What about the Czech republic?

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Once upon a time I saw a show on TV about a beautiful place in the south of Czech Republic – Česky Krumlov. I've been dreaming about visiting this place for a long time.

And in June 2018, we decided to make a trip. And why not with our vw van called Oliva to Czech Republic!

Friday noon we took our daughter Ema from the school and drove past Maribor, Linz and in the afternoon we arrived to Czech republic. At the border there are still visible remnants of the shops, both on one, as well as on the other side. This reminded me of the times long ago when we frequently went across the border to Italy, Austria... for coffee, jeans,...

Right behind the border we got lost! The navigation took us on some beautiful country road, where it was very nice, specially the nature and it was so peaceful...no cars, no people…certainly not the place we were headed to. Although we are a bit old school types of people and not close to modern technology, we realized that in this case Google maps would be the perfect solution.

After a few kilometers we entered the small picturesque town Rožmberk by Vltava, with the beautiful castle on the small hill.

And all those beautiful houses, the Vltava, which leads through the place,... Beautiful. The first impressions of the Czech Republic have exceeded all my expectations. We walked along the river, thinking about having something to eat at the inn, but since we didn't know where we were going to sleep tonight, we decided to move on.

In the Czech Republic, camper stop is allowed everywhere, unless expressly prohibited. However, on the other hand, their camps are still from the 50s, which means that they are adapted to the mass socialist (but by no means any harm). In the campsites, they are mostly pre-arranged wooden houses/barracks that you can hire. The bathroom is common. Sometimes you can also put a tent, but there are few places for trailers or campers.

Let me also add that the camps are very simple, but in principle clean (toilets), it is often necessary to pay extra for the shower. Prices are affordable, we have paid 15 EUR (2 adults, children and dog + van + shower) on average.

After a short walk in Rožmberk we drove to Cesky Krumlov, and first we found a campsite that's a little out of town. We thought it was perfectly OK, but since the restaurant didn't work, we drove back to town. We parked right in front of the wall and in the middle of the parking lot there was a great restaurant. We've been so hungry we went right inside and ordered our well-earned dinner.

The restaurant has proven to be really very good. We recognize that Czech food is excellent, their dumplings, sauces, cranberries, meat.... We haven't eaten so good in a long time. We, while traveling, live very modest and mostly cook for ourselves or we go to some cheap meals. Here we had 3 main dishes and each of us a non-alcoholic beverage, and the price we paid was EUR 22 – and this is the tourist place. We decided not to cook spaghetti in the Czech Republic, but we will eat outside. Great! For us this is luxury.

We're saw the possibility to spend the night in this park, and they also had toilets, but I thought it was just too much noise. That's why we were heading back to the camp. Somewhere on the way, I say to Rok, to turn left, because I've seen one motorhome before, and as far as I know, there's another parking lot, and maybe we should just turn around and sleep there. Ok. And we pass, first through the forest, then climb to the plateau, from where it was a wonderful view of the surrounding hills.

We ask the parking guy if we can sleep and how much would it cost to park all night. He just showed us the price: 30. I thought first that this was 30 EUR, and it seemed a lot, but then Rok reminded me these are Czech crowns and that this is 1.30 EUR. How much?? We have never ever slept that cheap. Let's try it. The parking is a single uphill place, but we found at the bottom a few places that were on the even ground and a super tree next to it (at night sometimes a tree can be very handy if you don't have a bathroom).



Through the window we observed how people kept coming from the left end of the wall. I was very interested in what was behind those walls.



And that's why we went for an evening walk. But when we actually came around the corner, we found out that we were going to sleep behind the walls of the castle gardens and that these gardens are beautiful and right next to the main castle of Česki Krumlov and there was us a beautiful view of the city below. Everything was illuminated by the lights and it all seemed like in a fairytale.



We were all very tired and fell asleep son after the walk. Ema and Rok slept perfectly, but not me. I had nightmares all night, how they were trying to rob us, attack... local gangs who would get drunk from some kind of party. Sleeping in a parking lot is obviously not for me.

Festival, Castle Hluboka and empty Czech Budejovice

In the morning, we moved the van closer to the old part of the city in order to finally enter this beautiful place that I've dreamed of so long. But at the city gate they wanted to charge us some entrance fee, about 250 ČSK (EUR 15) per person, because there was a festival in place. We thought it was a bit too expensive, and we didn't go in the city. Later I was so sorry. But at the same time, it's a great excuse to return to the city again.

We bought something for breakfast and drove on. Our next goal was the castle of Hluboka over Vltava. A beautiful white mansion. Because our van is small, we're lucky and we were able to park right under the hill where the road leads to the castle. There were only a few steps to walk to the beautiful entrance of the Castle gardens. And soon, the entire castle was in front of us. We had the intention of going inside, but we found out that we should wait just over 2 hours to get in. So we decided to stay outside and enjoy the beautiful view.

The next stop was Czech Budejovice. It was almost 1pm, and the city was empty as if it was extinct. Somewhere in the middle, in one of the streets, someone was playing some harmonica and singing loudly, but other than us and 7 tourists, there was nothing. We walk around the city, stopped on wonderful actors with music and slowly become hungry. And we couldn’t find a proper restaurant. Since being hungry the atmosphere between us was a bit intense. It was necessary to find something very fast.

Then we see the Igy Shopping center and in it the Beer room Potrefena Husa. Excellent choice. They have fabulous food and an excellent Staropramen 11 beer. Severe! Highly recommended. This is a chain of beer reastuarant from Staropramen.

Jindrichov Hradec

After a great meal and a tour around some shops, we drove up to Jindrichov Hradec.

A beautiful town with old buildings, castles and friendly streets. We even saw a few people there. In the city, the parking clocks are still like those from 40 years ago. Everything is clean, tidy and very nice.



It was planned to find a place to sleep around there somewhere, but since there was still enough time, the will to drive as well, we hit it forward to the Telč. Unesco-protected village, full of small, colorful houses, but also deserted. No one anywhere. It's true the weather was a little cloudy, but still.... It wasn't pleasant. We drank coffee and went on. Now we really needed a place to stay.



oe drive on the country roads because there was a bypass, and we sawt beautiful places, forests and fields. Everything is so beautifully arranged, clean that you feel you are in Austria. My performances on the Czech Republic were quite different. It's a beautiful country.

We get to the place of Trebič, where there is supposed to be the closest camp. The Garmin leads us to the bridge, where the bridge is under construction. And we can't go anywhere and we saw the camp right behind this bridge. And in the vicinity we saw a man, our age, and we asked him if he speaks English – no, German –just a bit. Okay, let's try it. In the end, we spoke Czechian, and I was talking Slovenian with a Czech accent, and we agreed perfectly. He told us about the bypass, and when we got to camp in 10 minutes, he stood there, because he wanted to make sure we found it (he walked across that bridge). So we have once again experienced another kindness of the locals, which is very common in these places.

The camp was wonderful. In the middle of the city, but at the same time in the woods and the perfect peace. There were 10 wooden houses in the camp, each one for a single family, and we stood on the meadow in the middle of camp. We decide to buy tokens for the shower, because we all needed to wash (last night when we slept in the parking lot, we only washed the teeth). The owner knew a few places in Slovenia and said that the campt is often visited by Slovenians.

We slept peacefully and I liked it a lot better than in the parking lot.

We're not going home yet!

Next morning after breakfast, we drove to Brno. On the way there, we passed through the town of Rosica, when all of a sudden, in a mirror, I see a police car, with lights on. Has he been driving behind us for a long time? We stopped and in some strange English, the policemen explained that a few kilometers ago we ran into a STOP sign. The situation was like this: the intersection was little in the uphill and with our Oliva it is difficult to drive into the uphill from the clean start, so Rok thoroughly looked left and right and because there was no one anywhere (since there's no one on Saturdays , you can imagine how the Czech Republic is empty on Sundays!!) he turned right.

The cops forgot all about English and started talking in Czech. Penalty: 200 ČZK. I told Rok just to keep it quiet that this is only EUR 8 and to pay and go. The cops started apologizing that they were driving behind us and had a camera in the car. And since the camera filmed us, they had to charge us with something, and that was the lowest sentence. That's so sweet! With a smile we said goodbye and we went our separate ways.

We get to Brno on the highway and found the parking lot in the center. Brno surprised us, as it was full of people, the shops were open and the atmosphere was wonderful. While Rok was practicing his knowledge of Czech with the lady who is thrilled how our dog Tora brings the ball, me and Ema discovered the Tiger store. It's Scandinavian and it's full of little nonsense.

We walked around the center, we drank coffee, walked to the church and ate lunch in the Potrefena husa again. It was just past the noon, and we were thinking of maybe going back home. We were already full of impressions, and Bratislava seemed out of the context. OK, let's go home. On the way from Brno, we were stopped again by the cops, because we've been changing lines at the crossroads, but I explained them that we are tourists and that the Garmin has taken us wrong. They just smiled and let us out.



Rok felt friendly and stopped in the Ikea, where we bought something quickly, in between, one old lady gently colliles in the car (no harm) and we headed in the direction of Ljubljana.

But all of a sudden, it was crushing my stomach, that if we're going home now, we're going to regret this one day, and that there is a question of when we are really going to go to Bratislava. Rok just replaced the lane and turned toward Bratislava.

Bratislava is expensive

Late in afternoon we arrived to Bratislava and went to the camp Zlaty Pesky. This one was a very interesting camp. Years ago, there were probably a lot of people around there... because there were so many wooden bungalows, and there were a bunch of failed buildings, all of which are around the beautiful lake, and a beach and even water slides. And now the whole thing worked out pretty deserted, and we even saw a rat was.

Toilets were not very clean, so we did the hygiene thing very quickly.

We slept right next to the fence with a busy road on the other side. But the noise was so steady, we all had a nice sleep.

In the morning, we paid and went to the center of Bratislava. The advantage of our van is also that we can park in a city garage in the very center of the city. We walked around the city and found that it remained in the times of socialism and that progress is not as visible as in the Czech. However, the city is very nice and well known for the monuments that are all over the city and show the daily people doing daily stuff.

We had coffee in the sun, bought a new pencil case for Ema in the paper store and drove home to Ljubljana.

Reflection

The Czech Republic is one of the most beautiful countries I have visited. It is very neat, peaceful and especially with excellent food. It is also affordable, we ate out every day, which is otherwise on our travels rarely. Campsites are somewhat outdated but still very pleasant at the same time. They take you back a little bit in time.

The landscape is beautiful, the fields arranged, and the roads are very good.

We're going to go to the Czech Republic again. We're going to see the rest of the country. The plan is ready, only weather and time must play along.

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