller who takes dozens of pictures every day and need to upload them. I now had a whole day off without having to trace anyone in the whole world. Instead I went to the Státní okresní archiv (the regional state archives) to investigate a few of the facts Hašek used. They were sceptical in the beginning, I had to go back for my passport before they would even let me in! I guess they were leftovers from times where rules were rules and no nonsense was tolerated. On my return and with all papers signed it was pure goodwill and helpfulness. I soon established where the Bezirksgendarmeriekommando was, and also had a look at the police records from 1914-18.

Hašek mentions a rytmístr König in Švejk. He is probably pure fiction or a different person. According to the records Theodor Rotter was in charge in Písek during the war. He is mentioned in Švejk on several occasions, was an expert on breeding police dogs, and also an acquaintance of the author. They had met when Hašek was editor of "The Animal World". The records are great reading, they would have been perfect background material for Hašek. Here are instructions on how to deal with drunkards, pacifists, anarchists, gypsies etc., all in the pompous official language that Hašek ridiculed. The only one piece missing was the village idiot Pepík Vyskoč (Joey Jump).

Hard work

2010-05-28T18:54:00.001+02:00

Tábor railway station today does not offer any hospoda where you can sit down and have a beer with some shaggy Hungarian. There is a Bufet Viktoria though, all plastic and convenience but without draught beer. I still felt obliged to have a bottle of Kozel that early morning in May 24, as this is a place of immense importance. The beer was good but I had to get moving, because it was as obvious to me as it was for Švejk that all roads lead to that Budějovice. It had the good sense to leave some books behind at Hotel Slávia. The backpack was already getting worryingly heavy.

The day before I had gone to the Infocentrum to pick up some maps. I assumed that the map of the Písecko region was sufficient, and that I would confidently manoeuvre westwards through Táborsko purely by relying on my excellent memory. I had decided to visit Klokoty on the way, but surprisingly, early that day my excellent memory played me a trick. I added 3 km to an already long walk almost before I had started. The beauty of Klokoty monastery still made me feel humble, despite me being generally indifferent to religion.

I continued down the Lužnice valley and walked on and on, ever forward. Before Sepekov I got lost in some marshland and was nearing exhaustion, with a backpack that seemed to weight 10 kilos more for every hour. By now every imaginable part of the body was aching. I decided it couldn't get any worse anyway and carried on to Milevsko even though it was getting dark and a thunderstorm was brewing.

The last 3 km to Milevsko were unbelievably long, and just before the station the thunderstorm hit. I had bought my second umbrella from a Vietnamese in Břevnov for kč 30 and it was turned inside out within four seconds. I wrapped the wreck around the backpack and was relieved to get shelter at U Vlaků, on the railway platform. Here I had the most welcome pivo of my whole travelling career. The pub was a grotty lidová hospoda serving excellent Platan 11. I gulped down three of them on the trot and then asked for a place to sleep. The other customers were railway workers which by now were struggling with their diction, but they took a keen interest in the tourist and were extremely helpful.

Just before 23:00 I finally found a place to sleep and was safe. Švejk only carried his fajfka (pipe) on his walk whilst I was carrying heaps of electronics and other necessities. On the road to Sepekov it had struck me that carrying all this on my back for a week could result in a premature end to my grand travelling project. I decided to change tack: go to Písek and settle down there, then do the rest of the anabasis as day-trips. That would rid me of three worries: the heavy backpack, keeping the electronics dry, and having to secure a place to stay every night.

I still decided on another stop before executing the plan: continue by foot to the brewpub/hotel in Zvíkovské podhradí which was only 20 km away. From there one I would head for Písek. The road went through Květov, mentioned in Švejk. It is a tiny village, I didn't even find a pub. That put pay to the intention of having a beer at every spot Švejk stopped at! I could have bought some bottle at Jednota, but beer-drinking has to be done properly and rain was threatening. I crossed the Vltava in a downpour and finally got to Pivovarský Dvůr, the promising land, combining a hotel and a house brewery. The beer was very good and I had plenty of time to catch up on sleep.

This concluded the first part of my own Budějovcká anabase. I struggled with getting my feet into the bed and felt the best way of getting down the stairs in the morning was walking sideways. These things wouldn't have bothered Švejk, but I'm sure he would have understood my predicament. In the last two days I had put more than 50 km behind me.

Tábor

2010-05-26T19:04:00.076+02:00

Early in 1915 Jaroslav Hašek was called up by the Austro-Hungarian Army. He was to report at Karlín on February 15, so he must have left for Mariánske kasárny in České Budějovice on a southbound train a day or two later. At least for Hašek the train journey south must have been rather uneventful. However, his alter ego Švejk and his obrlajtnant Lukáš suffered a series of misfortunes. First their suitcases got stolen at the station in Prague, then Švejk made the following unfortunate comment in the presence of a bald gentleman in the compartment they shared:

“I dutifully report Senior Lieutenant, Sir, that I’ve read once in the paper that a normal human should have sixty to seventy thousand strands of hair on his head on the average and that black hair tends to be thinner, as can be observed in numerous cases.” And he continued on mercilessly: “And then a med student was once saying at the Špírek’s coffeehouse that the hair falling out is caused by a disturbance of the soul during the mother’s customary six weeks of recuperation after giving birth.” (from Zenny K. Sadlon's translation)

Unfortunately the bald gentleman was the fearsome army inspector Major General von Schwarzburg and the merciless response was: Marsch heraus, Sie Schweinkerl! It didn't end there; Švejk was unfortunate enough to pull the emergency break just before Tábor. The train stopped, Švejk was pulled in to pay the fine at the railway station. There he settled down in the restaurant and that while waiting for the very next train he was beset by the mishap of sitting at a table and drinking one beer after another. The result was that the missed all the trains, didn't have a heller in his pocket, had no documents, and was forced to set out on foot. This is the start of the famous Švejkova budějovická anabase which I was going to retrace in the next week or so.

My own trip down to Tábor on May 23 2010 was less dramatic. I bid farewell to Prague in the classic art-deco Fantova Kavárna at Prague main station. It is a spectacle in it's own right, set below the glass dome of the station, and complete with a huge picture of His Imperial Highness František Josef I. The visit to Tábor had purposes apart from tracing Švejk. Last years on a cycle trip from Freising to Prague I had met some good people there, which I wanted to meet again.

Secondly, author and politician Jan Berwid-Buquoy lives in nearby Těšnice. I had for a long time tried to get hold of his book Die Abenteuer des gar nicht so braven Humoristen Jaroslav Hašek, but to no avail. I ended up writing to him, and he suggested I come and pick up the book personally. So, I did. It was right during a fest at his own family castle, a country and western-band was playing, people were drinking pivo and eating sausages in the garden, the kids were busy in the jumping castle. By the posters to judge it was also part of the election campaign for KDU-ČSL. Berwid-Buquoy was for the occasion dressed in a British battle-uniform and was easy to detect. I was very pleased that he, despite a busy schedule, had time to sit down with me and also to guide me around the castle. He was himself pleased that I brought him a personal gift from Richard Hašek, whose father he had known well, and who is quoted as source for the biography.

The family got the property back during the restitution process in the nineties. They bought it for one koruna but have has since spent a lot of money restoring it. Now it also contains three small museums: one on the abuses of communism, one on Konrad Adenauer and finally one on John F. Kennedy. Berwid-Buquoy also showed me his impressive library. He is himself the author of 12 books, and I received one of them as a gift: Ludwig Erhard, der Vater des deutcshen Wirtschaftswunder. Berwid-Buquoy and his wife are truly bilingual in Czech and German. He told me that he didn't speak a word of Czech until he was seven, his mother was Sudeten-German, his father Czech. After the Warsaw-pact invasion in 1968 they went into exile, and lived in Vienna and Berlin until after the 1989 Revolution.

The next two days were spent with friends I had met the year before. We'd had in 2009 had a great time at the hard-rocking Blues Bar and then at U lva, a classic pub with cheap beer and great atmosphere. However, Blues bar was by now history, the owner had been arrested for fraud and locked up. U lva still existed though, and the atmosphere was electric on the night the Czech Republic beat Russia 2-1 in the Ice Hockey WC final.

Tábor has a special place in Czech history. It was the main seat of the radical part of the Hussite movement, followers of religious reformer Jan Hus, an early critic of the abuses of the Catholic Church. He predated Martin Luther by 100 years. The radical Hussite movement, for a while led by military genius Jan Žižka, a legend in his own right, played a vital part in Central European politics until 1526 when Bohemia came under Habsburg rule. The protestant Hussite church still exists although it suffered greatly under the Catholic Habsburg-sponsored counter-reformation of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Tábor is an attractive city, the core is preserved and wandering through the streets of the old town is pure joy. It is well worth a visit, even if you couldn't care less about Švejk. It is situated south of Prague, on the way to equally enticing České Budějovice, in some countries known as Budweis. According to Švejk all roads lead to České Budějovice. I was to test his assertion in the next week or so.

Haškology

2010-05-24T20:56:00.004+02:00

There exist numerous sciences and pseudo-sciences on earth. There is cosmetology, ontology, astrology, tautology, philology, gynaecology, sinology and of course haškology. The latter science is by it's very nature represented by "haškologs", a relatively minor sub-species of the human race. Haškology not only deals with the the literary work of Jaroslav Hašek, but also his extraordinary and turbulent life, which in many ways is even more remarkable than his tour-de-force novel The Good Soldier Švejk.

Haškologové at Lipnice in 2008.

From the author’s death in 1923 until the fifties, written material on Hašek consisted largely of biographies written by his friends, amongst them Franta Sauer, Josef Lada, Václav Menger, Emil Artur Longen and František Langer. There was no systematic research on his life and work at that time. Hašek was not a popular figure amongst the elites of pre-war Czechoslovakia and Švejk was largely neglected by the literary establishment.

In the 1950's the situation changed. The communist regime decided that they could live with “certain contradictions” in his career, and concluded after some hesitation that Hašek could serve their purpose. Thus the irony was complete; the most anti-authoritarian writer imaginable was canonized by a regime that was far more authoritarian than the one the writer himself had mocked in his famous novel. However, his elevation also had a positive effect. Resources were made available for research and books on Hašek started to appear. One of the first was by Jaroslav Křížek and was titled Jaroslav Hašek in revolutionary Russia. This was the first serious study on the authors stay in Russia. This book is also a prime example of how facts got filtered to fit a political purpose. Křížek didn't mention Trotsky, and he ignored Hašek's association with the left-wing opposition to the Bolsheviks. Other researchers followed; Zdena Ančík, Milan Jankovič and Radko Pytlík and more. In 1970 the latter published Toulavé house, a complete biography on the author. Haškology hit it's peak in 1983, marking the 100th anniversary of the authors birth. A number of books were published this year, particularly by Pytlík. The anniversary was also sponsored by UNESCO. Some of Pytlík’s books were by now translated to German, English and Russian.

Some of Radko Pytlík's publications

Haškology was by no means limited to Czechoslovakia though. Literature appeared in Russia, and in the German-speaking world exiles Gustav Janouch (1903-1968) and Jan Berwid-Buquoy (1946-) published biographies. Janouch's book is well written but seems rather speculative and reviewers have pointed to his uncritical use of sources. Nor does he provide any discussion on the official Czechoslovak truth as presented by scholars on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Berwid-Buquoy in his Die Abenteuer des gar nicht so braven Humoristen Jaroslav Hašek explicitly seeks to dispel what he sees as myths created by Pytlík, Ančík et. al. He accuses the Marxist writers of ignoring western sources and exaggerating Hašek's humble background to fit their agenda. Berwid-Buquoy shows that Hašek's family background was not that humble after all.

This is also a view shared by English biographer Cecil Parrott (1909-1984). The diplomat and former ambassador to Czechoslovakia was also a Hašek-expert and he is the only person with a non-Czech background who has written a biography on the author. The title is "The Bad Bohemian" and it was published in 1978. It is a thorough study, albeit written in a dry and academic style. For most readers this book will still be the best introduction to Hašek, unless he/she reads German, Czech or Russian. In my view the book is also marred by Parrott's obvious distaste for Hašek's lifestyle and the sleeve even states that "Hašek's life was a disgrace". If these were the words of Parrott I don't know, it could also be the publishers trying to sell by shouting loud. Still the tone is set, and one of the conclusions is that Hašek was a "creative psychopath" who routinely broke promises, exploited his friends and was exactly the opposite of a model husband. These statements are partially true of course, but such kind of behaviour is very common amongst heavy drinkers who put the next glass of beer before obligations. It could be that simple; characterizing someone as a psychopath is heavy going to explain a common trait amongst alcoholics. Parrott's book has an extensive reference list, something that the biographies by Pytlík and Berwid-Buquoy lack. Parrott also acknowledges Pytlík's work and admits that he has lent heavily on his Toulavé House in certain parts. Another and in my view better publication by Parrott is “A study of Švejk and the short stories”. This book is a must for any admirer of Švejk.

Pavel Gan

In 1983 Bamberg hosted a conference on Hašek, exclusively attended by scholars based in the west, many of them Czech exiles. One of them was Pavel Gan (1933-) who with his extensive paper Hašek als Rotarmist an der Volga in 1918 shed new light on the authors activities during the first phase of the Russian civil war. Gan since went on to produce papers on Hašek in the Ukraine, Hašek on the way to Baikal and Hašek beyond the Baikal. All these papers are in German, some of them translated to Czech. The information in these papers are collected in his book which I wrote about in the entry "More important than Lonely Planet".

Literary historian Dr Radko Pytlík (1928-) is generally regarded as the number one living expert on Hašek, and has been so for some time. Already in 1978, Cecil Parrott recognised him as such. He has published a number of books on Hašek, including the biography Toulavé House (The wandering gosling), and a complete bibliography. He also specialises on Bohumil Hrabal and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He has written several books on Prague and particularly it's hospody. It can be assumed that no-one alive knows more about this particular theme than Pytlík. As said before, Pytlík has his critics. According to those he more or less willingly towed the line of the communist authorities, benefiting from the public canonization of Jaroslav Hašek, contributing to making Hašek more of a Bolshevik than he really was. On the other hand it's clear that Party backing aided research on Hašek. Pytlík spent six weeks in the Soviet Union doing his research, something which would have been inconceivable without official support. He also visited Austria in 1983 in the capacity as a haškolog. It must have been a precarious balancing act still; he says that when he had conversation with Cecil Parrott they didn't dare to speak openly, they knew that the StB (State Security) were tapping the conversation. Toulavé House is still pretty free from between-the-lines ideology (my version is a revised edition from after the Velvet Revolution), this is a literary historian writing, not an apparatchik.

After 1989 haškology lost the official backing and researchers again had to rely on voluntary effort. These are headed by Pytlík himself and Richard Hašek and twice they have arranged conferences at Lipnice (2003 and 2008). They also arrange other events and regularly appear in Czech media, from regional newspaper to television. Richard Hašek has also been interviewed by German, Polish, Hungarian and Austrian broadcasters. Judging by the attendance at the latest conference at Lipnice, the movement is in dire need of new blood. They amount of grey hair and bald heads was striking and the female part of the population was nearly invisible.

All is not gloom though. Pytlík is working on a new biography and hopefully he will keep healthy and be able to publish it. The market demand for material on Hašek is still there, a fact demonstrated by the fact that Hodik and Landa where able to publish a thorough investigation of the facts behind Švejk. I have already mentioned the efforts of Jaroslav Šerák and Hans-Peter Laqueur. Another enthusiast also deserves a mention. He is the Czech-born American Zenny K. Sadlon who maintains one of the most extensive web-sites around: Svejk Central. It was the first of it's kind in the world and contains a lot of documents. It also has links to virtually all that exists on English-language material on Hašek (and a lot more). Sadlon is also the man behind a new translation on Švejk, which was completed in 2009 and ultimately successful after a wobbly start.

Computer technology and Internet presents new opportunities for organizing and presenting the material. My hope is that some of the enormous knowledge possessed by those elderly haškologs can be collected and digitalised before it's too late.

Katastrofa

2010-05-23T12:00:00.093+02:00

First I would like to reassure readers that the ominous title Katastrofa hails from literature and is not based on my own travel experiences. It is the headline of Chapter 15, Book One of Švejk and refers to the result of Švejk and Blahník colluding to steal a dog for obrlajtnant Lukáš who in turn got caught red-handed by Colonel Friedrich Kraus von Zillergut, a supreme idiot who in the k.u.k Armee could only be matched by Lieutenant Dub. The result was immediate departure to the front, an event which Švejk commented on as follows:

It will be something truly exquisite when we both fall together for the Lord Emperor, and his family.........” (from Zenny K. Sadlon's translation)

My last few days in Prague were spent following Otto Katz and Švejk looking for the lost Field Altar in Vršovice, picking up the monstrance at Břevnov monastery, serving Field Mass at Motol, and collecting some loose ends. It can be noted that the monastery at Břevnov is beautiful and that the restaurant Klášterní šenk is extremely comfortable without being expensive. Their web-page is in Czech, German and Latin, how could I possibly not love the place!

The road to Motol was wet and horrible and I missed the exercise ground (now a golf course) altogether and ended up between the paneláky in Řepy, far beyond. There I celebrated my failure in an extremely shitty pub in a dreary seventies shopping centre, and then took the bus back to the centre. On the 21st I went back to Vršovice to photograph the barracks where Lukáš and Švejk lived, now housing a regional court. I also bid farewell to restaurant Dobrý den and Jonny Axelson. Later it has been confirmed that the restaurant has been sold.

One morning Richard Hašek and I visited Radko Pytlík's atelier in Holešovice. The atelier is his functioning office, filled with books from floor to ceiling and with a piano in the middle. A thought struck me when we entered the room: I'll never get to Siberia if I start digging into this. The next half year could easily be spent here. Pytlík told us that he's working on a new biography on Hašek. He has already compiled background facts on both Švejk and Hašek, and fortunately I have those huge files kept on my computer. They are vital as the journey progresses and I have already corrected errors on my own web-pages after consulting the files. Again I had a feeling of having entered a sacred world, containing knowledge that no Google-search could find. There will be more on Dr Pytlík in future letters.

After the visit to the atelier we went to U svatého Antoníčku around the corner, a classic pub where Dr Pytlík has been a regular for years. The Czech Republic were at the moment playing Finland in the Ice Hockey WC and as the Finns scored in the first minute there were some loud kurva and do prdele heard in the room. Ice Hockey is serious business in this country.

After the hockey we continued to U Rudolfina and met Antonín Kachlík, another elderly haškolog (and former film director). We had a discussion about Henrik Ibsen's An enemy of the people and concluded that there were many parallels with Hašek.

The final evening in Prague was celebrated with Richard Hašek and friends Na Slamníku in Bubeneč, one of the oldest pubs in Prague and a place with a timeless, serene atmosphere. The evening sun was shining through the thin smoke-stained white curtains, getting reflected in the cigarette smoke. The Pilsner beer was exquisite. Afterwards there was a great rock arrangement with some old stalwarts. The tourist drank wine for a change, and did so as if it was beer. The result was cataclysmic, but he was taken care of by good friends.

On the morning of May 23rd I set off for Tábor. I was sad to leave Prague, Richard and other good friends behind but also full of anticipation for the rest of the adventure. I will, all being well, be back in the mother of cities in October. From now on the taverns will gradually get less enticing, the beer will deteriorate in quality, but I will hopefully still have a good life amongst the good people of all nations.

Books and beer

2010-05-17T23:00:00.129+02:00

As mentioned in the previous letter, four Hungarians, led by László Polgár, had arrived at Lipnice. They were on the way to vital events in Prague: a Book Fair and a Beer Festival. Books and beer is an excellent combination and no-one in the Czech Lands wound find this particularly strange. In few other places are literature and beer that closely connected. The Czech Republic has a huge quantity of hospody and fittingly it also has a large number of book-shops. It also has a great number of beer-drinking writers.

The book fair Svět Knihy takes places at the Vystaviště (Exhibition Grounds) in Holešovice in mid-May every year and attracts book-buyers, book-sellers, literary types and the general public from even beyond the borders of the republic. The immediate reason for our visit on May 14th was the launch of Karel Vaněk's continuation of the unfinished Švejk, with illustrations by cartoonist Petr Urban. He is known for his humorous-grotesque caricatures and is as such fit for the task. He has already illustrated Hašek's original Švejk. The continuation of Švejk has not been translated to English or any other major language and is generally regarded as inferior to Hašek's. NB! I have not read it myself.

The launch was hosted by the publishers X.Y.Z and the honorary guests were Petr Urban himself, and Radko Pytlík, generally regarded as the foremost living expert on Hašek. Pytlík even introduced three members of the audience: Richard Hašek as grand-son and Hašek-expert, László Polgár as distinguished Bohemist from Hungary and a stray dog from Northern Europe, recognized for his web-pages on Švejk. I felt very honoured by Pytlík's recognition, although he somewhat imprecisely announced that the web-pages also exist in French! I bought both of Urban's Švejks, and he signed them personally with a grotesque Švejk. The books are far heavier than the Kralice Bible and the Gutenberg Bible put together and will not be travelling with me to Siberia!

There was never any doubt that the literary event would be rounded off by a visit to a hospoda and so it was. The direction was towards the classic U Houbaře, one of Radko Pytlík's favourite places, but Petr Urban was after the trials of the launch so overwhelmed with thirst, that he guided the whole delegation into the nearest corner pub. Pilsner Urquell was consumed in quantities, and only Polgár went missing from time to time. He got so involved with books that he atypically forgot about beer and went to buy more literature. Petr Urban himself stuck to pivo. He is a giant of a man in his late forties, a former Czech sledding champion who twice took part in the Olympics, and with his hockey-style long and greasy hair, even resembles his own caricatures.

The next day, May 15th, Hans-Peter and I traced Švejk, chapter 7 and 8, from U Kalicha to Hradčany. Again we talked to landlord Pavel Töpfer who the night before had had a visit of a group of 80 Germans who insisted on paying separately, just to confirm the statement in his book! We walked the route where Mrs Müllerová pushed Švejk in a wheelchair; to Střelecký ostrov. Then we followed him through Malá strana and onto Hradčany's Garrison Hospital where he withstood all the trials His Imperial Highness's servant Dr Grünstein subjected him to; needless to say with the greatest composure.

By now our legs were weary and after a Kozel at U černého vola we parted and I went on to further arrangements. At the former airfield of Letňany the annual Beer Festival was taking place. I was to meet László Polgár and Zsofia Hunyadi at Holešovice metro, and we were to go to Letňany , to, well… drink beer.

At the platform a surprise waited: Eero Balk. He is the Finnish translator of Švejk and a professional translator of Russian, Slovak, Ukrainian and Czech. He also has a special interest in the Sorb minority in East Germany, which language and culture are under threat. I suddenly realised that I was surrounded by Finno-Ugrians. László then commented on the logic that we were all communicating in Czech, which is neither particularly Finno-Ugrian nor Germanic. After visiting the three beer tenths, and becoming even more Finno-Ugrian we continued to Žižkov where an unofficial photo session took place by the statue of Hašek at Prokopovo náměští. The evening was rounded off with a few equally unofficial Pilsners at U vystřeleného oka (At the shot-out eye).

The next day, on May 16th, Hans-Peter and I followed Švejk's trail from Hradčany to Karlín where he was to happily to serve Feldkurat Otto Katz. Walking through the tourist masses in Malá strana and Staré město was stressful, but from Dlouhá třída onwards it was quiet and pleasant. Ferdinandová kasárna in Karlín, where Katz served, is now derelict, located just beyond the railway viaduct. We also had a beer in a pub right under the railway, a place where we as tourists felt rather unwelcome. I'm sure though that Švejk would have been understanding and explained the štamgasty that some tourists can't help being tourists.

In the evening we met Prague-based Norwegian journalist Terje Englund at Restaurace Bruska in Dejvice. He is the author of two books: The Czechs in a Nutshell and Spionen som kom for sent (The spy who arrived late). The former is a guide for foreigners to Czech culture, in the ironic tone Czechs are familiar with. He told us that feedback from Czech readers was good but that they didn't like his comments about Czech food. Englund is a vegetarian! When I got my own meal his terse comment was: “That's disgusting!” The second book is about Czechoslovak espionage activities in Norway during the cold war.

The next day, May 17th, I didn't celebrate the Norwegian national holiday as would have been right and proper. Instead I said goodbye to Hans-Peter and then walked back to Florenc to take photos of some placed we'd missed the day before. I got a quite a few stares when I photographed the former pub U marianského obrazu which only can be described as ready for demolition. By now Švejk was firmly in place at Otto Katz's flat in Karlín and was ready for new adventures.

Lipnice nad Sázavou

2010-05-14T23:00:00.068+02:00

Apart from Prague, Lipnice nad Sázavou is the place which is most closely associated with Jaroslav Hašek. The author moved here on August 25th 1921 and lived here until his death on January 3rd 1923. He is buried here, he wrote three of the four parts of Švejk here., and one of only two Jaroslav Hašek museums in the world is located here. In the early 60's a bust of him was erected below the castle, and in 2008 a full size statue was revealed to great celebrations.

Most important of all, the pub where he wrote most of Švejk still exists and is owned and run by his descendants. They bought the derelict property, restored it, and in 2002 re-opened it as a pension and restaurant. It is still thriving and offers comfortable rooms, and a smoke-free restaurant which offers solid Czech food and classic Czech beers, all at very reasonable prices. For Haškologs and Švejkologs Česká Koruna is the inner sanctum. It has also hosted two international conferences on Jaroslav Hašek and a number of other events. Lipnice will for me mark the symbolic finish to this journey, come October 2010.

The immediate reason for this May 2010 trip to Lipnice was a surprise visit from Germany. Some time in spring I noticed that my Švejk-pages got a huge number of hits from Ewe-Tel Gmbh, Bremerhaven. Some time later I received an e-mail from Dr Hans-Peter Laqueur who informed me that he had done basically the same thing as I have done over the last 18 months: collecting and analysing the facts that Jaroslav Hašek used to create the backdrop for his novel.

I have concentrated on the people and the places mentioned in the novel, Hans-Peter's project is even more ambitious; it contains sections on literature references, the reception of the novel, and a chronological analysis. Whereas I have worked with the Internet firmly in mind, Hans-Peter Laqueur started the work before that age, more than 30 years ago. It has - at very varying speed - been going on ever since. I dare to claim that outside the Czech Republic, no such thorough research into the realia behind Švejk exist at all. It would be a great asset for the many German-reading admirers of Švejk if it was ever published.

The day after Hans-Peter's arrival on May 12th, Richard Hašek drove us to Lipnice where we spent 24 hours in grey weather, but in such a place the weather is of minor importance. On May 1st a new beer was introduced to the the portfolio at Česká Koruna, Haškův ležák, a non-pasteurised lager brewed specifically for this pub. It is made by Pivovar Bernard in nearby Humpolec. It was a monumental occasion. The beer went down very well indeed.

Later in the evening two K.u.K Soldaten from Olomouc arrived in full uniform and appeared in the door through the tones of "Za Cisáře pana". One of them was Michal Giacintov, the other hid under a secret name. They had travelled 200 km from Olomouc to meet a curiosity from the North, so I had every reason to feel honoured. Later four Hungarians arrived, led by distinguished Bohemist Lászlo Pólgár. There will be more on him in the next letter.

The evening progressed wonderfully: by the authors statue salutes and toasts were given in Jaroslav Hašek's honour and I'm sure the Hašek would have taken part from his spot in the corner of the cemetery if he could. In the morning Richard drove his two guests back to Prague and our friends from Olomouc took the other direction.

The Good Soldier Švejk and the July Crisis

2010-05-11T20:20:00.002+02:00

The first six chapters of Švejk take place during the July Crisis of 1914. It starts with Mrs Müllerová's famous remark: Tak nám zabili Ferdinanda, carries on to U kalicha where Švejk gets arrested by police detective Bretschneider. Then our hero spends time at Police Headquarters in Bartolomějská ulice, goes through a friendly interrogation at the Regional Criminal Court, spends happy days at the lunatic asylum Kateřinka, has a short visit at Salmovská Police Station and is again sent to Police Headquarters before he is finally released/thrown out with the words "May the Devil take you". He then returns home via U kalicha. By now Austria-Hungary has declared war on Serbia and we are entering August 1914.

Ninety-six years later, on May 10th 2010 I official started my own journey in the footsteps of Jaroslav Hašek and his hero Josef Švejk. The obvious place was U kalicha where Švejk and landlord Palivec were arrested by police detective Bretschneider after both had made indiscreet remarks about the recent assassination of Franz Ferdinand and even about His Imperial Highness Franz Joseph I himself. Palivec's famous and ill-conceived remark about the flies having defiled a portrait of the Emperor was to provide disastrous. The remark has gone down as a classic in Czech popular culture.

Today U Kalicha (At the Chalice) is very different from what it was in 1914, but the location at Na Bojiští is the same. In the 1950's the pub was expanded and revamped and was already during communist rule a major tourist attraction. After the property was handed back to the former owners in the early 1990's, the restaurant has been owned by brothers Pavel and Tomáš Töpfer and continued the tradition of catering for tourists. The prices are about twice the normal Czech average so the place has few regulars. Still the food is Czech through and through and so is the Pilsner beer, of course. It is believed to be co-incidental that Hašek choose this place is the starting scene for Švejk's adventures. He was never a regular here (although he was in numerous other taverns).

Around mid-day on this day in May 2010 the tourist groups hadn't arrived and at U kalicha there were two guests. One was a Norwegian tourist nosing around; the other guest was Prague born and bred Richard Hašek. He was having a conversation with landlord Pavel Töpfer, not to be confused with Palivec. The two had immediately recognised each other. Mr Töpfer sat down at our table and engaged in an amiable conversation. From what I understood the two gentlemen discussed business models, as they both to varying degrees make a living in the shadow of the famous author. I was greeted with a menu in Norwegian, and it had surprisingly few errors. Many menus in my home country are far worse, even in "native" Norwegian places.

Pavel Töpfer showed us a book he is busy writing. Here he describes (among other things) people he has met during his forty years in the restaurant business. The book has pictures of notabilities ranging from Václav Havel to Nursultan Nazarbayev. Virtually every visitor of note has been here, so the commercialisation of Švejk is very successful in this particular place. Not that this is a bad thing in itself; it does after all propagate the fame of the novel across the world. There is a surprise in the book: Pavel Töpfer describes Norwegian and Swedish guests as noblesse! This is a reputation they don't have elsewhere. The explanation might be that Scandinavian visitors in this place more often than not are pensioner or at least grown up people, not the standard Scandinavian piss-head abroad. According to Mr Töpfer the worst are the Poles who buy one beer and share it between four, and Germans who always insist on paying separately, creating a logistic nightmare when they arrive in bus groups.

The day progressed splendidly. Richard and I walked round some of the places associated with his grandfather. We visited U kotva across the former county regional court, and had innumerable Pilsner beers at the classic U Jelínků. After this I had to throw in the towel, fast resembling a Scandinavian piss-head abroad. The next morning Richard dutifully reported that he had arrived home at 2.30 AM and had put the washing on! Czech beer is not only excellent, it doesn't give you a hangover either. The next day I was therefore fully fit to retrace the first six chapters of Švejk and take some more pictures.