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.
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