Cesky Krumlov

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We’re now at the end of our 3 days/ 4 nights in Cesky Krumlov where we’ve stayed in a new self-contained apartment about 1 km from the centre of the old town. We’ve been quite comfortable although Terry has cursed the low, sloping ceiling of the bedroom on a mezzanine floor each night.

Cesky Krumlov is another UNESCO World Heritage town and so on our first day here we spent the day visiting the major historic site in town – the castle complex and its tower. It turns out that we’re visiting a bit too early in the season as quite a few attractions are still closed for the off-season. Thus we were unable to visit the castle itself but we did visit the Castle museum and tower. The museum had displays of family life for the “well-to-do” in the 19^th-early 20^th centuries. From what I can gather the castle has been owned by 3 families whose names keep cropping up in various Czech historical sites. The first of these families was the Rosenberg family and under them Cesky Krumlov flourished and many of the elaborate homes were built. The second family were the Eggenbergs and finally the Schwarzenberg family became the estate owners in the early 18^th Century. The museum contained displays ranging from various forms of armour, early scientific instruments, fancy dinner sets and glass ware through to a display of chamber pots and various personal grooming tools. Later on we climbed the 162 stairs to end up on the very windy tower viewing platform - we’re certainly getting our value out of Terry’s knee replacement surgery as he’s managing to walk all day and climb towers/hills without pain. The views over Cesky Krumlov were pretty spectacular although it was good to get back down again out of the cold wind. We warmed up by walking up the hill to spend time enjoying the baroque Castle Gardens. At this stage they are mainly sculptural skeletons of large trees, the green leaves of tulips and other bulbs are starting to appear while purple pansies are trying to survive the still freezing nights. Later that day it started raining and so we escaped back to home before venturing out again later in the day for dinner.

We had thought that our second day was to be a write-off due to weather but breakfast sunshine made us decide to take off for a drive in the South Bohemian countryside towards the Austrian border. The iPad GPS app is now working well and we had a very pleasant day without becoming geographically embarrassed. We followed the Vltava River to Rožmberk nad Vltavou where we stopped to visit the castle – closed but very pleasant views over the town – and have yet another mediocre Czech coffee. From there we continued south to Vyšší Brod where we stopped to visit the Cistercian monastery – also closed – and had a walk around the town before continuing on our way to a small town called Frymburk and then home to Cesky K. By the time we left Vyšší Brod there were some pretty dark clouds around and it started to sleet as we drove along the hilltops towards Frymburk. Between Vyšší Brod and Frymburk we drove through fir forests where they were harvesting wood in places. There was still snow on the ground in patches and in places there were glimpses of mountains that I assume were in Austria, ski fields and small picturesque villages.

We’ve had a quiet day today. We strolled around the old town a little more, purchased some mementoes and drank more mediocre coffee. As you can gather we’re not particularly impressed by Czech coffee. The lattes here seem to suffer from both a lack of actual coffee content and to add insult to injury they are made with UHT milk. This afternoon we found a coffee shop advertising Italian coffee and so purchased a double-shot espresso and some fancy Czech cake – it’ll be interesting to see if we sleep tonight.

There are quite a few things that have surprised/impressed us so far about the Czech Republic.

We’ve been surprised by the number of East-Asian tourists travelling through the country, both Korean and Japanese. If it wasn’t for these tourists there would not have been many tourists any CK. Our Prague host, Sabina, told us that a Korean film-maker made a film set in the country and since then there have been lots of Koreans visiting. There are some young Asian tourists travelling independently but most are in moderate-sized groups following a tour leader carrying a flag and listening to a commentary on individual headsets. It’s Saturday today and so there has been an increase in the number of German-speaking tourists – we assume that they've come for the weekend from either Austria or Germany.

I've been surprised by Vietnamese shop-keepers. We were told that during the 1960s-70s North Vietnamese refugees were given guest worker status in Czechoslovakia to escape the war in Vietnam. Since the end of communism they've been allowed to own their own businesses and the little mini-market that we've used here in CK is run by a man of Vietnamese origin, as was our first bar in Prague.

We’ve been impressed by the language skills of the staff working in restaurants and tourist attractions. It’s not unusual to observe one of these people talk to a tourist in Italian, then to the next tourist in German and finally speak to us in English. I do wish that I had at least one other language.

We’ve also been impressed and surprised by the investment in solar energy. On the train from Prague the other day we passed a large solar farm and if it’s the one that we think it generates almost 30MW of power and covers an area of 60 hectares. We also saw a couple of smaller installations yesterday on our drive through the countryside.

Tomorrow we head for our next “home” in the village of Valtice. Valtice is south of Brno in South Moravia and close to the Austrian border – according to Google Maps it’s about a 4 hour drive from Cesky Krumlov.

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Photos

Baroque gardens at Cesky Krumlov castle
Not much in flower yet but will be gorgeous in 6 weeks or so.

The Vltava River south of Cesky Krumlov
Lots of fishing along here I imagine.

Views towards the south (Austria) near Frymburk.
There are wind power generators on the distant hills.

Detail of the Plague Column in Cesky Krumlov
The column was erected for the memory of the plague epidemic that struck the town during 1680-1682.