What I Miss About South Moravia: People, Dialect and Ordinary Things

When you grow up somewhere, you don’t see most of what surrounds you as anything special. It’s simply there.

People who greet you, familiar streets, gardens, fruit that happened to ripen somewhere nearby, the way of speaking that everyone around you uses.

You don’t think about it.

It was only after I moved from South Moravia to Jihlava, in the Vysočina region, that I slowly began to realize how many ordinary things I had actually taken for granted. Some I started to miss almost right away. Others only after a while.

And perhaps what surprised me most is that they aren’t big things at all. They’re more like little details.

South Moravia, the way I carry it inside me.

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People and everyday chatter

When I think back on South Moravia, I remember the people most of all. They always seemed open, talkative, often smiling and kind-hearted. Of course, I’m not saying everyone was like that. That would hardly be possible. But I was used to a certain way of communicating, which I sometimes miss today.

People in Moravia knew how to laugh a lot, even when their work was hard or their lives weren’t always easy. They could always find at least a moment for fun, to sit together and have a laugh. 🙂

And it’s exactly this cheerfulness and the ability to make a nice moment out of an ordinary day that I always liked about them. Maybe also because I’m a bit like that myself. I love to laugh, and I love people who are simply good to be around and with whom you can laugh from the heart. 🙂

You’d go into a shop, run into the same saleswoman a few times, exchange a few words, and gradually it was no longer just about paying and leaving. After a while, you actually knew each other a little.

In villages, of course, this had a small downside too. Everybody liked to know everything about everybody. Who went where, who arrived, who was with whom, what’s going on at whose place and what’s new. Sometimes it was almost too much, but today I mostly just smile about it. It belonged to the place too. 🙂

There was a peculiar mix of closeness, curiosity and the fact that people simply knew about each other.

Gardens, fruit and the feeling that something is always growing around you

Another thing I miss is the land. The soil. Gardens. That feeling that something is always growing around you.

We ourselves didn’t always have a garden. Still, I was used to the fact that when someone had a surplus of fruit and didn’t know what to do with it, they would give it to a neighbor or a colleague at work. Back then it seemed completely normal. So it would never have occurred to me that one day I’d miss a bowl of freshly picked blackberries. Or homegrown grapes.

And yet it’s precisely the grapes that I sometimes really miss today. I would never have believed it before. 🙂

After moving to Jihlava, I also didn’t know for quite a while where to find certain things. Where to buy black currants, gooseberries or other fruit. Of course, today I know where to go. But it took me a while to find my new places.

And maybe all of this is where my present joy in growing things on my loggia comes from. Even though it’s only a few square meters, I love the feeling of planting something, watching it start to grow, and then picking my own tomato, pepper or a few herb leaves. There’s something deeply familiar about it.

Vineyards and grapes that I sometimes really miss today.

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Some flavors simply stay with you

I connect South Moravia with flavors too. And I honestly can’t say whether the dishes I taste elsewhere are really different, or whether it’s just me who perceives them differently. Every region has its own customs, its own recipes and its own way of preparing certain things. But now and then I taste something and think that it’s just not quite right. It tastes different. Not exactly bad. Just different.

And on the other hand, sometimes a familiar taste or scent is enough and you’re suddenly back years ago in your thoughts.

It’s strange what memory keeps inside. Sometimes we can’t remember the exact date or what we were wearing back then, but we remember a scent or a taste perfectly.

The warm wind

One of the things I truly felt after moving was the weather. In Vysočina it seems colder overall. And I probably feel it most in the wind. In South Moravia I remember days when the wind blew, but it was warm. You’d step outside and not feel that chill in it.

Here I sometimes feel that even on a nice day, the wind still finds a way to remind me that we’re in Vysočina. 🙂

Maybe it’s a complete trifle. But it’s exactly such little things that you start noticing only when you move somewhere else. I would never have thought that one day I’d remember a warm wind.

And then our speech

I miss that too. Malú, velkú, takovú… (in standard Czech “malou, velkou, takovou”, meaning small, big, such). Words and endings that seemed completely normal to me my whole life. Until I moved somewhere where people simply don’t talk like that. And today, when I overhear a familiar dialect somewhere, I almost always perk up. Sometimes a single sentence is really enough. And I immediately feel I somehow know that person, even though of course I don’t know them at all. It’s just that the speech is familiar. And, in a strange way, close.

Village parties, dances and rock gigs

When I recall the time I lived in South Moravia, it also includes various village parties, dances, concerts and rock gigs. Back then, there was nothing special about it. You simply knew that something would be happening somewhere, and you went dancing. It was a normal part of life. And that is perhaps one of the things you only start to realize in hindsight.

Painted wine cellars and chapels – a piece of Moravian tradition.

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Returning to familiar places

I still love going back to South Moravia. And the older I get, the more I feel that I’m not returning only to a certain place. I’m also returning to a part of my life. All it takes is driving down a familiar street and suddenly I remember something I haven’t thought about for years. I see a house and the people come back to me. I walk past some place and suddenly recall what once happened there. Sometimes it’s a complete trifle. One sentence. One image. Somebody’s laughter. And suddenly everything is much closer again, for a moment.

Maybe that’s exactly why I love going back so much. Not only because of how South Moravia looks. But because of what I keep there in my memories.

A field with poppies and a village on the horizon.

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Home can be in more than one place

None of this means that I don’t feel good in Jihlava. Quite the opposite. I’ve gradually found my places here, my routes and my habits.

I like Jihlava and the nature around it. I like that we have so many things within reach. And I’ve long known where to find or buy things, or where to go. It just took a while. Probably like everything that is supposed to start feeling familiar.

And maybe it was thanks to the move that I understood that you can love the place where you live now and still miss some things from the place you come from. One doesn’t rule out the other.

I carry South Moravia inside me still. In my speech. In my memories. In flavors. In the way I look at gardens and everything that grows in them. In the fact that a few words with a stranger make me happy. And maybe also in the fact that I sometimes miss that warm wind, which I hardly noticed back then.

And every time I go back, I have a strange feeling. Some things have changed. Others have stayed the same. And something of all that has stayed in me, too.

Today my home is elsewhere, but I will never forget where I come from. South Moravia will always be a part of my life, my memories and of me. And I will always be happy to go back. 🙂