Burning Witches

On April 30th, the last day of April, “paleni carodejnic”, or “burning of the witches” takes place. Apparently, bonfires are lit across the Czech Republic and old brooms are thrown out and burned to celebrate the end of a long winter. May 1st, or May Day, is a national holiday, when spring is celebrated.

This morning while Eloise, Lillian, and I went out to Dvoka Sarka with our friends Ann-marie and Lydia for a nice walk in the outdoors, our “roommates” Kelley and Jessica did some spring cleaning. It was amazing to walk out of the gloriously warm day into a beautiful, CLEAN apartment. Jessica was the one to tell me about the “burning of the witches” tradition and we all agreed that spring cleaning and blue skies made us feel like we had done our own “burning” of our long winter days. We made it through our first winter in Prague, what locals say has been the longest and coldest in quite some time.

Emily