27/7
Hoping to escape the pressing, ever present swarms of people, Jeff takes us south after school toward the medieval, once moated town of Trebon where he and Rowing Australia came in 2008 for a training camp. It sits on the isthmus of two largely man-made lakes in swampy Southern Bohemian Czech. Whilst it’s off the international tourist map (we’re the ONLY non-Czechs in the over-full campsite), it’s well & truly on the Czech family summer holiday map!
It must be 35 degrees and 90% humidity. I’m struggling with the oppressive industrialized pillaged landscape and the relative suspicion & quiet hostility of the folk. They seem so locked in with a weak currency, a language no-one else speaks and decades of brainwashed mistrust of westerners. The asphyxiating crowds are no less away from Prague. So many seem so incredibly overweight, including their children - the beer is so cheap and everywhere & the food so fatty. Middle aged women wear either two-toned hair (very blonde on top) or pinky, purpley red thick streaks. Men carry enormous stomachs, enjoy the ole mullet hairdo and wear denim ¾ pants. They all seem to smoke. No-one says hello - they just stare - even if I sing out ‘ahoj’. Maybe I’m saying it wrong & instead singing out an obscenity! I’m feeling like crossing the border back to Germany but have learnt to not make too many stories too soon.
As the pm heat eases, we jump on the bikes and go for a sticky beak to find a gorgeous town with beautiful pockets of greenery.
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| Trebon town square |
An amazing pub & beer garden scene each with an obligatory ensconced middle aged pop band serenading the beer drinkers and sausage & chip eaters. Calls for a beer. The glasses are huge.
Cross-eyed, we take a very happy bouncy bike ride back to the centre of the old town for an extremely tasty kebab.
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| Trebon skyline |
All high on life & with a softer take on things after a lazy ride home as the sun sets,
we collapse into bed, dressed only in undies. Initially the blunted senses tolerate a noisy local summer camping scene but by 0200, I’m just begging to be overtaken by sleep. Thank goodness we can’t understand anything of their soft swishy sounding language.
28/7
Bloody hell - they’re up early with yodeling kids. Good thing the kids are so pretty.
Reluctantly and with a hangover (after one Czech beer!?), I prod Jeff from bed and with heavy legs, we drag ourselves around a 6km run and are very pleased for it.
Back home, we sit in the lighter, fresher morning air, down 1L water and a coffee. Jeff and Kel have several rounds of UNO, Wil reads and I prepare breakfast …..and a second coffee.
With the pathetic adults finally sorted, we start school and plan a day on the bikes looking around the area and promise a lunch of ice-cream. Wil ogles the abundance of incredible specialized mountain bikes and the extraordinary biking skill of their very young children - obviously a Czech thing.
Jeff & I take in some literature aware that the Czechs are a very well read bunch. In Prague almost every second shop was an enormous bookstore popping with shelves loaded to sagging. Whilst Jeff struggles through a collection of short stories by Franz Kafta, I’m pleasurably whisked into the Communist world of writer Milan Kundera.
School done we head out on the bikes through the forest opposite the camp where we stumble on the Swarzenberg Tomb which the local aristocrat family built in the 1800’s for their earthly remains.
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| a family tomb |
On into town we lock up in a small square off the main plaza where Jeff finds shops he was in 4 yrs ago selling touristy stuff like metal work, stuffed puppets, and coffee cups - all seemingly just as they were back then.
Into the main plaza we find the Saturday markets are on, it’s quite hot (35deg?) and we wonder about all the food sitting on tables, all the sweet stuff swarming with bees. Double scoop icecream (cheap here, < ¼ the price of Prague) while we sit in a shady courtyard chatting about all the important things in life, like Beany Kids, pink/purple hair swatches on middle aged women, whose more overweight? Oz or Cz?
Wander out of the courtyard to the large fringing gardens where we assume the seated position to discuss (prompted by a wedding we saw) how one chooses bridesmaids and groomsmen. Kel has chosen hers but not to be revealed here as we are sure they will change many times before the big day.
Back into the plaza in search of breakfast bowls, no luck but found a nice cool cafe for hot beverage (not good here!), kids a grapefruit juice, more probing conversations, then with the intention of taking a long bike ride around the lakes and forests we find a storm is kicking up so have to rush back to the camp to put the awning up, by which time there’s thunder, lightning and it’s bucketing down, so we fall back to reading and snoozing, a big salad with meatloaf for dinner, communal shower, and then a movie - Johnny English again, even funnier the 2nd time!
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