I headed out to Czech Village for the annual Houby Days celebration Friday. It was my first exposure to the festival, which is in its 30th year. My mission was to ask people about their family's heritage.
Some people needed an explanation about what I was asking. A couple people dialed up their parents on a cell phone. One guy said he was Czech and Bohemian. After talking to his mother, he changed his answer to English.
I was surprised by the variety of the answers. Call me ignorant, but I guess I assumed most of the people celebrating the Czech heritage would have roots in Czechoslovakia. Some did, but certainly not all.
There was no check-in process on C Street, and no guards stopping the non-Czechs. That was a good thing, because I'm German, with a sliver of Irish, and I had a job to do.
My grandmother is one-eighth Irish, so does that make me one-sixteenth Irish? One-thirty-second? Either way, it's reflective of my amount of luck lately.
Although I'm mostly German, I am by no means a fan of sauerkraut. I say this having never tried it (that I remember), but that's just fine with me. I'd say my food preferences follow my dash of Irish heritage more than my German ancestry.
But, I am a proponent fairness and all that good stuff. So, if you must, call me Germish.