On the way from Hluboká Castle to Český Krumlov, we stopped in the village Holašovice. This place was added in Czech UNESCO World Heritage List in 1998, and although I wasn't expecting anything special, we decided to stop there: it only added 20 minutes to our route.
The village turned out to be pleasant, but, as expected, far from Venice. We enjoyed looking at the identical houses in the "rural baroque" style and were already heading back to the car when we suddenly saw an open courtyard with a sign in Czech, "Rural Court Museum.".
Apparently, one of the locals decided to make a little money by showing us their village life. We love museums like this, and the price for the two of us was less than ten dollars, so why not stop in?.
We met an elderly man—I'd put him at most 70. As it turned out later, the "man" was named Wroclaw and was 82 years old.
We were the only visitors there, and he took us around the museum. It was a large barn, perfectly arranged with all sorts of peasant tools. What struck me was that there was a special device for every task—butter and cream separators, a wooden washing machine, a regular harrow and a harrow for dry soil, about fifteen planes of various widths and two jointers, an axe with a cleverly curved handle for hewing logs from the side without the risk of cutting your knee, and so on.
I was so interested in it that I even forgot to take photos, which I now deeply regret.
All this was accompanied by a story in very good Russian - he even recited to us by heart the beginning of Gorky's "The Stormy Petrel" - he said that he really liked this poem at school.
Besides Russian, he also speaks English (a little worse, he says) and German. He lives alone with a dog and a horse and does everything himself. Incidentally, he has a full set of teeth. So, if you want to stay active for a long time, buy a country house in the Czech Republic!
He told me about his family—it turns out they've lived in this place for about 500 years. In the 16th century, almost the entire village died out in the plague epidemic, and his family was among the six Czech families that survived (Wikipedia, by the way, speaks (Or, in another way, that only two residents survived.) After the plague, German-speaking colonists from Austria came to the empty lands. In 1945, they all left, I think against their will.
It is possible that Wroclaw is the last of his family to live here: he has two children, but they live in the city and, as far as I understand, have no plans to move.
The museum was very interesting and left a huge impression on me; it was the highlight of our visit to the village. If you're passing by, stop in—you won't regret it!
