Nicky: We found ourselves crossing over the border into the Czech Republic about mid afternoon. Our first stop was a quaint hill side town of Stramberk. We found a quiet car park and settled in for the night as it was getting dark.
The next morning we went off to explore the town. We knew we would be able to climb up to the tower and get some good views, so we decided to take the Dale's binoculars. This was when we realised that they had been stolen in Tallinn too, as we searched the whole van to no avail. It was another grey cloudy day of about 15 degrees, which we had been experiencing a lot of lately. The highlights of the town are traditional wooden buildings, a market square, church, and a 13th century castle tower. We climbed up to the base of the tower, and admired the views over the houses below and countryside in the distance. On the way back to the van, we bought the local food specialty- Stramberk ears. They are gingerbread cones, which traditionally are filled with whipped cream and honey. You could buy them filled for 10Kc (40 cents) or a pack of 10 unfilled for 28Kc (1.10 euros). The legend goes that the Tartar people laid seige to the town. The locals managed to drive them away by flooding them out with water from the towns fishponds, and in doing so the Tartar warriors left behind bags of human ears, which were valuable to them when they returned home as it proved the number of people they had killed. Therefore Stramberk now celebrates by making gingerbread ears.
After lunch we went for a walk through Narodni Park, adjacent to town. We walked to the top of the hill, which gave us great views of the town and also a large quarry. The item of interest in this park is a cave, in which the jawbone of a Neanderthal child was found in 1880. We finished our afternoon of walking with a jaunt to the neighbouring town of Koprivnice. It is a bit like Stramberk's ugly twin as it is home to the Tatra factory (trucks) and housing blocks.
The following day saw us visit two more lovely towns in the area: Pribor and Novy Jicin. Both had some beautiful buildings and market squares. Pribor was the birthplace of Sigmund Freud, and there is a museum now located in the house he spent the first 4 years of his life, before his family moved to Vienna. There is a monument to him out front, which is a couch people can lie down on and meditate or contemplate their thoughts.
That afternoon we searched for a campsite on the way to Brno. We had one in mind near Brno that we knew was open, but we decided to look at 1 or 2 on the way. The second one we tried was open. The campsite was largely deserted bar 2 chalets that were occupied. It really is the end of the season here. The owner wasn't there, but a cleaner was, who with gesturing and use of our phrasebook told us we could pitch up. We likened the facilities to a Soviet communist holiday camp- the facilities were clean, but very old. Big concrete buildings, the toilets in the ladies had a toilet roll as you entered and none in the cubicles, and big steel doors. There was also a lack of a fresh water tap for filling the van and toilet and grey waste disposal, hence we improvised. The following morning we finally saw the camp owner who 'kindly' took our money as we left, we were hoping noone would. He charged an astonishing 8 euros for electric, however the total bill was 17 euros, so not too bad. Our solar panel has been struggling to say the least with the cloudy days, and so we needed the power.
We were close to the Czech Republic's second city Brno, and stopped at the Moravian Karst Caves in Blansko that afternoon. We were aware that there were several caves one could visit, and were keen to go on a tour, that included a boat trip through the caves as well (Punkva Cave). As you could probably guess this would require asking some questions at the information centre where we would buy our tickets. It was reasonably busy inside (only one attendant dealing with cave tickets), and we waited behind another customer being served. More people arrived, and instead of queuing, congregated around the desk. The customer at the counter finished, and it should have been our turn, but another couple pushed in. We then had to make our presence felt to get the next turn. After a few questions and nearly getting there with what we needed, the customer behind us informed the assistant that 'we were going to take all day'. Many of them waiting it seems were after a pass to take photos in the caves, which was a quick transaction. Needless to say that he was very rude, and we sympathised with the staff if this is what they have to put up with every day.
The cave tour was an hour long, and consisted of 800 metres of walking, and a 400 metre boat trip. I was expecting the boat trip to be the wow factor, but I think the most impressive sights we saw where during the walking part. It was all discovered at the beginning of the 20th century, and formed by many many years of water flows of the Punkva river.
That evening we made our way to Brno and checked out the parking options. We headed to the Mendel museum as we wanted to visit the following day. In that area, the parking was relatively expensive at 30-40kc an hour (1-1.50 euros), however to our surprise 1 km away we found free parking. The following morning, we wrapped up in scarves, hats and gloves and spent about 3 hours in the city centre checking out various churches, Spilberk castle, and the vegetable market, where we picked up potatoes, carrots and corn. We were following a route from a pamphlet from the information centre, which led us to some view points along the city walls. The views were of the train station and housing (not so great), but at one point we saw Old Brno Abbey and the Basilica of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary Church. The Mendel museum is located in this complex. Mendel was one of the abbots of the monastery and it was here that he conducted his pioneering work in modern genetics with his breeding of pea plants. It bought me back to high school biology with talk of homozygous, heterozygous and recessive traits. Mendel published papers on meterology and regarded himself as a meterologist, the importance of his work in genetics was only realised after his death.
That afternoon we drove to Vienna, Austria. We stocked up again on food and cheap Czech beers at Tesco. We were stopped on the Czech side of the border and handed over passports and Dale's driving license, travelled about 300 metres over the border and were stopped again by the Austrian Police this time. We noted the temperature hit 19 degrees once in Austria, and hoped it was a sign of better weather to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment