Tramping

Tramping is a Czech and Slovak pastime which has been referred to by a number of interviewees in the course of the NCSML’s oral history project. The activity itself consists of spending time in nature and sleeping rough. Particular types of music and clothing (very often influenced by American, Wild West imagery) accompany the pastime.


Peter Vodenka at the 'Corral OK,' South Bohemia, 1980s

In his interview with Recording Voices & Documenting Memories, Peter Vodenka explains what tramping meant to him growing up in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s:



Bob Rychlik also enjoyed tramping in Czechoslovakia in his youth:



Trempové or tramps may be, as Bob Rychlik says, ‘without leaders,’ but they are often loosely organized into osady (tramping colonies). The head of each osada is known as the ‘sheriff.’

Several tramping groups were established by Czechs and Slovaks who emigrated, amongst the most prominent of which was Chicago’s Dálava, headed by Sheriff Eda Vedral:


Eda Vedral in a '35 years of Dálava' t-shirt, Chicago

If you are interested in finding out more about tramping on both sides of the Atlantic then Jan Šikl’s film See you in Denver is an excellent, subtitled resource.