Bears, Rum & Rafting.

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Good Morning Cesky Bears

There is nothing like wanting to avoid the crowds to make you jump out of bed early in the morning on your holidays. My first priority (after caffeine that is) was to climb Cesky Tower for the morning view of the UNESCO Heritage listed town. The town was already basked in early morning sun and in the pit of my tummy, I knew today was going to be a wonderful carefree day. The Cesky Castle bears thought so too as they were padding around their humble moat from one side, under the bridge and out to the other. Only a handful of voyeurs were hanging about and they didn’t mind the intrusion.

A little French boy had a moment of stage fright coming down the wooden steps of the tower and promptly sat down on his padded bottom, lips quivering and welling tears. He was shaking his head determinedly, holding out his chubby arms to his dad to pick him up and carry him. Dad, equally determined had his hand just out of reach. The rest of us watch the stalemate with amusement. By us I meant the heavily pregnant woman, presumably his mother, a grandfatherly figure (whose beard was like a sheep) and me. Lisa was somewhere. Eventually, the boy sensing that he had to overcome his fear by himself, stood up, reached for his dad’s hand and took a tentative step. Realising he could turn this to his own advantage, took a lunge at his dad’s body gambling that his reflexes would automatically catch him. His gamble paid off and he was carried down by his much surprised father.

The view of Cesky Krumlov is every single beautiful cliché you can think of. While cliché, not at all disappointing and our early morning rise made the entire experience a lot less chaotic. Although, I can see why Caroline thought the Vlatva was a circuit (technically making it a moat). If you walk around the tower to follow the river, it does seem to merge on itself. The Vlatva hairpins around the Old Town so neatly, that the close packed buildings obscure where it flows out to the suburban areas. Concrete apartment buildings stood beyond the Old Town with its communist inspired grey starkly contrasted against the emerald countryside.
“Fancy seeing you here,” Keith said from somewhere behind us.
“What are you guys up to today?” Wendy asked, all smiles.
“Maybe see the Castle, wander a bit, window shopping and then rafting, I guess,” Lisa replied, looking at me for any objection.
“Have you got your ticket for the English speaking tour?” Keith patted his ticket in his shirt pocket efficiently. “Its filling up,” he said pointedly. So we said goodbye and headed off to get some tickets. Not surprisingly we bumped into Margo with the same inclination to see the living abode of the Royal Krumlovs (who then died out, giving it to the Rosenbergs, who lost it to the Schwarzenbergs and well you get the drift). We squeezed into the same group as Wendy and Keith. Caroline who was only minutes behind us was in a group after ours. “I hope you’re not on a Czech tour.”
“Hhmm, I did say English,” Caroline said not entirely confidently.

The English group was about nine in total, the Czech group was about twenty-five. Our guide, Ana, was young with a heavy Czech accented English and wild orange hair. Her make-up equally as bright, matched her stripy a-line skirt and lime green tank top. She walked with practiced confidence in hot-pink strappy wedges through all the rooms. In each particular room she would begin her well-rehearsed speech with ‘Now I will tell you about…’ and point to each respective piece in a well choreographed robotic dance. For that reason, I thought she was fantastic. It was like having an audio of ‘A Very Short History of Czech Royalty’ read by a Czech person, no spontaneity at all. So far in every room a bear skin rug could be seen beady eyed and flattened staring at you from the floor.
“Are they all bears from the moat?” I asked Ana.
“Well, not every bear that dies is in the castle,” Ana replied, misinterpreting my question. “But that bear is a she-bear and she died last year. From a heart attack,” she continued. No tales of ill-mannered bonehead soldiers falling into the moat after a drunken night out only to be mauled by bears and thus later shot as they had the taste for human flesh ala Altreskja’s take. The she-bear had just spent too many years slovenly sitting in her tiny moat waiting for chunks of meat to be thrown at her and paid the price of captivity in the form of a blocked coronary vessel. Now she was a deflated remnant of her former self spread out like she had staged dived and no one caught her.

“Sis is a picture of the Summer Castle. You can visit the Summer Castle but I hope that you don’t,” Ana says solemnly. “It is now a Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Centre and Mental Institution,” She grins when we all laugh at her joke. After every room, she herds us out and then locks the door which is then opened by the next group coming through. It seems terribly inefficient but it certainly gave you privacy when you were in the room. I guess it also makes sure no one lingers behind to steal a bit of Krumlov Royalty.

A Bit of Photography
After the tour we all went our separate ways and Lisa and I found ourselves in the Castle Garden. The Prague day trippers had arrived and while not terribly congested, it was time to go find a little quiet corner for ourselves in the form of the Garden Café. At first it was so deserted in the courtyard we thought it was not open till a girl popped her head from the balcony and told us to take a seat and she’ll be right with us. There is no such thing as a snack in the Czech Republic and when you order a toasted ham and cheese sandwich, you don’t get one, you get two.

After dipping into the world of Jan Saldić, a photographer who captured interesting people in interesting positions or places in various states of undress for quarter of an hour, Lisa and I went our separate ways before meeting up for rafting. I strode into alleyways, circled on myself, looked at all the scraffetti in all of its stages of restoration and ducked into shops of little interest other than they were little. A lot of disabled people were around today. No matter where I turned a carer was struggling to push a wheelchair along cobblestone paths but the delight was palpable in the air. I was plodding up a rather steep street when I turned the corner and was stunned by about eight or ten simultaneous flashes. When my vision came back I was standing in front of a group of Japanese tourists who looked just as bewildered as I was. There are now ten copies of Cesky Tower, quaint alley and miscellaneous Vietnamese girl standing with her face contorted in surprise.

General: 1, Girls: Nothing, Dan: Mistakenly Abandoned
The boys were raring to go while the girls were a bit more, say, realistic about our abilities? We were directed to some life jackets and I spied the smallest one and put it on. Not that I thought it was necessary, if we fell out, we can just walk through the water to climb back into the raft. We only had one weir to go through and the chances of tipping out in a raft was none.
“Who’s the captain?” Dan asked us and the girls all turned to me. “How did I know that as going to happen?” He handed me a map and pointed where the finish for us was and a bottle of rum. Free rum with every rafting trip, now that is an offer you can’t refuse. As a strategic measure, I gave it back to the boys for ‘safe keeping’ but if they decide to drink both bottles and begin paddling upstream, I wouldn’t mind.

We paddled in circles for a little while before I managed to work out the currents, steering and balancing everyone’s paddling strength. The boys had good old laugh at us before coasting down the weir. Then it was our turn.
“What do we do?!” Lisa asked who was sitting at the front.
“Lean forward, do nothing and enjoy it,” I said as we slipped down. The boys had stopped to watch us come down. I like to say it was out of concern in the event we tipped but I had bets on the amusement factor if we happened to disembark involuntarily from our raft.

No such thing happened. There is nothing like a bit of friendly competition on the waters to bond people. Or the need to produce maximum saturation with your paddle to the opposition. It was my fault that we were left sopping wet and in danger of having to bail water out of the raft with cupped hands. I forgot to teach the girls how to effectively splash the boys. All boys have this inbuilt skill of creating large quantities of water displacement with a flick of a wrist. I am convinced that it is a trait only found on the Y chromosome. Girls can dance, boys can saturate an entire raft of girls with one paddle swish.

Sometime later we called a truce and tried the rum. It was rancid. Bucket of rusty nails would have gone down better.. No wonder they gave it away for free. I wrinkled my nose in disgust and left the boys and the General to enjoy the rum. It was by no means Huckleberry Finn like coasting down the Vlatva but it was close. There was more than ample time to watch the trees, rustic riverside houses, other paddlers and campers float on by. Well confident with their abilities and the lead they had on us, Mark and Daniel decided it was time for a swim. Stripping off the life jackets they wrestled each other and with all the pre-requisite manly grunts and tousle they then plopped gently into the water. The water was beautifully cool and I happily dangled my feet into it. My paddle hit the riverbed and I toyed briefly with the idea of standing up and trying a bit of punting. For some strange reason, I didn’t think the other girls would welcome my spontaneity. The boys spotting some girls ahead, stood up and waded waist deep over to their raft; where they then promptly but unnecessarily secured their life jacket back on.

The girls and I had a giggle at the boys until we realised that the girls ahead were topless. We looked at each other, then at the boys, then back at the topless sirens. Sure enough, the boys had their eyes trained on the wayward breasts while the general kept his eyes firmly within the finish line ahead (I believe marriage does that to you, or at least army discipline). The sirens having realised they were inadvertently swimming in the path of numerous paddlers, quickly tried to make it back to shore to their swimmers draped over a tree branch. We seized the opportunity to make a break for the finish line. Which we possibly could have succeeded if it weren’t for the General’s one track mind to beat us with or without the help of his crew’s wandering gaze.

Needless to say we lost, but in style. With my momentary lapse in concentration we managed to pull into the riverbank backwards. Well, I do need to practise my parallel parking.

Embarrassingly, we left Dan behind. Caroline and the boys went in one van back to rafting head quarters while he went behind the long grass to change out of his wet swimming trunks (While there was a disproportionate amount of water being bandy about, we did manage to get the boys a bit damp and Keith’s nylon 80’s style trunks were unsalvageably split to the waist band). The rafting guide ushered the remainder of us into the next van. Sitting down waiting for the driver, I vaguely wondered if we should actually alert Dan to our whereabouts.
“Surely he will work it out,” Lisa theorised.
“He’ll just get the next one,” Wendy reassured. I went along with their logical arguments till I could see Dan talking rather rapidly to the other rafting guide from the window of our speeding van. My instincts thought whoops.

Whoops it was. Dan only just made it back in time for our group dinner and with a calm expression and professional smile he explained in his still sodden sandals how we ditched him at the river only for him to have to negotiate in broken Czech to the guide for a lift back to meet us for dinner. Oh the guilt waves.

However nothing that couldn’t be solved with platters of meat (much to Mark’s grumbling stomach’s delight) and a table full of cocktails. The boys (by now, you would realise when I say boys, I mean Mark and Daniel) were perusing the drinks menu with enthusiastic confusion. They being under age in America for alcohol consumption were open for suggestions for drinks. Needless to say, the General had a few good words and opinions on what the boys should drink. “Laiphroig,” he said. “Best whisky. When you buy a bottle you get a peat bog with it in Scotland,” he informed sagely tipping his glass towards Mark. Mark took one sip and if his eyes could pop out of his head like a Looney Tunes cartoon character, they would have. Steam would have plumed out of his ears, and face turning red like a temperature gauge. Everyone else’s drink went down with less fanfare (minus peat bog inheritance) and the General’s stories became much wilder with each sip of Laiphroig. By the end of each story the boys were marching to the beat of his drum. Wendy rolled her eye’s in practised admonishment with each line he delivered. “Keith, your drunk,” she finally said in a firm tone and he stopped with the wild stories, even though you could tell he wasn’t nearly all that drunk and desperate to tell another tale . If you have been married that long, brought up a family and are still able to walk happily hand in hand along the cobblestone streets of Cesky Krumlov, you can forgive a little drunken story telling. For all the beauty and uniqueness of Cesky Krumlov, the rarest sight is a married couple still very much in love and not afraid to show it.

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Photos

She-Bear
Enjoying the morning sun.

In or Out
'Should we go to the otherside now? Or save that for the afternoon?'

Town Church
Views from Cesky Tower

Mini Tower
Views from Cesky Tower

Vlatva From Above
It could be a circuit...

House in Symmetry
Moving on from communist grey.

Fresco Sundial
In Castle grounds.

Scrafetti
What is real, what is painted - lots to look at while we wait for Ana.

From the Royal Rooms
The Krumlovs had it good.

Cesky Castle Gardens
Every Castle Garden must have a statue with arching water.

Cesky Castle Gardens
Blue Skies, green trimmed hedges, no people... my kind of place

Haunting Blacksmiths
Don't ever forget a promise - reminders of a legend.

Saint of Fire?
Funny Patron to have in an apartment courtyard, but when the protective saint wasn't here, the place had burnt down during a drunken night's shenanigens.

Table of Cocktails
Couldn't decide on which drink, so we chose them all.