Surprise in Eisenstadt

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

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

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. The author spent a month 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 to find that not even one of the coffe houses, 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" (1917) but then he lived  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 in-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's description corresponds to the cafe-cum-brothel Zum Weissen Rössel. 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 still recognisable). 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 used war calendars, Otto's Encyclopedia and maps when he wrote his masterpiece. But in the case of Bruck and der Leitha and Királyhida he doesn't seem to have used either, and even the best of brains may miss a few details when trying to recall them from the top of his head six years later.

One day I was given a private tour of Brucker Lager by Wolfgang Gruberr and camp commander Truppenübungsplatzkommandant Oberst Reinhold. It was very interesting although very few of the buildings from 1915 exist any more. The wooden barracks 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. Those 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: Mackensen, 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 have already raised my misgivings about both films for different reasons. The third and 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 place his verdict:

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

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 12 June, 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

The k.u.k Dobbeladler

Jaroslav Hašek was transferred to Brucker Lager in Királyhida on 1 June 1915 and left for the front with his 12th March Battalion on 30 June. 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 5 June 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

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...

Mariánská kasárna, now derelict and up for sale

The episode about using the Krankenbuch to escape from the hospital for entertainment in town may also be authentic. The author spent nearly three months in the city, as Einjährigfreiwilliger (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 Mariánská kasárna on 17 February 1915 to join the Ersatzbataillon of the 91st infantry regiment. Here he enlisted in the reserve officer school (often called one-year volunteer school). He was however soon expelled for some disciplinary reason. He spent some time in hospital due to rheumatism and hardly took part in military training. The Ersatzbataillon  was transferred to Királyhida 1 June the same year. This was part of measures taken by the authorities in the spring of 1915 to move Czech replacement units away from their recruitment area.

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 44% German and 56% 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

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

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...