Cesky Krumlov

29/7

Campsite noisily up early at 0700 forcing us to rise for a 0730 run!  Poor buggers in their tents on the soggy ground - Ed kept our feet so lovely dry & clean.  The block of 8 toilets are a mess with only two just flushing.  Still drizzly but we head off opportunistically in case the heavens really open again.

It’s a beautiful run through forest along sandy paths by interlinking still lakes & past sizable horse studs.  We’re a bit lighter today.  Off after breakfast & an open shower (the only one this year I’ve worn my thongs in).

Jeff takes us on an easy drive through small towns & fields to UNESCO listed Cesky Krumlov whose old town is encircled by the Vltava River.  We’re spoiled with a blue sky.  From our car park, we walk along the Vltava watching families & packs of fun-loving teens bobbing (& regularly capsizing!) along the shallow rapids.  Women in their (bottom) underwear only, bottles of grog pulled along in the cool water behind and a few crazy blow up floating walruses.

The town is really cute with narrow cobbled paths, tiny footbridges, small irregularly shaped squares and ornate, almost kitsch sgraffito on a scale to trump Spain’s Segovia.  

sgraffito

We dawdle along with the cosmopolitan crowds, stopping to listen to 4 young very talented buskers playing foot-tapping Russian folk music around the market place.

Following the increasingly splendid views, we head up to the castle through covered walk ways and grand stone gates to be rewarded at the top with spacious Roman gardens.

With crowns to burn, we decide to sample Czech pub food on a terrace by the Vltava whilst watching the amusing rafting activity.  The food’s OK and touristy.

Jeff’s cleverly suggests we stop by the TESCO & fuel station to blow the last crowns and stock up on the fabulously cheap groceries.

Late afternoon sun accompanies us from Czech back into Germany as the kids read and Jeff & I ponder about what Lenin/Stalin’s Communism was building - what WAS their idea of Utopia because it didn’t liberate the proletariat & only left decay & a country so markedly different to the one just to it’s west.

Whilst it has some delightful patches and thankfully a vigorous younger, more cosmopolitan generation, I can’t help sigh relief as we free camp in clean, spacious, ordered Bavaria - even though we’re in the carpark of a graveyard!

I imagine in a few generations, Czech’s curious students will have it hopping and happening like it’s western neighbors. And whilst their language is easy on the ears,it bears no relationship to our more familiar Latin roots, making travel that much more exhausting - these younger ones hear English in music and movies and are making in-roads! Like Milan Kundera says, they’ve forgotten,have no real memory,and aren’t really interested anyways in what’s been. It’s not relevant and the Party speak & political living isn’t their world.