The unconventional passenger (Czech Republic)

Jana’s mother, who lives some 25km away from Hutĕ, Vláda and Jana’s tiny village of eight households, is 80 but is up with the sun and off into the woods to forage — for mainly blueberries and mushrooms at this time of the year — on her 50cc moped.

On one of my visits, Vláda said one day, “Fancy walking down to the junction to meet the bus from Prague [120km away]?”  The junction is 1.3km’s walk away, down a road that might see half a dozen cars a day if it was lucky, and past some ponds and houses — all with their own vegetable plots and flower beds, the Czechs being keen garden tenders.  At the junction stands a cherry tree barely taller than I, yet bears more fruit than I can eat in one waiting.

The bus approached, slowed down and came to a halt.  We walked up to the passenger door as it opened.  I was expecting a visitor.  Instead, there was a basket of blueberries sitting on the floor right by the driver, which he then proceeded to hand over to Vláda.  Since then, Vláda would call that junction The Blueberry Junction as a point of reference for non-Czech-speaking me.

Apparently this has been the arrangement for the last ten years since Vláda and Jana moved full time to Hutĕ, a village of six terraced houses and one big house that were home to the workers and the manager of the glass factory nearby.   That was more than 100 years ago now, back in the days of the 19th century, before the glass industry in the area went into decline around 1850s–1900s when they ran out of trees to burn for their furnaces, Vláda said. 

Jana’s mother would fill her baskets by 8am, then flag down the long-distance bus from Prague and persuade the driver to take them — often filled with blueberries or mushrooms, but sometimes potatoes or apples from her own garden, and even occasionally complete with pastry ready-made (by her) for Jana to pop straight into the oven to make an apple pie.  

Bags are charged additionally on long-distance buses here in the Czech Republic, but this is the first time I’ve heard of a basket of fruit travelling alone — regularly.

(Czech Republic, 2011)