When the lightest touch wakes you up…A Nap In the Únětice Village

The wonderful and inspiring Czech photographer  Jan Pohribny invited me to his village where he lives with his wife, a beautiful woman and amazing artist and photographer too, and their son who enjoys playing the guitar and can cook a wonderful meal! I didn’t join his photography students for a project but when I saw the photos through others, I knew I had to make a trip on my own. I did and I am grateful.

However, getting there was a bit tricky. The bus that was supposed to be a simple ride from Prague to the last stop, which was the village, terminated the route two stops prior to the last stop. It was just that bus! I had gotten on the anomaly bus! The 12:00 p.m. bus doesn’t go all the way to the last stop which is the village. I had no airtime on my Prague simcard and no cash to purchase any and there was no ATM or restaurant in site given it was a very residential area, part of some other village.

I didn’t worry because the worst case scenario was for me to wait until a “normally” scheduled bus came after 45 minutes and once at Jan’s village I would try to call him. Village has to mean “small”, I decided, so I would somehow find him once there. Meanwhile, I walked into this car dealership near the bus stop and asked if anyone spoke English. And one man replied, “Very small English.” Good enough for me. I told him I was sorry that I would not be buying a car that day but instead just needed to call this number since I had no airtime.

I left Jan a message that I was near and well either he could come to pick me now or I will get on the next bus and he can pick me up from the last stop in 45 minutes.

I didn’t know what to else to do….except…relax…

20 minutes later Jan came looking for me and said, “I knew you would be taking a nap somewhere around here. They didn’t know where you had gone after you left the car dealer ship.”

I was amazed to learn that an important historical period and culture, Únětice, is named after this small village just outside Prague. It´s due to the excavations carried out in 1879 by local doctor and amateur archeologist Čeněk Rýzner on Holy Vrch (bare hill) that overlooks Únětice. It was here that he uncovered 56 graves dating from the late bronze age (roughly from 200 to 1500 BC) . In later years, far bigger and more important sites were discovered in the near locality and elsewhere in Central Bohemia. You can read more here.

We walked down the road from Jan’s home to the green fields. There I saw a very colorful cemetary. And a very trendy tree!

While walking Jan pointed that the plant on the ground was a healing plant of some sort. He didn’t know the name.

The poppy fields in Unetice are not home to the same kind of poppy in Afghanistan, the hub of opium trade.

This is Jan taking a photo. “For any real photographer there is always something new no matter how many times you have seen something before,” he said.

This is looking down at the village from the top of a hill that we walked up. There was a beautiful creek to explore and much more but I started getting sleepy. So Jan told me how to get back once we got back down the open field. As I have mentioned before, I am a light sleeper when taking naps in parks, but perhaps because this was such a small village, or perhaps this part of the earth really had some unique magnetism pulsating from the core, but I was knocked out!

I was in such a deep slumber that I didn’t even notice this woman’s dog sitting next to me for at least 5 minutes! She came running after him because she was worried he was chewing my shoes which I had taken off to nap! I was startled because I didn’t hear this hyper noisy dog at all. I took their photo and went back to sleepy.

And then an hour later was woken up by the softest, slightest touch. Mr. Lady!

I sat there too happy that I couldn’t trace a single dream—best kind of deep sleep—and noted the little guy on my finger. I was overcome by the contrast: the vast green field, the deep hills, the trees, the noisy dog, earthlings, cars and then this little ‘bug’.

There really is enough space for all of us if we can just stop stepping on each other.

Reminded me the end exchange between a mountain and a squirrel in Emerson’s poem “The Mountain and the Squirrel” which Iqbal translated in Farsi and Urdu as well.

“If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.”

A sleep so deep that only a little lady bug could wake me up…

Related posts:

So there I was minding my own nap business…when I heard something move… How to take a nap in a park… Photos: House of Czech photographer Jan Pohribny