Cesky Budejovice
We went to Frankfurt for Torch's party on Saturday, and left for the Czech Republic on Sunday afternoon. Just past the border, the autobahn turns into a hilly, winding, two lane road packed with strip clubs and roadside markets - you can definitely tell which country has the stronger economy. Originally, we were planning on staying in Pilsen the first night, but the odor of burning coal became exponentially worse the closer we got and we decided to go on to Cesky Budejovice, the home of the real Budweiser. This turned out not to have been the best decision - the roads marked as highways on the map turned out to be two-lane country roads on which even 60 kph was pushing it. The thick patchy fog (or perhaps coal smoke) didn't help much, either.
At any rate, we pulled into Cesky Budejovice around ten or eleven that night, and wandered around until we found one of the hotels listed in Let's Go. We went for a bit of a wander and managed to find a restaurant that was still serving food, some of it even vegetarian. More importantly, they were serving forty cent half liters of excellent beer. Next day, we woke up and headed out to the brewery. We initially went to the wrong entrance, but the security guards let us call the front office, and we ended up glomming onto a British tour group. We decided against trying to weasel some of their free lunch, jumped back into the car, and headed to the next town.
Cesky Krumlov
Cesky Krumlov is about 16 km southwest of Cesky Budejovice, and consists mainly of a castle on one hill, a church on another, and a town crammed into the valley between the two. Evidently, Cesky Krumlov's castle is the biggest in all of Bohemia except for Prague's. As we drove into town, the fog that had been around ever since we arrived in the country lifted. The town was absolutely gorgeous (and even had a vegetarian restaurant), and we spent a good few hours wandering around. As we walked up the main entrance to the castle, we noticed that all the people out walking their dogs were picking them up right before a particular gate, at which point the dogs would go absolutely crazy, barking and straining to get out of their owners' arms. Moments later, I saw my first bear pit; there were a couple of brown bears in a pen about eight meters down. I suppose it's morally suspect to keep the bears like that, but they did have a couple of beer kegs to play with. Some friends of mine would be happy to have just one.
Kutna Hora
After Cesky Krumlov, we drove to Kutna Hora, a tiny town about 60 km east of Prague. We arrived around 7 in the evening, and the town was already totally deserted. We wandered around for a bit, and found the old town hall and cathedral. They looked very impressive, lit up against the backdrop of the hills. We finally broke down and went into the Irish bar, which seemed to be the only one with any noise at all coming out of it. We turned out to be the only people in the bar (the noise was just from the stereo), and started talking to the bartender. He was a local kid who desperately wanted to get out of town and spent his time practicing darts.
Next day, we walked down to the main attraction of the town, the bone church. For some reason, they've put the bones of some 40,000 people in the cellar of one of the local churches. There's about six vaults with three meter high stacks of skulls and femurs, a coat of arms sculpted of bones, a chandelier that uses every bone in the human body, and strings of skulls festooned about like popcorn on a Christmas tree. Very unsettling.
Prague
After walking back into town, we drove into Prague and went for a walk down Wenceslas Square, into the old town, and over the Charles Bridge. We checked at an apartment where Mark has stayed in the past, but the old lady wasn't home, so we just checked in to a youth hostel. I don't know if it's a standard feature of Czech beds, but both of ours had holes in them about halfway down, perfectly positioned to suck your butt in and drag the rest of your body to the floor. My back wasn't too pleased with this arrangement, but oddly enough, I had no problem going to sleep at night. I suppose 3 liters of beer a night will do that.
The next day, we walked down to the castle on the old side of town. The guide book is in storage, so I'm not sure what it's called. The national cemetery is housed there, so I took pictures of Dvorak and Janacek's graves for Dad. After hunting for the metro station for a half hour only to realize we were standing right in front of it, we promptly got on the subway and went out of town. Then we got off and got onto the subway going in the right direction, and went to the other, bigger castle. It was also very nice, but I was starting to go into monument overload, so we didn't stay very long.
Mark did, however, point out a woman who had very nice eyes and a nice smile. She also seemed to be an exceptionally happy person; she was sort of bouncing and skipping her way down the stairs past all the teenage German tourists. Anyway, she seemed to be going in more or less the same direction as we, so we started joking that she was stalking us. So, remembering my Hardy Boys Detective Handbook anti-surveillance techniques, we crossed the street right before walking over the bridge. Sure enough, by the time we got to the end of the bridge, she had also crossed over to our side. We became concerned.
As it turns out, she just wanted directions to the old Jewish cemetery.
Suffering from nervous exhaustion, we decided to call it quits for the day. Well, after dinner and another three liters of beer, at any rate. The ride home the next morning was fairly uneventful, with the exception of the accident in which we almost participated. Some idiotic Czech in an Audi going the other way decided that a blind curve would be the perfect opportunity to pass a truck and a bus. Someday, I'll develop a hypothesis explaining why drivers in some countries are so much more moronic than those in others. At any rate, we made it safely to the border store, where Torch stocked up on beer. Right after leaving the parking lot, we were flagged over to the side of the road by the police. We immediately took the seasoned traveler's approach to dealing with police in a potentially scary situation: Mark, who speaks German, answered "nein" to every question, while I, who speaks a little Dutch but not much else, just shook my head a lot and looked dumb. We later figured out that the policeman must have been looking for information about the near-accident up the road. By that time, though, we were well over the border and Authobahning our way home.
Click on the image to view the big picture.
More pictures to come after Christmas...
