Part 20 - Terror of the Trdlo - This is the End

By the time they had spent two months traveling, among other cultural lore, Zdenka had taught Beata, Sieglinde, and Silvernose the equivalents of the Schwabisch months November and Dezember in Krajanština: Listopad and Prosinec – “Leaf-fall” and “Slaughter of the Pigs”. 

They entered the outskirts of Vodníkov on the ninth day of Slaughter-of-the-Pigs Moon as a light snowfall dusted the city.  

Adapted from Prague-in-Snow by TripNotice.com CC by SA 2.0 

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

They were pleasantly surprised to see many of the streets newly fitted with cobblestone pavements, and fine finished or almost-finished half-timber and stone buildings replacing the old buildings which had burnt down or collapsed in the rioting and violence of the previous summer.

These ought to alleviate by a little the crowding and housing shortage of Vodníkov, thought Silvernose to himself as he simultaneously judged the facades aesthetically worthy.

As if she could hear his unspoken thoughts, Zdenka hazarded to herself a counter-idea: Surely the 

Krajan people are not benefitting from these new houses – the Schwab nobility and merchants are finding ways to displace even more Krajany from our own neighborhood.

Zdenka and her friends would find out later that she was right.  The Archbishop and Baron Rudiger von Possenreisser had employed an army of lawyers to buy up burnt-down or dilapidated Krajan-filled flats and replace them with newly-constructed Schwab-owned accommodations for Schwab tourists and gentrifying colonists.

The promised giant grain mill and bakery complex had been built on the Moldava with the Archbishop’s funding, which did alleviate some of Vodnikov’s chronic unemployment, but hardly any of Vodnikov’s chronic hunger.  The eagle’s share of the output of the massive bakeries was devoted not to mass quantities of simple, nutritious bread loaves for the common people, but instead to grilling a sugar-smothered spit cake that had become wildly popular among Schwab tourists.

That lightly-snowy day, Zdenka was appalled to read the hundreds of Schwabisch-language signs hanging over the newly-cobblestone streets touting “TRDLO: The Most Traditional Vodnikov Treat.”  

“This is not traditional to Vodnikov!” she spat.  “This is from Skalica!  This has NOTHING to do with my native neighborhood! It is isn’t even Krajan!”

There were trdla filled with cinnamon, trdla filled with licorice, trdla soaked in wormwood, trdla drenched in spiced lard, trdla stuffed with sauerkraut - whatever piqued the jaded palates of the Schwab tourists and parted them from their silver.  Many of the signs advertising them were emblazoned with cute cartoon animals: hollow, hairy, tube-shaped laughing hedgehogs.

Zdenka felt profoundly sick.    

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THE END

If after all that you still want to know how to prepare trdlo/trdelnik, Janek Rubeš shows how to make them here.

If you missed sections of the 20-part Terror of the Trdlo saga and want to catch up, click below:

Part I - The Adventure Begins (But Not Really the Terror, Yet)
Part II - Zdenka vs. The Green-Eyed Monster (Jealousy - That Is)
Part III - Nun: The Wiser
Part IV - The Hermitess
Part V - Silvernose Arrives Minus His Weird Girlfriend
Part VI - She's Gone Feral
Part VII - A Little Traveling Music
Part VIII - Horror at the Hermitage
Part IX - The Rutting Moon
Part X - Herbal Interlude
Part XI - "It's Blood"
Part XII - Empty, Disturbed, Dead
Part 13 - Hut Stinking of Musk
Part 14 - The Howling, Squealing Horde
Part 15 - Something Wicked This Way Comes...UP
Part 16 - A Heaving Sea of Beasts
Part 17 - Hymns Above the Battle's Din
Part 18- Wreathed in Blue Fire 
Part 19 - Not Exactly a Witch

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p.s. Which, in your opinion, is the ugliest-sounding term for this spit cake:
       trdlo (Czech and Slovak)
  or Prügelkrapfen (Austrian German)?

I can't put trdelník in this competition, because the ending makes it cuter.