We live 100 meters from the city hall in Zizkov (Prague 3) and Tuesday was Masopust in Czech which means goodbye meat – they last day before lent.

In Zizkov this is celebrated with people dressing up and walking in parade from Jiho z Podebrad to Zizkov city hall where the city provides free food and beer. So we had to check it out.

As in other Christian celebrations, Masopust has elements of much older traditions involving fertility rites and celebrating the coming of spring. In Masopust these elements take form in the masks and costumes traditionally worn by revelers, representing various mythical characters and creatures. Like the guys in this video with wipes and strange face paint and costumes:

Later on the parade made it down to the town hall and the party got an extra lift from the free beers and food that plenty of teenagers and hobos also seemed to enjoy. Here is a cheeky Czech guy who offers Femi a drink of vodka and then later asks him for money:

Because of the cold weather (sigh!) we only stayed for one beer and by then we had seen a lot of the gimmicks. A funny thing was the odd mix of people with old women, students, young school children, expats and tourists – everyone with a big smile on their face.

Wednesday offered more entertainment in our neighborhood as Helge, a Danish friend, had invited us out to Akropolis. An Nigerian artist calledTony Allen was playing afrobeat with his band.

It turned out to be a fantastic concert and Akropolis has great atmosphere much in the same way as Vega in Copenhagen. After the concert we all went to a bar to celebrate Helges birthday, more people joined and the good times continued. We were about 8 or 10 Danish speaking people so it almost felt like being home.

In 10 hours Im on the plane to Stansted. Ann and I are spending a weekend together in Cambridge