Fairytale Hrusice

Do you like fairytale characters such as water sprites and all sorts of ghosts?  Do you also like Josef Lada’s pictures of animals that can walk on two legs and some even talk?  If you do, you just have to visit Hrusice. When you get to the most important fairytale places, you will find information signs with extracts from books by Josef Lada. These texts and the beautiful pictures you will see are connected to each of these places.

You will visit a place where a house in which Josef Lada was born on the 17th December 1887 once stood. This is also where the famous black tomcat Mikeš lived with his human and animal friends.
Are you curious what a haunted place might look like? Na Šmejkalce is a place where a ghost called Mulisák and his son Bubáček scared people. They are both characters from Lada’s book Bubáci a hastrmani (Ghosts and Mermaids).

Do you remember the story where the billy goat Bobeš was learning to walk upright and carry a cup? When Mikeš asked him what he was up to, he said he was learning to serve beer. Why would he do that? It’s because he saw a beer coaster with a picture of a billy goat carrying a glass of beer and our dear old Bobeš decided to have the same photograph taken. Except that he would swap the original writing that read “Velkopopovický Kozel” (Velké Popovice Billy Goat) for “Hrusický kozel” (Hrusice billy goat). Well, this Bobeš lived with uncle Malinovský in the local shepherd’s hut.

Water sprites are one of the best known characters that appear in pictures by Josef Lada. Many of them lived in the Hubačov lake. There was a water sprite called Brčál, who liked to visit the former Hubačov mill for a chat and kept spirits in cups in his underwater home. But don’t be afraid, he only kept the sort of spirits for his occasional drink.

You will also see the well-known Jedlička’s pond where all children from Hrusice and the tomcat Mikeš had so much fun every winter. So what are you waiting for? Come and visit the village where all of your favourite characters lived and quite possibly live even today. Perhaps you will be lucky to catch a glimpse of some of them.