I love being Bohemian. I love the food, songs, stories and everything of my culture that my family handed down to me. Yet when I say I’m Bohemian, most people automatically picture a gypsy style dressed woman with wild flamboyant taste. That is not me in any way, shape or form. I am a typical American school teacher with lots of great memories and experiences of what it is to grow up in a country where my family was allowed to be different from the next family. This is my Bohemian story:

My grandparents ( Rudolph and Anna) were of Slovak, and Serbian descent. My grandmother came from a Yugoslavian family and my grandfather from a Czechoslovakian family. They were both first generation born American’s, growing up in a small neighborhood of Chicago. The community within Chicago they lived in consisted of almost only Yugoslavian, and Czechoslovakian families. As these families became a part of the melting pot of America they formed a community that they called a Bohemian neighborhood. In that wonderful, little neighborhood they married and had two beautiful daughters, my mom Francyne and my Aunt Marie. My mom and aunt grew up in the same Bohemian neighborhood of Chicago. They were bilingual kids coming from a Slovak home and attending English schools. They held the beliefs of their Slovak household close to their hearts, went to Bohemian grocery stores, and indulged in everything that was their cultural roots, while warming embracing  being Americans. They were and are very proud to call themselves both Americans and Bohemians.

As I try to carry on their traditions and hand them down to my wonderful children, I hope I will be able to make family proud of the fact that I love what they have taught me and am proud to call myself a Bohemian.

So the Bohemian part of my blog will hold my family recipes, traditions and memories that I hold so very dear. I hope you will enjoy reading about the part of me that is proud to be a Bohemian.

My grandfather, Mama, and Aunt, Chicago 1947.