Traditional Venison Feast at Karlštejn 2026
(a little retrospect by Jan Kučera)
One of the traditional and very popular activities of the Czech Handel Society is the annual joint visit to the venison feast at the the restaurant and guesthouse “Pod Dračí skálou” in Karlštejn. This year the event took place on Saturday, January 10th.
The meeting point for participants who were going to travel from Prague by train was at the Prague-Smíchov railway station. The author of these lines was going to arrive there (similarly to last year) with a carefully prepared poster “haendel.cz”, in order to properly supervise the orderly departure of the participants. Unfortunately, he overslept and so arrived at the place later, together with Libor Hofman and with the chairman Jiří Janoušek in the chairman's car. The poster was then used as a decoration for the festive table.
It had snowed heavily not long before the trip, so the journey was somewhat difficult, except for the last section, which was carefully cleared. As a reward, some participants were treated to a view of the snow-covered Karlštejn.
A total of 10 of us gathered this year (9 people and 1 dog), in alphabetical order by last name: Libor Hofman, Jiří Janoušek, Jan Kučera, Vlasta Michková, Oto Michek, Stanislav Mohorita, Jana Hejdová, Petr Tylínek, Michal Typl and Zuzanka.
We were treated to great food and drink. We remembered the recently deceased. We discussed what to do next. There was also the first phase of a completely informal debate about whether (and how) to help organize further concerts by the American ensemble Vertical Voices led by Michal Šust, who, after their success two years ago, offered the Czech Handel Society a sequel.
Finally, we gathered for a group photo and then drove to our homes.