19th July – 29th July 2024
The Czech Republic, Czechia for short (apparently pronounced ‘Check-keeya’, not ‘Check-chia’, which I learnt late in the game), was historically called Bohemia, an infinitely cooler name all together. This was to be our trip’s last Slavic country with the last unintelligable language and the last to not use the euro. Here one euro is worth about 30 Czech Koruna,meaning more managable numbers than the Hungarian forints. It has been a strange experience to travel through these countries where the languages are all so alien. Road signs, information leaflets, menus, grocery labels all mean nothing in passing and it must be what being illiterate feels like. We have relied heavily on the camera function of Google Translate performing its magic.
We vacated our Bratislavan campsite before the onslaught of the AC/DC fans and headed north, entering the Czech Republic from the south. Unusually for us we had no real idea where we were headed. We had a few days in hand before our next arranged rendezvous and fancied ourselves staying somewhere quiet in the countryside, ideally with somewhere to swim/dunk/paddleboard. We stopped for a lunch break at a motorway service station, made a sandwich and studied our ‘font-of-all-knowledge’ camping app, Park4Night, to see what we could find. We are now in peak summer holiday time, so this fly-by-the-seat-of-our pants technique of campsite organising will likely be less successful for the next month and a half. BUT, this time we were lucky and a phone call secured us a spot in a camp ground that, on paper, seemed to meet all our criteria. Now we had a destination- Vitlek Camping- a rural idyll on the outskirts of the lesser known small village of Opatov, somewhere in southern Czechia. Not to be found in many tourist publications. The campsite was owned and run by a Dutch couple (who spoke perfect English like all their countrymen) who had bought it 20 years ago and been beating it into shape since then. The grass was lush, there were lots of mature shade trees, the site allocation relaxed and free-form, the facilities excellent and it was on the shore of a beautiful little lake that was perfect for all of the aforementioned activities of swimming/dunking/paddleboarding.
Our pitch was in a perfect spot, only meters from the lake and although there were plenty of other campers in a chaotic melée of tents, caravans and campers, the whole place had an air of tranquil contentment. We would be good here. For the next three days we did very little that didn’t involve a paddleboard. We didn’t even make it down to the village to have a look around. The weather continued to be great, in that sweet spot of 26-28 deg C and we filled our time with board inflation, ongoing board repairs, board paddling and board loafing. The lake was rustic but perfectly clean and warm enough to swim in and we did plenty of that. Lazy days, but we could have been anywhere. It was soon time to drag ourselves away and get to seeing some of Czechia.
Next stop, Ceske Budojovice. This is a city of about 97,000 folk, located some 120km south of Prague and the largest city in this region, South Bohemia. It’s main claim to fame is that it is the home of The Budweiser Budvar brewery, makers of the original Budwiser. This is not to be confused with Anheuser-Busch’s far inferior product that is peddled in the rest of the world, where, due to an ongoing trademark dispute, the Czech version has to be marketed as Budvar or Czechvar. Despite its history and high profile, Budwiser Budvar is only the fourth largest producer of beer in the Czech Republic. This country likes its brews. Apart from it having a picturesque, well preserved old town centre, the main reason for our stop here was not the place, but a person. Slightly randomly, our friend and NZ investment chap, Bruce, who lives in our old home town of Kerikeri in NZ was spending some time here that coincided with us passing through the near vicinity. This is less random if you factor in that his other half is from here and they were visiting his mother-in-law. We arrived a couple of nights before we had arranged to meet him and found an interesting but strangely unfrequented camping spot not far from the town centre. This was a grassy area on a small sports facility which had a small bar/restaurant which was close to the river and the cycle path. The power supply was on an extension reel, protected from the elements by an upturned crate and the showering facilities were ‘sports team communal style’. This made showers happen fast whilst one had the room to onself. There were only a couple of other campers here during our three night stay which was suprising given its location and the fact it was only the equivalent of £10 per night. Our neighbour for the first two nights was an Austrian chap who seemed to be by himself. We got chatting to him and discovered that he was travelling with his wife but she was currently in the nearby hospital having been crushed by a falling tree a few days prior whilst they were out hiking. A helicopter rescue, trauma surgery and a medevac back to Austria had ended their trip, but they counted themselves lucky that she hadn’t been killed. Another reminder that a nice life cannot, and should not, be taken for granted.
About 20km from Ceske Budejovice is the very beautiful, and consequently very popular town of Ceske Krumlov. Another UNESCO World Heritage site by virtue of it’s well preserved Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture, it is apparently one of the most visited places in Czechia, a claim that it was impossible to refute given the crowds present on our visit, and pretty suprising given as this is the same country that also has Prague as a tourist destination. Every time we find ourselves joining the throngs of mass tourism we regret it a little, the press of humanity somehow shaving some of the loveliness off the lovely place it has come to see. Despite this, it was indeed still a lovely place. We decided to take the train. Our nearest station was an easy 15 minute walk from camp and despite being only one stop south from the start of the line at Ceske Budejovice main station, all the carriages were already heaving. The sun was beating in through the windows and there was no functioning aircon. We miraculously found two seats and settled in for the sweaty 50 min trip. The train wound its way through a very beautiful valley, stopping at every little town, village and settlement on the way. What an amazing service for the area, locals and visitors alike. We finally arrived at Ceske Krumlov and there was another 15 minute stroll downhill to the town. It is a rabbit warren of narrow cobbled streets, old buildings, churches and the most magnificent castle presiding over it all, sitting high up on a rocky escarpment above the river. We wandered through the rambling castle, seeing as much as we could without shelling out any money and came across a slightly odd exhibit. This was two rather tatty and depressed looking brown bears whose home was the deep old moat. They were attracting a lot of attention and photographs but didn’t appear to be thriving. I don’t think that Ceske Krumlov needed them to attract any more visitors.
We soon had worked up a thirst and felt the need to find a quiet little place to escape the melée and get a drink. A riverside bar entirely fulfilled the remit, served us very respectable decaf coffees (often a tricky thing) and gave us a prime perch from which to observe the other popular activity in Ceske Krumlov, river rafting/kayaking. I don’t know where they were setting off from or how far they were going, but there was a constant stream of them floating by. To be fair, it looked quite a pleasant way to spend some time. Suitably refreshed we hit the streets again. There were no more specific sights that we felt the need to make a beeline for, more it was the general feel of the place and its setting and so we did our usual thing of just wandering the streets whilst avoiding the multitude of tatt shops. How can so many shops, all selling exactly the same sort of rubbish, all stay in business. It is a mystery. Thoughts of our next meal were starting to pervade our mind and given the also ridiculous number of restaurants, making a decision became a bit overwhelming. After a few laps we decided on a lower end establishment, called The Travellers Restaurant, which served us good beer and medicocre, (but entirely appropriate for the price) traditional, hearty meals that involved meat, dumplings and goulash. The goulash was acompanied by a bizzare bread ‘loaf’ which was a compressed amalgamation of chopped up bits of (quite stale) bread, served in slices. An acquired taste that we did not acquire. With stomachs full of food we decided that our sightseeing batteries were depleted so we opted to catch the earlier train home.
The next day we saddled up and cruised down the cycle path alongside the river into the old town of Ceske Budejovice. This boasts a very fine central square, one of the largest in the country, with a large central fountain that apparently used to supply the town with its drinking water. Loads of lovely old buildings border the square with some nice shady arcades, a welome relief from the on going heat of summer.
We killed a bit of time with some mooching then it was time to meet Bruce. A rendezvous by the fountain had been arranged- code name Red Fox. Very ‘Cold War’. It was great to see him – we agreed that we all had acquired some more grey hair in the past 5 years – and bizzare to meet in such a random location. We had a long, and in the end quite boozy, lunch at a local brewery, catching up on the intervening years and doing just enough ‘business chat’ to justify him putting in a claim for expenses having kindly paid the bill. Whether or not his company honour the claim, being in Czech Koruna and during his holidays, is yet to be seen. We may owe you a future return lunch, Bruce, somewhere equally left field!
Our next stop was Prague. Another great European city, some would say one of THE great European cities. Another splendid, gorgeous and ancient arrangement of impressive buildings, squares, cathedrals and churches, bridges, cobbled streets and parks. Here again all is overseen by a stupendous castle complex on a hill, looking down on the old city and the Vltava River that carves through its centre. This was not a city centre to try and camp anywhere near the centre of so we found a very well appointed and secure camp located on the site of an old farm in one of the western suburbs that was serviced by the very efficient and extensive tram system. I know that I bang on about the provision for cycling in much of Europe, but I am also highly impressed by the public transport,especially the trams, in and around the bigger cities. It’s cheap, easy to navigate, reliable, and clean and tidy. A delight to use.
We gave ourselves a couple of days to sample what Prague had to offer, which was our usual foot tour of the exteriors of the main sights, a walk through any church or cathedral that wasn’t charging an entry fee (not many), and many a back street (to escape crowds, to escape the sun and to escape logical navigation). If we had thought that Ceske Krumlov had been busy and crowded, that was a mere gentle warm up for a Prague experience in late July. We just had to grin and bear it…like it or lump it…put up or shut up…swim with the tide…bite the bullet…. so we joined the throng and then winged mercilessly about the scourge of over tourism. According to my all-knowing Apple watch we walked an impressive 23km over the course of our two day jaunt. All in 30-32 deg C heat. Not quite the insufferable ‘pushing 40 deg C’ heatwave temps that make everything impossible, but hot enough to make the whole endeavour difficult whilst being cool enough to convince us that it is entirely reasonable behaviour.
On the first day we joined the river of humanity and tackled the steps up to the castle. From here we appretiated the elevated view of the city, wandered around the outside of the very impressive St Vitus cathedral (Czechia’s largest and most important church which is within the castle complex) then descended back to the old town again. To dilute all the Old Sh*t that it impossible to escape on our wanderings, we like to add in visits to more esoteric attractions, often sourced from Atlas Obscura, a great source for alternative sightseeing. In Prague this included the ‘Lennon Wall’, a wall opposite the French embassy that was adorned with a portrait of John Lennon and some of his song lyrics following his murder in 1980. Many other Beatles and Lennon inspired artworks and writings joined the wall following this which was added to with anti-communist, resistance and general anti-establishment grafitti. It has been painted over and re-decorated so many times that almost no John Lennon inspired artwork remains. Now it just looks like a mess. The latest additions pertain to the conflict in Gaza.
We saw a sculpture of Franz Kafka’s head which is outside a town centre shopping mall. Erected in honour of the surrealist novelist, one of Prague’s famous sons, this does a funky rotation of its slices every hour on the hour. I am sure that it would have appealed to him. We missed the show by 50 minutes.
We schlepped up to the new city to the impressive National Museum then cruised through the long rectangular Wenceslas Square, complete with statue of emponymous saint on a horse. This is a popular venue for mass gatherings and celebrations and it can apparently accomodate up to 400,000 people. We continued down the long boulevard that seems to be being entirely dug up and renovated, past lots and lots of shops and eateries, back to the old town. Here we ran out of steam and got the tram home.
The next day we did a version of the same thing. Once in town we happened upon a craft type market in a large courtyard. Every second stall was selling lovely linen clothes of various designs and styles and there was a frenzy of middle aged women sorting through racks and trying on items. I resisted the urge to join them as a) I have sufficient clothing for my current needs and space available, b) quality linen items and commercial laundrettes don’t mix well and c) I am a tight wad. Onwards we shuffled.
It was time to brave the main square. This is the epicentre of the crowds, especially at lunchtime. There were a bazillion restaurants, all full, and thousands of people all heading in different directions whilst not looking where they were going. Here is another popular tourist attraction: the astrological clock, found on the side of the Old Town Hall. This was made in 1410, making it the third oldest astrological clock in the world, and the oldest still in operation. It also apparently does something fancy on the hour. We arrived at half past. So we photographed and then we escaped.
I decided it was time for another Atlas Obscura offering, a clever ‘infinity’ book sculpture in the municipal library. I confidently navigated us across the sun-baked, crowded square, dodging the selfie takers, the blitherers and the stop-in-the-middle-of-the-way-ers until we were at safety. Then a quick check of the map revealed that we had come entirely in the wrong direction and we had to retrace our steps. My over-heated, starting to get hungry, slightly foot weary travelling companion and (contemplating-his-life-choices 24 years ago) life partner showed the first glint of irritation and followed behind, grumbling more than audibly. We found the (correct) library, eventually. It was shut. Contrary to interweb information. The grumbling notched up. It was time to feed and water the man. Luckily our prior selected late lunch venue was a mere hoppity, skippedy, hoppity, skippedy, hoppity skip away and we (soon) arrived.
U Medvidku is billed as the oldest restaurant in Prague, founded on its site in 1466. Also a brewery, it serves traditional Czech fayre in traditional, slightly gloomy surroundings, and it was a perfect spot from which to hide from both the heat and the hoards. No umbrella festooned, fancy outside terraced seating area here. Just solid wooden furniture, wood panelled walls and aggressive cast iron light fittings. We ate sausages, chips and fried little fish. A light lunch. (Well it would have been if it hadn’t been for their very quaffable ‘NZ-style’ beer. ) Our prompt for coming here was our other travel director, the late, great Antony Bourdain. His travel shows have guided us on many an ‘homage visit’ to eateries on our journeys, and this was another of those. Our ethos of ‘if it’s good enough for Bourdain, it’s good enough for us’ has not let us down yet. Lunch restored humour and energy levels back to normal, and so risked requesting one final tourist activity before we headed home.
At the centre of Prague, gracefully but purposefully spanning the river, is the Charles Bridge. Construction of this medieval stone arch bridge took from 1357 until 1402 making it quite an epic civil engineering project. It was originally known as merely Stone Bridge, or Prague Bridge until 1870 when it received its new moniker, named for Charles lV who had laid the first stone. It is decorated with 30 statues and until 1841 was the only means of crossing the river in the city. Now it is pedestrianised and walking across it is a ‘must do’ activity during a visit to the city. We had avoided it until now. It had to be done. We braced ourselves and headed over. There were a lot of people on the bridge, but also many sellers of souvenir rubbish and slightly oddly, a multitude of portrait sketchers. I can’t imagine strolling across the bridge, admiring the view, taking photos of city, dodging my fellow sightseers and then saying to myself “You know what I need? I need to sit for half an hour in the heat on a small stool under an umbrella on this historic bridge and pay someone to draw a slightly mediocre likeness of me in charcoal. I can give that to Mum for Christmas.” To be fair what the bridge crossing did give was a vantage point for great view of the castle and an opportunity to watch the many pedaloes buzzing about on the river. Then we went home, via these babies. No, no idea either.
Two days was more than enough to sample the delights of Prague and the next day we headed to (depending on your point of view and love of beer) another jewel in the crown of Czechia, the city of Plzen. Seemingly lacking a vowel, kindly inserted by us English and the Germans in our name for it – Pilsen – this is the birth place, and on going home of, that fine golden brew, Pilsner lager. There was a dearth of formal campsites close to town so we opted for a rare night ‘freewheeling/freeloading’ in a car park. Our selected spot had good reviews on our app for quietness, lack of undesireable visitors, proximity to a nice park and access to the city. We like there to be a couple of other campers for ‘safety in numbers’ but it to not be too busy so as to attract attention from locals and police who might decide they don’t want us there. As it happens we had this delightful spot all to ourselves without any problems.
The reason we were here was to do the tour of the Pilsner Urquell brewery, and having arrived at lunch time we booked places on an English speaking tour at 4.30pm. This left us with a few hours to kill, so we decided to walk the 3km to the city centre to check it out. It may not suprise you to discover that it had a nice square, an impressive old church, lots of nice old buildings and some lovely green spaces. We severely over estimated the time that we needed to survey the Old Sh*t, so had to kill time within our killing time activity. We ate ice cream, we had a coffee and we spent almost enough time sitting on a bench in the square to risk being moved on for vagrancy. In fact one of the local vagrants did clock us and approached us for some loose change to buy some food. We declined, but then felt guilty afterwards and took him a couple of slices of pizza from a nearby kiosk. Good deads done, it was Pilsner time.
The Pilsner Urquell Brewery has been brewing here since 1842 when a novel technique of beer production first created its characteristic pale lager beer. This proved so popular, and so much copied, that now this style of beer acounts for about 2/3 of global beer consumption. All the world’s Pilsner Urquell is produced here in Plzen and it is Czechia’s largest brewery, now owned by Asaahi Breweries. Our tour took us through both the original old and the new modern brewery areas, both sporting gorgeous copper tuns. It was beautiful.
Then we visited a small section of the vast network of tunnels under the plant. These were dug by hand and are used for barrel storage and maturation of the unfiltered/unpaturised version of their beer. We had a very generous sample of this, poured directly from its barrel, drunk in a troglodyte tasting room. Fresh from the cow, so to speak.
Back on the surface we ‘exited through the gift shop’ and the tour finished with another free can of beer. This was apparently as compensation for the tour being slightly curtailed because one area was closed. We took our beers, bought nothing and sat on a bench in the sun outside the shop to drink them. Were we metomorphising into alcoholic vagrants like our friend that had accosted us earlier?? We were alone with our thoughts for a few minutes before we were aggressively befriended by a group of five very drunk Czech chaps. There was a fairly large language/sobriety gap but we think we ascertained that they were two middle aged brothers-in-law with their three grown up sons. They had just completed their tour and were absolutely plastered. This may have been due to the 12 x 500ml beers EACH that they consumed in the pub in the two hours prior. They were very amusing. One of the younger blokes even trotted back into the shop and bought us a gift of another bottle of beer for us to share, and another (not entirely necessary) one for himself. His Dad then politely and quietly vomitted behind a nearby wall. We finally extracted ourselves, bid them farewell, and headed to the brewery’s on-site pub for dinner. Who knows what they were up to next. It was only 6.30pm.
The pub here is apparently the biggest in Czechia, but it did not look it from the outside. That is because it is like an iceberg, mostly under the surface. We left the sun drenched upper courtyard, filled with drinkers at picnic tables and decended into the vast depths of the establishment. It became increasingly obvious from the garb of many of the other patrons that this was a pre-match staging post for football fans. A quick interweb search confirmed that the top division local team, FC Viktoria Plzen was due to take on visitors Hradec Kralove, kick off in an hour, at the next door stadium. The brewery had embraced its geographic advantage of being ‘closest beer to the match’ and even put in a back gate and built a bridge over the river that separated the two venues. Genius. Our minds drifted back to our five drunk friends and we are pretty sure that one of them had said that they lived in a town called Hradec Kralove….Wonder if they made it it to the match?
Anyway. Back to dinner. Nick ordered a significant section of a pig. And ate it all. And was happy as a pig in sh*t because it was tender and moist and delicious. No stomach space was wasted on vegetables. I had some chicken with bacon drizzled spätzle, an egg noodle pasta dish,common in these parts. Also delicious. There was also some more Pils drunk, because…duh!…and we then slowly wandered back to Davide, slightly wishing that we had cycled instead.
Our car park was delightfully empty and we slept well in our splendid solitude. The next day signalled our exit from the Czech Republic and on the way out we spent up our remaining Koruna on fuel and groceries, leaving our final remaining coins in a charity box. We were on our way back to Germany, nothing but euros needed all the way from here.