OLOMOUC – Czech Republic (Mon 27 July)

We woke today to a completely different pace of place, it was like ‘horse of a different colour’. Olomouc has come alive. It seems as if the whole town has turned up to shop. But then I guess they need to if all the shops are closed for the weekend. Come Monday they need to restock. When you look out and see everyone of all ages out shopping, it makes you wonder who does any work in this town. We have the impression that this is very much a university city and with holidays on at the moment, everything is at half pace. A bit like Dunedin over Christmas really.

We went to a grocery store a few doors along from where we are staying. That was quite a journey in itself … a journey back in time. As you walk in the door, you are confronted with three counters, one along each wall. Behind the counters and stacked in the glass cabinets on the counters is all the merchandise. But as a customer it is inaccessible. You ask for what you want and they will get it for you. It reminded me of the old ‘Lolly shop’ that I used to go to as a child, with the big jars of ‘Blackballs’, and ‘Milkbottles’, that the shop owner would get down for you via a ladder when asked for. But we didn’t indulge ourselves in the rest of the shops today, today we are going for a day trip to Brno.

We did a similar trek that we did coming into Olomouc, through small towns and wheat fields, and arrived in Brno about two hours later. We knew we were still in Eastern Europe (the old Eastern Bloc) when we saw a Lada police car. However we saw a Skoda police car shortly afterwards and came to the conclusion that this was their ‘chase’ car. A little different to the Alfa Romeo’s that the police were driving in Italy.

A good point to start any tour of a city is to find a church, as that normally gives you a good orientation. We chose the Cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul. The interior of this church has been the lightest that we have seen yet, with very high ceilings and amazing intricate stained glass windows stretching all the way up. On the down side, it had the most upright, uncomfortable pews that you can imagine, so we didn’t stay long.

We were reading in the ‘Lonely Planet’ on the way here about a crypt in the monastery that sounded like it might be worth a visit. But it said that it was closed Mondays, but we thought we would check, and it was our lucky day. The Capuchin Crypt is … interesting, unique, but certainly worth a visit (providing you aren’t squeamish or suffer from nightmares. In some ways it is rather weird. From the years 1651 to 1784, they interned the bodies into the crypt under the church. The difference here is that they weren’t embalmed or prepared for death in any way at all. They were allowed to decay naturally in the cold, dry air under the church. A few were put into coffins, but most were placed directly onto the earth. This crypt was vented originally via 60 vents, of which 14 still remain.

The first body that you see is Franz Baron von Trench. He commandeered 1000 Pandurea Corps, which were a volunteer group described as the ‘scum of the earth’. But evidently Franz was a rather good organizer and managed some success with this ratbag lot. It didn’t stop him from dying from dropsy at 38 though. The strange thing about seeing his body lying there in a coffin (with a glass lid), was comparing the bones and leathery skin before you, with the portrait that was hanging above the coffin.

There were a number of other coffins with bodies in the next few rooms, that contained the remains of judges, benefactors, doctors, their wives, but there was also a 12 year old child and a chimney sweep. Each of them important to the church in some way. Each had decayed in its own way. Some were remarkably well preserved, with boots and clothes reasonably intact, others were not so lucky. There is one woman there who it is now theorized that she was probably buried alive. At times of great infections (plagues, etc) they buried people immediately, without waiting the three days that was customary of the time. They have surmised that she was probably in a deep unconscious state and was buried on the assumption that she was dead.

The last couple of rooms we found the most interesting though. In one room there were 20 bodies laid out side by side. These were the friars from the church. When they died they were carried down from the church in the coffin, the bottom of which was taken out so they dropped onto the earth. A brick was put under their head for a pillow, and the coffin was taken back upstairs for the next one. I guess their thinking was something like ‘Come into the world with nothing and leave with nothing.’ All that aside, these bodies were quite well preserved, some still having the cowls of their cassocks intact, sandals, rosaries, all still there. There were 153 friars interned here in this way, of which only 24 remain. With there currently being 41 bodies in the crypt.

They ceased placing bodies there in 1784 due to a period of infectious diseases. I’m not sure of the dates, but I am guessing that it was one of the plagues. The message that appeared many times through this crypt was ‘Tu Fui Ego Eris’ which translates ‘What you are, we were, what we are, you will be.’ Hmmm … makes you think doesn’t it.

Well that was our dose of macabre for today. We were wondering what our families and friends at home must be thinking with us visiting some of these rather macabre and dead sites that we have seen. And although it is strange and rather morbid, that is the attraction. These are things that we will never see anywhere else. NZ just doesn’t have the kind of history that embraces that level of … weird.

We spent the rest of the day just browsing around the city before returning home. Once again an amazing city, with amazing architecture. The contrasts of the very old, the falling apart, and the modern. Somehow all jelling together to make this place what it is.

OLOMOUC – Czech Republic (Sun 26 July)

Well a ‘Powerful Vengence’ wasn’t brought about as we didn’t quite make it to the church service this morning. But we did wake to a beautiful blue sky, which put us in the right mood to have a better look at this city.

We started by heading to a couple of museums as they are free on Sundays and Wednesdays, and that was a good enough reason for us. We first went to the Museum of Modern Art which had some very cool works, and despite not really being everyone’s cup of tea, it had a whole floor dedicated to books and book covers particularly during the period between the two world wars. Having a print background I liked this, but I particularly liked the installation at the end of the room by Guy Schraenen. It was a recycling ‘mini skip’ filled with hundreds of books. The script explained that he was trying to point out the glut of information available and how this makes us ‘incapable of perceiving the world in its entirety.’ I liked that idea.

The second museum that we went to was the Archdiocese Museum. The first item you see when you get inside is the ceremonial carriage of Bishop Troyer. The cool thing about this was that it is shown in a painting further on in the museum that was dated 1783. They also have exhibits here of the treasury of the various bishops from the area. As is usual with these exhibits, you have to keep an eye out for anything that is described as a relic, as it is almost certainly going to contain a fingernail or piece of bone from somebody.

But the funniest part about this museum was the footwear, and this wasn’t part of a display, it was what they made you wear. As you went upstairs, you were given ‘Grandpa’ style slippers to put on over your shoes. I assumed that these were to protect their parquet floors, but I began to wonder if this was a little ‘in joke’ aimed at getting their own back on the tourists, as the museum staff didn’t seem to be wearing them. Or perhaps they were a means of slowing down any would be thieves trying to make a run for it. Either whey were decidedly ugly and did detract somewhat from the exhibits, as you spent more time trying to keep them on, and trying to keep a straight face every time a staff member walked past.

Between the two museums we paid another visit to the St Wenceslas Cathedral and particularly the Crypt. There was a very elaborate ‘relic’ here containing the bones of St Pauline. She is the patron saint here and there is an interesting story around her. She was evidentally possessed by an evil spirit and was healed by St Paul the exorcist. On her healing the family was converted to Christianity which was punishable by death at the time. Her father Artemisius, a gaoler from Rome, was beheaded and Candida and Pauline were stoned to death. In 1623 Pauline’s sacred relics were brought from the catacombs in Rome to be paraded through the streets of Olomouc in the hopes of stemming the plague. The city had lost thousands of people in the epidemic. Their plea was answered.

While I was reading about this, Justine was having a confrontation of her own. An old man in a suit was trying to give her a little book about Olomouc, punctuated with lots of comments like “Beautiful girl”, “Lovely English lady”, and a big wet kiss on the cheek as accompaniment. All this amidst a cloud of protests on her part as you can imagine. When she picked up the 10 Kn that he had dropped and he told her to “keep it for later.” She decided to make a run for it. The fact that he had obviously been drinking for some time already, I don’t think helped his inhibitions. And all this inside a cathedral crypt. The funny part was that after we went outside, he came up to her and tried all exactly the same lines again. He hadn’t recognized the fact that he was talking to the same person. It was obviously his ‘pick up’ line. I wonder how often it works for him.

Later in the day we decided to go for a walk in the park and through the rose gardens. Well we got as far as the rose gardens before we were confronted and were demanded an entrance fee of. What the … ?! So the museums are free, but you have to pay to look at the roses in an outside garden?! We declined the offer and went and watched some guys playing tennis instead, and wondered just how much our tennis has deteriorated since we have been away.

On reflecting over the day we decided that this is a city of contrasts. The grandiose churches, the large ornate buildings in the centre of town and around the square. But take just a short walk off the main routes and there are buildings that look decidedly decrepit and unkempt. It seems as if a lot of the buildings in the public eye had a very quick tidy up a few years ago and now they are requiring a proper refurb. But outside of this ‘old’ part of town there seems to be quite a bit of reasonably modern architecture. Unfortunately as a tourist, you so often only get to see the centre part of town, and even with the best of intentions you don’t get to see what a city is really like.

OLOMOUC – Czech Republic (Fri 24 July)

We left Cesky Krumlov today bound for Olomouc. Don’t know if it is what they call ‘itchy feet’ but as much as this is a very nice place to be, it felt like it was time to move on. Perhaps that is because we haven’t stayed in one place for too many days at a time before. But we made a concerted effort to slow down in the Czech knowing that it is one of the few places that we can.

As we were loading up the car with our gear we saw a guy tucked away in the corner of the carpark, out of sight of any of the windows, busy squirreling away on his laptop, We suspect that he had found a spot where he could tap in to the Hostels free WiFi. What ever the reason he looked positively sheepish and made a run for it. We have to say we enjoyed the free access as well, it doesn’t come as often as we had hoped.

We observed coming into Cesky Krumlov that the housing and architecture had a definite residual feel of communism about it, but this disappeared once in CK. As we left it quickly reverted back, to what we had seen coming in. It seems that there are tourist pockets that have been given a polish up. Taking the back roads we went through many little towns and villages that looked like they had been forgotten for some time. They looked like scenes from an anti-communist movie with grey concrete plaster houses built right onto the street, with no personality and in various states of disrepair. Very functional and probably very nice and homely inside, but we didn’t get to see that. In these towns the houses came in three colours: al la natural concrete grey, a faded and peeling apricot/red, or a mustard yellow. In some towns it appeared as if they had made a concerted effort to clean these same style houses up with various paint jobs. However the most noticeable thing about these small towns was the absence of people. There just wasn’t anyone around. There was the occasional Trabant parked on the roadside, and usually at least one large tractor and farm implement being driven through in the opposing direction, but other than that, you wondered what the rest of the townsfolk were up to. Were they inside enjoying a large meal, watching TV, or was there an event on somewhere that everyone was attending?

Between towns there was a lot of harvesting going on. It seems to be the season for haymaking and the wheat harvest. Big combines in the fields and in transit between sites.

We stopped on the way at a place called Telc for lunch and a browse. Now this is one cool little medieval town. In the town square (well it’s more of a long rectangle) the two opposing sides are lined with Renaissance facades with various degrees of elegance and decoration. There doesn’t seem to be much more to the town other than the town square, but that alone makes it well worth a visit.

At the far end of the square there was a market going on, but as is the custom here, half of the stalls sell handcrafts (anything from pottery, to clothes made out of cork, to fabric goods and back again), and the other half of the market is a well patronized set of beer tents. After all this region has fantastic beer, and what better way to spend a hot afternoon, or so we’ve been told. Set up under the city gate by the market was a guy selling and demonstrating didgeridoos. Made us wonder if he was an Aussie making the most of his heritage, a kiwi taking advantage of his neighbour, or a local who appreciated the instrument. It was odd to see on this side of the world, but somehow not completely out of place in a small bohemian town.

After leaving Telc the journey was a mixture of painfully slow road works stuck behind an endless procession of large trucks, long straight and very mundane sections of single lane roads between wheat fields (that necessitated slowing down to a crawl every time a car/truck/tractor came the other way, or the more interesting nice and shady winding sections between forests of trees bowed over the road. Unfortunately the later usually involved following one of the resident Trabants at a perambulating pace.

As we dribbled our way through the countryside we amused ourselves by testing our pronunciation of the names of the various towns that we went through. The thought went through our mind, how do you abbreviate a language, that in its written form, is very economical in its use of vowels in the first place? What does their txt language look like, would it be even more decipherable than English txt?

We arrived in Olomouc a little later than expected, and here we were surprised once again. We drove to our accommodation, to find a large courtyard behind a set of very old and large steel gates. On one side of the courtyard lay a church with very ornate wooden doors. At the far end was what appeared to be a wine shop (that would be very difficult for the public to access), and on the other side was a large neglected building with locked doors. The church was a very plain looking affair. Very square, straight and yes you guessed it made of grey concrete that is badly in need of repair. Outside the gate was a small sign that said ‘Hostel’ but this certainly didn’t look like the right place. Perhaps they had moved. We drove along the road a bit further into the town square to ask directions, and we were directed back (as far as we could tell) in the direction from which we had come. We went into what appeared to be the wine shop to find that it was the hostel reception, amongst other things. The hostel was in fact the dilapidated looking building with the locked doors. The receptionist was just escorting some people inside, they returned very shortly and left. We should have been warned by this, if not anything else.

What we were soon to discover was: (a) the name of the hostel had changed from what was listed on their website (b) the 24 hour reception is actually 9 – 11am and 4:30 – 8:30pm. If you arrive after this time you will not be able to get in (c) the full buffet breakfast is extra not included as promised (d) the free parking doesn’t exist (e) the double room isn’t a double room, as they don’t have double rooms (f) the quoted price didn’t include ‘Tourist Tax’ although they stated ‘no hidden costs’ (g) the Cable TV is just the cable (which hangs from the ceiling in the room) but there is no TV (h) the promised fridge is in the communal kitchen, but isn’t even remotely cold. (i) there is evidently a restaurant on site, but we are yet to find it. In fact the only thing that they promised that did exist was the 24 hour hot showers. And just while I am in a grizzle mood, this place really is a dive. it isn’t clean, there are rooms with lights but no light switches, there are extension power cables strung through several rooms to power the essentials like the stove. The room itself is very large and big enough to have a shower and toilet as well as the four single beds. Instead we have communal facilities for the floor and they don’t even provide toilet paper or the basics like curtains in the bedrooms. The shower looks like it has been built into a cupboard and opens directly into the communal hallway (the bathmat is outside the door). But there is free internet provided, provided you bring your own laptop. I’m not sure how those without manage.

We would be fine with all of this if it was cheap and reflected the condition of the place but it isn’t. We wouldn’t if the place was represented honestly in their advertising and online promotions, but it isn’t. Where is the Consumer Act when you need it?

However there are little cutesy pictures of kittens stuck to the walls everywhere. Perhaps we should give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they are in the process of doing a refurb. They certainly have the space and the room to have a great hostel here. Oh well, at least we have a bed to sleep in. Humph … sleep would be a good thing. These beds are so hard it would be more comfortable to sleep on the floor. After the first night we stacked the mattresses off the other two beds onto ours so hopefully our spines won’t hit the floor tonight. I could go on forever, but I feel that I have done enough winging to last a few days :-)

On the plus side as we looked out of our curtainless window, we watched an amazing sunset with brilliant colours, creating a vignette through the sky.

We woke in the morning to rain, and I mean big fat drops that land like fists on the cobblestones. We had a late start on browsing around the town, and what we saw between drops was very cool. This is a relatively undiscovered town on the tourist map, so it is nice to see it before the hordes arrive.

In the middle of the town square is the town hall. On one side of the town hall is an astronomical clock. This shows date, time, month, phase of the moon, the stars, plus a whole lot more besides. It has been redecorated several times over the years the most recent being in the communist days, and so the mosaic gilt and gold illustrations show a series of devout workers, instead of the pious saints of the previous centuries.

Also in the town square is a large bell. According to what we read (or rather interpreted) this little puppy weighs in at just over 2.7 tonnes. There is quite a bit of publication around and it seems that this bell, and its three mates were cast this year (2009) for the St Michaels church. They are very ornate and look very cool. According to what we could read these bells were cast to replace the bells that had been confiscated previously. We walked up to the belfry where the other three bells are located, and we aren’t sure if the fourth bell has been brought back down from there or perhaps it hasn’t quite made it up. February this year seemed to be a big date and we wondered if it was the 20th anniversary of the ‘Velvet Revolution’ that they were celebrating.

There seems to be an awful lot of churches here of every shape and description, from very small and circular to very large and ornate. We went into St Michael church and as is our custom we sat in a pew near the front to take in the ambiance of where we were. We noticed that carved into the pews like graffiti were various names and dates. ‘Elavk 1907’, ‘H. Rohm 1912’, etc. It makes you wonder who these people were, what they were doing here, what happened to them during their lives, what did they get to see? Wouldn’t it be interesting to be able to have a conversation with them now. Also in this church is a painting of the pregnant Mary. Something that you don’t get to see very often. We went from here to the very impressive St Wenceslas Cathedral. This was quite different, there is no graffiti here. As it was the end of the day they were about to close, so we will come back tomorrow, maybe even for a service. Perhaps we could pray for a 'powerful vengence' on the so called hostel that we are staying at ... but after we have gone :-)

CESKY KRUMLOV – Czech Republic (Thurs 23 July)

We had a quiet day today, starting with domestic duties, however we did get quite excited about the turn around time on our washing. We used the washing machine here at the hostel. A Bosch machine that did a complete wash cycle (dry to spin and out) in fifteen minutes. Imagine how many loads you could do on a Saturday morning with that baby.

Then it was on to more important things. We went for a drive which took us to the National Park which runs between the Czech and Austria. We wanted to go for a bush walk but first we had to find some bush. We passed a large reservoir lake on the way that is known as the Czech Rivera, but we came to the conclusion that this is probably because it is the largest piece of water that they have. We did find a place to stop in an area that is well know for its cycling so we thought that biopeds might be accommodated. The bike paths we found were roads, where we entertained ourselves by trying identify the road kill (We correctly identified a mole, but we had to Google to confirm).

When we did find somewhere to venture off the road, we were swarmed by mozzies, ants, flies, bees, butterflies, etc. It was like they hadn’t been fed for a month and were warned that we were coming. Just incase I haven’t mentioned this before, the insects here are huge. In between the trees we saw quite a few ant mounds that stood about one meter high and just as round, formed by the piling up of pine needles. We know these unusual structures were ant mounds, because Justine destroyed one to see what it was. We were faced with a teeming mass of very angry and very large ants, swarming in all directions. We didn’t fancy them up our trouser legs and so we legged it out of there. During the course of our scenic route we kept seeing these signs illustrating bears. We didn’t know if the track was called a bear track, or whether bears habituated the area, either way we made sure we made lots of noise and didn’t go too far before heading home again.

We finished the day by sitting down with a couple of a similar age to ourselves that are also staying here, to share a beer and a few stories. They are from a small town just out of Denver that has a population of about 400, 200 of which live in the local rest home. They are doing a quick tour of a few of the major cities in Europe (this one was an aside). It seems strange, now we are the ones sharing the stories with people and they look at us with disbelief. It was only a few weeks ago when the reverse was true.

CESKY KRUMLOV – Czech Republic (Wed 22 July)

We went up to the castle today and once again we were faced with the dilemma of there being five different tours and no combined tickets. So we opted for a climb up the stairs to the tower, as we have had quite our fill of baroque style state rooms for a few days. It’s an interesting castle. The exterior is painted in a fresco style (not sure if that what it is as on closer inspection the plaster seems to be etched), which gives it an almost illustrated fairytale feel.

But on the way to the castle we were studying the map and discovered that the castle had a ‘Bear Moat’, and we joked about whether the moat was to keep the bears in or our. As we discovered, it was neither. They keep bears in the moat. If you remember back to Auckland zoo about 35 years ago, when they kept bears in big concrete pits that were too small for them, well that is exactly what it was like. A couple of bears roaming around, picking through the cabbage for a bit of carrot, and looking totally bored with their lot. Kinda sad really.

But just in the nick of time we overheard something that gave us something to laugh about. It went like this, “How many countries are there in Europe?” “There’s like … you know … lots.” It wouldn’t be so funny if it wasn’t for the seriousness and conviction that the reply came with.

The other great attraction in this town seems to be the kayaking. You can hire out kayaks for a ride down the river, but the first step is through a short narrow chute, with a bit of white water at the bottom. This really is entertainment. It’s like rookie hour. Almost every single kayak not only tips it’s occupants into the water, but then proceeds to fill with water and sink. They have people stationed a few meters downstream to pick up all the pieces of debris and flotsam. And they have people lining up to do this who have obviously never stepped into a kayak before in their lives. It really is entertainment.

We spent the rest of the day generally browsing around the town. And it was during this browsing that I spotted something that gave me a new realization of the age of these towns. We were joining the audience watching another kayak tip it’s occupants into the river when I noticed a rock that a couple were sitting on. This rock was about 4 meters long and looked like it had been shaped at some point in it’s life into a square profile. Well weathered along it’s side was MDCXXV (1625). I am guessing that this was the year. This is just a piece of river junk, cast up on the bank for someone to sit on. It puts the age and time into perspective doesn’t it.

COMMUNAL KITCHENS

There is a down side to sharing kitchens and this is it. This is the sight that we were greeted with this morning when we went out for breakfast. Some *#^@* had had a right royal cook up breakfast before checking out, and left us with their mess to clean up. There’s always one to spoil it for the rest.

CESKY KRUMLOV – Czech Republic (Tues 21 July)

We headed out of town today to a very small place called Hluboka Nad Vltavou. Their claim to fame is the castle on the hill, or more correctly the Chateau. This is a neo-Gothic affair that was rebuilt in the mid 1800s by the Schwarzenberg family, and inspired as we were told by Windsor Castle.

We expected to do what we have done at other places around here, buy a ticket and go for a browse, but this was not to be the case. To go for a browse, you must go with a tour group. You have a choice of two tours that do different parts of the castle and they don’t sell combined tickets to see both. You have a choice of following a Czech speaking group, with a piece of paper written in English, or wait two hours and do an English tour for twice the price. We opted for the former, and as pleasant as the guide was, some of the jokes are lost in translation.

The whole place is very ornate. Carved wood paneling everywhere. Some of the rooms were entirely decorated to the point where the portraits were inset into the walls and the wood paneling formed their frames. There was a very elaborately carved filigree mirror frame that took 17 months to create. There were Murano Split glass chandeliers, in fact there was a lot of Italian art and decoration throughout the rooms. The story goes that Princess Eleonora was often confronted by her husband on the cost of the decorations as he was more ‘economical’ in his thinking, but she usually won.

For me the most impressive part though was the armoury, but perhaps that is just the boy in me coming out. They had every conceivable type of sword, crossbow, guns of all shapes and sizes, canons, mace, full body armour, etc. What never fails to surprise me though is the size of the body armour. The guys that wore this stuff were extremely small.

After we came back out into the sunshine, we were greeted with the sounds of drums coming up the gravel path. And there was a half dressed guy beating a drum and leading a procession of a camel and several horses, all done up in medieval livery. And there was a poor guy at the back following them with a wheelbarrow and shovel, ready to pick up anything if required. It makes you wonder what he did that was so bad that they allocated him that job. Short straw perhaps. The whole spectacle was to promote and announce a medieval event, due to the language difficulty we still aren’t sure what. Perhaps a jousting contest, perhaps a witch hunt or public slaying, we didn’t hang around to find out.

As we drove out of town, we saw what looked like the cliché storks on the chimney pot. But this wasn’t cliché, this was for real. A family of stocks standing on a huge nest that they had built on the top of some ones chimney. Now you know you aren’t at home when you see that.

On the way home we called into Ceske Budejovice. Our first experience in this town was with a beggar in the car park. He bowled up to us as we were parking our car and proceeded to pull up his shirt to display a urine bag strapped to his stomach and then ask for money. He had the exchange rates all worked out for Czech, Euro and US Dollars, just in case we were in any doubt as to what a fair amount would be. We declined him on all three counts. So he went off to try the next car. He must do quite well out of it as I saw him going into the bank later with quite a little bundle of cash. Every country has it’s different flavours of beggars, ranging from the straight out annoyance factor (Milan) to the sympathy vote as we had just experienced.

Once we got past that it was a very cool town with a very large town square in its centre, surrounded by 18th Century buildings and a large fountain at its centre. In one corner stands the grey town hall which has figures of the four virtues at its top and dragon like figures seemingly protruding from the building itself. Then as you turn your back and start walking away the bells start to chime (as they do every hour). And what an impressive sound. The tune is like no chiming that I have heard before. Very cool.

But what this town is best known for is its beer. This is the home town of ‘Budweiser Budvar’ beer. And we aren’t talking about the cheap imitation crap that the Americans love and make with the same name. This is the real stuff, and there is no comparison.

CESKY KRUMLOV – Czech Republic (Mon 20 July)

Today started out a little grey but at least it isn’t raining. Our destination today was Cesky Krumlov, across the border into the Czech Republic, only about 150 kms away. First we had to head back towards Linz, but this time we decided to take the back roads, which for the first part of the journey took us along the bank of the Danube.

When it came time to cross the river, we crossed what appeared to be a hydro dam, but to quote Justine, “It can’t be a dam, this is the Danube, they can’t dam the Danube.” But indeed they had. And alongside the dam was a lock for the barges. So we stopped and watched for a while. The last boat through that we saw was two barges tied two abreast and pushed by a single tug-like craft. These barges are big boys and they only just fitted through. It showed that these skippers have been doing it for a while, as it slid through with no more than six inches to spare on either side. The only fenders they used was a single block of 4x4 wood hanging over the side at both front corners. Very impressive. From the time of sliding in, to sliding out the other end, 8-9 meters lower was about 15 minutes.

The rest of the journey was interesting as GPS Jenny decided to go AWOL on us. According to her we were driving across farmland, forests and non existent lakes. We have learnt not to rely entirely on her and use our discretion at times, much to her chagrin. None the less we pressed on through the areas of open farmland looking like patchwork, with squares of freshly cut hay, wheat, sunflowers, and woodland coming right down to the road edge. If we were at home these areas of woodland would be called bush, but this definitely isn’t bush. These are areas of trees standing tall in well organized rows, growing in a way that each tree respects the personal space of those around it. The ground cover and scrub that we are used to, just doesn’t exist.

We had our passports and papers at the ready as we had heard that the Czech border guards were particularly stringent, but when we got there, there was no one there and we just drove straight through. We’re still not quite used to these land based borders where neither country cares whether you come or go. They have laws that say that you can only holiday in any one country for a maximum of 90 days, but it makes you wonder how they enforce it when they have no idea who is in the country.

Into the Czech we went. According to the guidebooks, the Czechs have been invaded by the Habsburgs, the Nazis, the Soviets, and now by tour groups, so I feel that we have a treat in store. The landscape didn’t change much from what we had left on the other side of the border, but the architecture of the small towns that we went through, definitely did. You immediately had the feel of communist functionality over form.

Then we arrived in Cesky Krumlov … Wow! What a cool little town. We are staying in a small place in the old part of town that has private facilities, common kitchen, dining and garden to enjoy the evening sun. But aside from all that, the town just has a very cool medieval feel to it. We went for a bit of a wander which included a visit to the St Vitus Cathedral. From across town the cathedral is very impressive with its tall steeple. But once inside, we were disappointed. Perhaps this was because of the pervasive old and musty smell, the fact that every thing was covered in dust and needed a good clean. But perhaps it was suffering from the Abbey that we had seen less than 24 hours previous. Outside of the Cathedral, this is a very impressive town, one that we are going to enjoy exploring over the next few days. It definitely has that bohemian feel.

MELK - Austria (Sun 19 July)

As we had ordered, we woke to a blue sky this morning. This wasn’t to last all day but at least the weather was fine. Unfortunately a large part of the snow from yesterday had washed down, so we didn’t get the photo opportunity that we were hoping for, but there are still large patches left behind.

Our first stop this morning was a return visit to Halstatt, and our main reason for returning was to go to the Charnel House or Bone House. This is a small chapel that is attached to one of the churches there. Inside this small room there are 1200 skulls stacked up on a table/bench that runs around three walls, with other bones stacked in neat piles under the bench. Most of these skulls have been painted with decorations, and have the owners name and date of death painted on. Much like the firewood piles that I mentioned earlier, these skulls are arranged very orderly and systematically. They are organised according to the family names. This is the only such location of this happening in the world.

The story goes that with land being such a premium here (being wedged between the lake and the mountain) after 20 years of being buried, the bodies were exhumed and the skulls and bones were placed in the bone house and the graves reused. The decorations on the skulls reflect the flowers that would normally sit on the grave, and are a symbol of the love of the family. This practice started in the 12th Century, and the last to arrive in 1995. Today, this will only happen if it is specifically requested in a persons will, but this doesn’t often happen.

What they did say, but not fully explain, was that even today the graves are reused. After twenty years of a body being buried, the grave is re-dug and a new body buried. They didn’t say what happened to the previous occupant, whether their remains were put somewhere else, or whether the new body was put on top, or added to the existing one. So many questions. This language barrier can be a real curse sometimes.

After having another wander around the town, we pressed on for Melk. The trip there was pretty ordinary and we arrived at about 3:00pm. We had left the mountains behind and were now in the land of the rolling hills once again. We are almost back to where we started in this country, not far from Vienna.

The main feature of Melk is the Golden Abbey, and this can be seen long before you get there. The abbey has been the home to Benedictine monks since the 11th Century. Perched on the hill it really does look golden, but from the colour of the paintwork, not via gilt. The gilt is kept for the inside and the church would be one of the most gilt ridden that we have seen. Amazing to see.

But before you get to the church, you pass through the museum. According to what we read here, the rule of St Benedictine can be summarized ‘Ora et labora et lege’ which means ‘pray and work and read’. I hadn’t realized that this was the basis of education and cultivation in Europe. But when we got to the library a little further on, this was apparent. This is the sort of library that book lovers dream of: 12 rooms, 1,888 manuscripts, 750 incunabula (printed works from before 1500 ad), 16th 17th and 18th Century works. Together with newer works this library totals about 100,000 volumes, organized in topics, starting with the bible of course. In the one room that we were in, there were 16,000 volumes. There is no Dewy numbering system here, it makes you wonder how they find what they are looking for.

But getting back to the museum, the highlight of this abbey is that there is a cross here that holds a fingernail sized splinter from the cross of Christ, that was given to the abbey in 1040. This splinter has been stolen twice, once in 1169 by a priest, and then again in 1362. Both times the guilty parties were proven guilty by … unusual means. Means, that bring back memories of the witch hunts and how they were expected to prove their innocence. Whatever the means, the guilty parties were hanged, and burnt at the stake, as you do when someone steals a relic from Christ.

Another cool item there was the recyclable coffin from 1784, which took us back to Halstatt earlier in the day. The deal was that they believed that the wooden coffin hindered the decomposition of the body. So they lowered the person into the grave. Then when every one had left, they pulled a pulley, the body dropped out of the bottom, they hoisted the coffin back up again to be used again, and they filled in the grave. How’s that for recycling? Just several centuries before their time.

Once again today, we found churches to be filled with the macabre, weird and the morbid. We started the day with a chapel filled with skulls, and we ended the day in a museum with items containing body parts such as pieces of shin bone, fingernails, and pieces of hair. We were once again surrounded with varying concepts of death and mortality. It really is an interesting world we live in, where we can almost expect to see the unexpected, every day.

Tonight is our last night in Austria, tomorrow we are Czech-ing out. So we finished our stay here with a local dish, Weiner schnitzel and an Edelweiss beer.