Medievalness

It took us way too long to leave Prague. When we finally found the car dealership in the maze that is downtown, we were greeted with the information that Eurocar's Cesky Budovice office would be closed when we were supposed to drop the car off. Their solution was to tack on the round trip bus fare for a guy from the Prague office to go down to pick up the car. We indignantly let them know that that was unacceptable, and after some tense moments, they were able to get the agreement of one of their Cesky Budovice agents to meet us at the train station to pick the car up. Problem solved, but it took us over an hour to get that agreement.

The hostel people were happy to see us go, as we'd stayed past checkout time because of the car issues, but we were once again free and mobile! Just like in Croatia and Slovenia, the Czech country-side was surpisingly well-signed and easy to navigate. There was quite a bit of traffic leaving Prague, but once we cleared their beltway, we were off.

We stopped first for lunch in the town of Tabor, which is highly recommended by Lonely Planet as a typical but still undiscovered Bohemian town. I guess that all of the other tourists there had likely read the same blurb. There wasn't too much to see. One of the cool things though was the Tabor Treasure, which was a stash of centuries-old coins that had been discovered in a medieval house which had unfortunately burned down. There was a big mystery as to who and why would have hidden so much money in the wall, and historians were still trying to figure out the story surrounding them. We had been at Tabor for just the afternoon, and had spent too much time there.

After an unimpressive lunch, and headed down to Cesky Krumlov, which is where they filmed the movie The Illusionist , and I had heard several people including my parents rave about. Cesky Krumlov is very cool. It is a city built centuries ago, that with the exception of running pipes and electricty through, hasn't changed at all. You really feel like you're stepping back in time. All the other tourists there must also think the same.

Unfortunately, we'd gotten to Cesky Krumlov a bit late, and had to choose what we wanted to see with the few hours of daylight that we had left. We chose the castle, which had bears in the moat. The bears actually looked very docile, and reminded me of big dogs, perhaps St. Bernards.

We walked around the castle and the beautiful gardens behind them. It must have been nice to have lived there. When it started to get dark, and we found the tourist office which set us up in a small pension downtown. We were ecstatic that we'd gotten a room, as the town seemed pretty full. We presented ourselves to the pension-owner, and were given directions on how to drive the car from the outside parking lot to the pension. Unfortunately as we learned, driving through a medieval city with small windy roads meant for horses and large disorienting squares is not easy. We didn't have a map either and it was already dark, so we couldn't figure out where to go. Dave stayed in the car, and I went to the pension on foot to convince the owner to jump in the car to guide us. Amazingly, the owner didn't want to come, even though it would take him all of 5 minutes to walk back with me and be driven back! He ended up charging us the equivalent of $3 for his knowledge and time - unbelievable!

We set out for the most exotic-sounding restaurant which featured gypsy food. It was pretty packed but we got the last table. A lot of the dishes sounded normal, and just had the word "gypsy" in front of them. The meal was interesting, but maybe my palate is not prepared for the gypsy flavors. I wonder if this is really "typical" food for the Roma people. I don't know any, so unfortunately I can't ask.

We wandered outside until it got cold. It was extremely cool walking around this city that didn't have anything outwardly modern. There was even a ghost tour going around with people dressed in medieval period dress. It really felt like we'd fallen into a time warp, and the long shadows that the buildings cast made you feel like anything could jump out of any corner... Spooky in a good Halloween-style way.

Dave and I settled on the Horror Bar, which looked like a cave with a doorway in it. There were macabre decorations around, and a jazz band playing. It was cool, but we left after a bit to pass out back at the pension.

We left the pension after breakfast, quickly, before the staff tried to extort some more money from us, and drove to Cesky Budovice - the hometown of the excellent Czech beer Budvar. We walked around town for a bit. There really wasn't that much to see.... It was probably a town like Cesky Krumlov, around which a modern industrial-looking city had been built. We couldn't make it to the Budvar brewery unfortunately due to time constraints.

We met up with the Eurocar man outside the train station, bought our tickets to Munich, and boarded the train to Western Europe.


For another bit of write-up of these events, check out Dave's blog: Finally made it to Western Europe...and am dealing with the crash of my travel blog


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The events in this blog occurred in the period when TravelBlog was down. Luckily, I kept a personal journal off which I am basing this write-up. Although writing in the moment is preferable, I think that the photos, people we met, and story are worth sharing.
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