The Mushroom Cult

In addition to Sophie's successful start of school, there are other promising signs that we won't be reduced to pathetic lonely alcoholism by mid November, even though easy access to high quality beer makes that a tempting, if not very ambitious, goal...

Bayard has gone out for beers a couple of times with an American grad music student and has befriended the German dad of one of Sophie's classmates. Betsy is getting to know her department mates, and we've gone out for beers with her department head.

Our best friends thus far has been a Czech "Fulbrighter" family that lived in Vermont for a year and want their 8-year-old daughter to keep up her English. We've exchanged play dates with them, they've had us over for dinner, they lent us bikes so we could bike in the hills around Brno, and best of all, they took us mushrooming.

A word about mushrooming: The Czechs are crazy for mushrooming and take pride in being able to identify their mushrooms, distinguish old from new, poisonous from edible, and knowing special secret places that other mushroomers have yet to find. In fact, the Mushroom Cult is so intense, Czechs don't buy mushrooms; one must pick one's own. (Think: more or less, the OPPOSITE of how you feel about cleaning toilets)

One more thing about the Mushroom Cult: it is closely related to the Chata (cottage) Cult. Czechs love to go mushrooming, but it is even better if you go from your cottage. Lots of Czechs have them, little rustic cottages, usually grouped into little cottage communities. During the communist times, one's chata was an escape from work and the state's constant monitoring (which also explains their love of cars, I think). And, of course, access to the opportunity to own a chata was dished out along political party lines.

Our descent into the inner circles of the Mushroom and Chata Cults, began with a train ride out of Brno up into the Moravian highlands (it looks like the country around here only...well, higher up). They met us at the railway stop (not a station: no platform, no ticket seller, no beer...just a stop...more about the Beer Cult in a later posting). We walked down the train track embankment into a forest where we followed a stream until we walked out into a small field (collectively owned by a nearby village), and then into their little cottage community (only four cottages, small by Czech standards).

Their cottage was rustic but full of get-away-from-it-all character: no running water, wood-heated stove, etc. The neighboring chatas were owned by retired skilled workers (from a nearby steel factory) who must have earned the right to their chatas by reaching the right production quotas or whatever back in the bad ol' days.

Our mushrooming expedition started with all the right equipment: baskets and knives. We walked up into the forest and immediately got a flavor for the skill, experience, and cultural training required. Even by the age of eight, their daughter would, from 30 or 40 feet away, look at a mushroom and say: "ah...it is a babicka...edible but too old and wormy." Meanwhile we were still trying to locate the mushroom!

By the end of being led through the forest by our mycological hosts for two hours, we had two loaded baskets but I could only identify one species of mushroom (poisonous...not a bad place to start). We returned to the chata where our hostess (who had returned earlier) treated us to fungal feast, of soup, fried mushrooms, and dumplings (knedliky) with mushroom gravy.

To properly prepare these wild mushrooms, our hostess had cooked them down into a...goop? The proper thing to do is keep some of those stewed mushrooms on hand in the frig and freezer so you can get your fungal kicks whenever the mushroom mood strikes you. Our hostess made an AMAZING soup with parsnips, potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms.

Two last things about this mushroom thing:
1) it is not compatible with alcohol-drinking (but that doesn't include beer, go figure)

2) it seems to go hand-in-hand with warm hospitality and great friendship.

We are so grateful to landed so well, amongst such nice people, and with such delicious mushrooms.