The journeys of Captain Oddsocks

Where the Czech...? #163

2011-12-09T16:53:00.002+01:00

This picture was taken from the third floor of a renaissance chateau. Do you know which town it's in?

Where the Czech...? #162

2011-12-02T12:44:00.000+01:00

Does anyone know what and where this is?

Where the Czech...? #161

2011-11-25T09:43:00.000+01:00

Who'll be first to tell us where this is?

These boots are made for walkin'...

2011-11-22T23:19:00.010+01:00

In the context of Czech towns and cities that might be interesting to foreign travellers, Zlín is quite unusual because most of its tourist attractions are modern.

They're also connected with the story of one family and their company, Baťa Shoes. Siblings Anna, Antonín and Tomáš Baťa came from a long family line of cobblers but the company they founded in Zlín in 1894 became one of the biggest shoemaking concerns the world has ever seen and still has 50 factories, more than 4500 shops and almost 50,000 direct employees.

There was an element of being in the right place at the right time for Baťa shoes (with the outbreak of World War One and huge orders from the Austrian army) but good management and integrity were key to the company's amazing expansion. Tomas Baťa was sometimes called the “Henry Ford of Eastern Europe” for his quickness to embrace the technologies of large-scale production, but he's best remembered in the history of Zlín for his integrity and social consciousness. Baťa employees were paid up to 4 times more than their counterparts in other countries and were assisted with housing, specialized training, medical care, insurance and retirement benefits decades (if not lifetimes) before before these things became the norm for factory workers elsewhere.

The Baťa family left Czechoslovakia soon after the occupation by Nazi Germany, and in the late 1940s the remainder of Baťa shoes was nationalized by the new communist government. The communists tried to portray the Baťas as ruthless and exploitative capitalists, but such was the regard for the family that Jan Baťa was cleared of all 64 charges against him by an extraordinarily courageous jury. The communists came up with new charges, resorted to a closed military trial to justify the seizure of company assets and in 1949 Baťa shoes was renamed Svit, Zlín itself was renamed Gottwaldov (after the first Czech Communist president Klement Gottwald) and the Canadian province of Ontario became the new world home of Baťa shoes.

Three places to find out more about the Zlín heyday of Baťa shoes are building 21 (the former headquarters), the excellent and extensive shoe museum, and street after street of the cute little Baťa villas - the cubelike houses built by the leading architects of the first republic for Baťa factory workers.

The distinctive Baťa villas use the same combination of exposed red brick and pale grey concrete as the factories you'll see if you arrive at Zlín central station by train. Wandering the streets of villas and trying to imagine how wonderful they must have seemed to the factory workers of the 1920s and 30s is possible all year round, and from May through September the 1930s interior of the villa at Nad Ovčírnou II 1295 is also open to the public (unfortunately closed during 2011 'for technical reasons').

The shoe museum takes its visitors through seven centuries of shoes ranging from peasant boots to embroidered royal slippers to a pair of 41cm monsters made for an American basketball player. There's also a recreated workshop and displays of techniques and tools. For non-Czech speakers there are translated booklets explaining all the exhibits, the history of shoemaking in general and the Baťa company specifically.

Building 21, the Zlín skyscraper, offers a wonderful view over the city from its new rooftop cafe and terrace, the chance to ride a continuous paternoster elevator and to visit the boss's office which was built in an 6x6m elevator (fitted with air-conditioning and running water) that could travel horizontally as well as vertically throughout the skyscraper! Unfortunately that was also closed on my last visit to Zlín, so I don't have any photos to show you, but the best way to remedy that is to plan a little trip to south Moravia and see it for yourself!

Markéta Irglová - Crossroads

2011-11-21T13:22:00.005+01:00

Some nice shots of Wallachia sprinkled through this clip. See if you can spot the main square of Nový Jičín.

Where the Czech...? #160

2011-11-18T06:28:00.000+01:00

Who knows which town this town hall belongs to?

Grandmother's Valley

2011-11-17T04:53:00.001+01:00

"It was long, long ago, when last I gazed on that dear face, kissed those pale, wrinkled cheeks, and tried to fathom the depths of those blue eyes, in which were hidden so much goodness and love."

The author of this simple lament for her deceased grandmother was one of Czech literature's most highly regarded figures, Božena Němcová. Her image graces the five hundred crown banknote, and the cool, green valley of the Úpa river around the Ratibořice chateau is called Grandmother's valley after her most beloved character. Grandmother is an iconic story in Romantic Czech literature and if you think of the regard for stories like Huckleberry Finn or the Adventures of Robin Hood you’ll have an idea of the tale's place in the national consciousness.

For anyone who has read Grandmother and wants to find out more, the gentle, leafy stretch of the Úpa river valley from Havlovice to Česká Skalice is a good place to start. Božena's father worked as a stablehand at the Ratibořice chateau for most of her childhood and it along with the other prominent buildings of the valley provide the setting for her stories.

The Ratibořice chateau sits on the side of a low hill surrounded by dense gardens. As you crossed the Úpa River and follow the road across its open floodplain, the trees of the forest provide an almost theatrical backdrop. As you draw close to the chateau around the gentle right hand bend, the huge carpark and the jumble of souvenir and refreshment stands will make immediately clear just how popular this place is among individuals and school groups.

A little further along the same road is the old water mill. The narrow channel that runs alongside still turns the huge wooden waterwheels, but the roguish miller and his family are long gone. Further up the valley again near a weir is the wide flat plain called bělidlo, which come from the word běla or bíla meaning white. Usually translated into English as the Bleachery, it was the place that the peasants of the valley gathered to wash their linen and clothes and spread them out on the even grass to dry in the sunshine. The wooden cottage there was Božena's childhood home.

When you've explored the chateau, the mill and the cottage at the old bleachery, there's also a very pretty 3km path along which young Božena walked from Ratibořice to attend school in Česká Skalice. The path is marked with signs describing the history but they’re only in Czech. The Božena Němcová museum in Česká Skalice's old wooden schoolhouse has translations for the exhibits.

Even if you won't make it to Grandmothers valley, take a look at Božena's portrait on the five hundred crown banknote and keep an eye out for statues of her or streets named in her honour. She's an important and respected figure in modern Czech history and if you're spending much time in the Czech Republic it's good to be aware of at least a couple of those.

What is happiness? - Sunflower caravan

2011-11-14T08:39:00.000+01:00

Where the Czech...? #159

2011-11-11T11:24:00.000+01:00

I don't think I've ever seen a more unlikely buttress than the one that leaps up to support the side of this old Gothic church. Does anyone know where it is?

Between two churches...

2011-11-08T15:18:00.012+01:00

Frýdek-Místek is a city of around 60,000 inhabitants that straddles the Ostravice river about 18km (11 miles) south of Ostrava. The river here forms the border between the old historic lands of Moravia and Silesia and the hyphen might be a clue that Frýdek-Místek was once two towns. Frýdek chateau sits atop a high rocky outcrop on the eastern, Silesian side of the river; Místek was founded to watch over the lower, western, Moravian side of the river crossing.

The two tiny historic town centres of Frýdek and Místek are now surrounded by a sprawl of everything that was good and bad about the architecture and town planning of the socialist era. The high density apartment towers are separated by generous green spaces and the wide footpaths, tunnels and courtyards make it easy for pedestrians to get to either old town or the the bus and train stations that are just on the Frýdek side of the river. Unfortunately though, the lawns and gardens are unkempt, the pathways are crumbling and littered and the ground-floor shops that should have been grocery stores, hairdressers and newsagents have devolved into dark and mostly deserted non-stop bars filled with flashing lights and hypnotized gamblers.

Luckily there's more to Frýdek-Místek than its bedraggled suburbs and most visitors will probably spend their time in one or both of the historic old towns. The street layout of both is preserved.

Místek is the smaller of the two and just off the tidy marketplace square stands the most impressive building. The church of St. James was originally Gothic but the striking red and white plaster and pear-shaped copper dome are from a later reconstruction in the baroque style. Many of the houses around the old marketplace square are quite attractive and one side has a beautiful long arcade walkway from the 1500's. There are some insensitive and ugly buildings on the square too, and because the old town of Místek is so small, you really only have to walk one block to be among the grimly oppressive pavilions that sell discount clothes and house a hard-to-comprehend number of seedy all-night gambling bars.

Across the river in the shadow of the imposing Basilica of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, Frýdek's old town does a better job of shrugging off the surrounding urban grimness. No doubt it's helped by its position atop a relatively steep-sided hill and the loosely connected ring of parks that cushion the impact of the communist-era architects. The imposing chateau that stands over the western end of Frýdek's slightly sloping rectangular square is open to the public six days a week and the courtyards and formal park are free of charge.

The rest of the Frýdek square is lined by two, three and four storey townhouses in varying architectural styles, and they seem to house the best of the city's best cafes, restaurants, penzions and shops. My particular favourite is the Frýdek-Místek teahouse (at Hluboká 64).

If you're not familiar with teahouses, they're inspired by the orient, offer 100 types of tea from across the world and there's at least one in every decent sized town in the Czech republic. I'm not sure what makes the Frýdek one so special but everyone I've taken there seems to agree it has a certain something. It's long been my favourite teahouse but if anyone thinks they've been to a better one, please post the address in the comments below because I'd love to check it out.

7

Where the Czech...? #158

2011-11-04T10:49:00.000+01:00

Who recognises this?

Where the Czech...? #157

2011-10-28T10:11:00.002+02:00

Who can work out or guess where this is?

Where the Czech...? #156

2011-10-21T13:46:00.000+02:00

This is a tough one. Does anybody know where it is?

Hats off to Nový Jičín

2011-10-18T17:49:00.016+02:00

The main central square of Nový Jičín is one of the Czech Republic's most attractive. It's almost an equal-sided square and the two or three storey townhouses that line its edge have colourful facades and covered arcades that create an unbroken walkway around the entire perimeter. Not a single building looks out of place and towers of the town hall and the church of the holy trinity add an extra pinch of architectural drama.

Two of the nicest houses on the square are both towards the corner near the Church of the Assumption. The yellow and white one with the balcony on each floor was originally the town's post office but is now used as shops, a cultural centre and on the top floor an excellent little cafe with seating inside or overlooking the square from the flower covered balcony. Nearby, the sky blue House of the White Angel has the most elaborately decorated of all the street frontages and has served as the town's pharmacy since the early 1700's.

The plague column in the middle of the square has been recently restored and in front of it stands a small fountain with two dancing characters dressed in the typical German costume of the region. Nový Jičín was a Sudeten German town and if you meet ten locals, you'll probably hear ten different explanations for the figures on the fountain. If you meet the same guy that I met while I was crouching down to photograph it you might even hear a conspiracy theory or two.

Away to one side of the plague column and the dancing German settlers is a new statue of St Nicholas gazing across towards the church tower. Near his feet lays a large bowl shaped fountain and surrounding it are three small sculptures of apples. I've no idea what they represent but they're cool. I also quite liked the modern coloured lights that play unobtrusively on some the historic buildings after dusk.

Just off the square the renaissance chateau houses the museum of hats and millinery. Nový Jičín has a centuries long tradition of hatmaking (since at least the early 1600's) including the opening of the TONAK workshops in 1799. Anyone with the slightest interest in vintage clothing absolutely must pay the museum a visit. Darling.

With good transport links and good range of accommodation for all budgets, Nový Jičín is well worth considering as a base while you're exploring the countryside between Olomouc and Ostrava. Pretty little Štramberk is just a few kilometres away, as is Kopřivnice (and its Tatra automobile museum), Příbor (Sigmund Freud's home town) and the moody ruins of Starý Jičín castle.

Accommodation in Nový Jičín
Nový Jičín official tourist information

Where the Czech...? #155

2011-10-14T05:44:00.000+02:00

Who recognises this pretty town square?

Trying to like Ústí

2011-10-11T16:18:00.002+02:00

Among the rounded hills of the North Bohemian highlands about 80km north of Prague, the city of Ústí nad Labem lies in the valley of the mighty Labe River where the smaller river Bílina joins it on the long journey towards the North Sea.

It may sound like a lovely setting for a city, but Ústí has a reputation as being not a very nice place to visit. And as you approach, it’s easy to see why. No matter from the north or south or by train from the west along the Bílina valley, huge industrial and manufacturing zones litter the skyline, hillsides and riverbanks with smoke stacks, silos, conveyor belts and docking cranes.

Poor Ústí can’t even rely on the saving grace of many riverside cities, their bridges, for a bit of architectural interest or romance. The southernmost of Ústí’s three river crossings is a flat Meccano-like span and the middle bridge with the arched top is little better. Despite its brutal modern design, the northernmost bridge is the most striking of the three. Two high sharp-edged pillars of reinforced concrete rise asymmetrically from the river’s eastern bank and from those, steel cables as thick as a man’s leg fan out to evenly spaced points across the span like the web of a monstrous mechanical spider or one of those string and pin wall hangings your crafty aunt used to make back in the 1970’s.

The old centre of Ústí roughly keeps the original layout of the customs settlement that grew beside the river between the 10th and 13th centuries, but apart from the two churches, there’s little remaining of historic architectural interest. On the main square alone there are five modern buildings of six stories or more. Of them the only one that really displays any architectural grace is the Česká Spořitelna building with its considered proportions and detailed relief work around the entrances.

There’s also an interesting mosaic column, presumably from the communist era, that scales the height of the bronze-windowed Magistrát Města building, but when I visited in October 2008 it appeared soon to disappear behind whatever the cranes and concrete trucks were constructing behind the barricades in that corner of the square.

The worst of the buildings is the 13 storey bright blue Interhotel Bohemia. As if being 13 floors high and bright but grimy blue weren’t enough, it also has large illuminated signs proclaiming Casino Non-stop and a flashing and beeping electronic billboard that blasts out across the main part of the square.

With so many Czech cities and towns talking such good care of their historic centres, how did Ústí manage to become such an eyesore? Grim European cities tend to fall into one of two categories; industrial or war-damaged. Ústí falls into both.

When the industrial revolution began to replace traditional manual labour with machines and factories in the 18th and 19th centuries, Ústí found itself with all the prerequisites for transformation into an industrial and manufacturing centre; The surrounding hills are laced with rich deposits of brown coal which was a convenient source of energy and the wide and easily navigable river Labe at its feet provided Ústí with an efficient means of transport.

Two large ports were built on the left bank of the Labe, a shipbuilding factory soon followed and not only did Ústí mine and ship coal, coal powered factories were built nearby to manufacture goods close to the source of their energy.

Today the Setuza industrial area is the backdrop for any view across the river from the centre of Ústí and slightly west of the centre along the valley of the Bílina River, is another industrial area the size of a small city. The main resident here is Spolchemie a.s. They manufacture chemicals, glues and other substances for use in the building, plastics and pharmaceutical industries.

On top of 100 gloomy years of coal mining and heavy industry, Ústí suffered more than most Czech cities during the Nazi occupation from 1938-45. In the mid 1930’s there had been a sizable Jewish community in Ústí nad Labem including prominent business families the Petscheks and the Weinmanns. Both families managed to emigrate before Ústí was, along with the rest of the Sudetenland, fell into Mr Hitler’s control in October 1938. The Petschek villa was occupied by the Gestapo then the Communist Party and is now an art school.

Ústí’s Jewish quarter just west of the city centre was completely destroyed during the war and the land is now part of the Spolchemie industrial zone. No trace remains of The Ústí synagogue, which was burnt to the ground at the end of 1938 and the former hillside Jewish cemetery is now the city park. The headstones that couldn’t be sold or otherwise used were laid flat and covered with earth and there they remain, the Cemetery remembered only by a monument in the form of a huge stone Star of David half buried in the soil at the lowest corner of the park.

The worst blows to Ústí came towards the end of WWII. A section of the Berlin to Prague Railway had been laid through in the 1870’s and with its high-capacity ports Ústí was one of the busiest and most important transport hubs in central Europe. With the German Army transporting huge numbers of troops through Ústí and making use of the extensive manufacturing hardware to produce arms it was an obvious target for Allied bombing raids.

The allies first bombed Ústí in December 1944, but the most destructive raids were in April the following year. In two raids, the 8th squadron of the American air force destroying almost a quarter of the city’s buildings. Both historic churches were damaged and at least 512 people lost their lives. The majority of the German troops managed to survive the bombing in air raid shelters; most of the known victims were local residents, German civilians retreating before the approaching eastern front, or prisoners of war including French, Czech and Slovakian resistance fighters and captive soldiers of the soviet red army.

Especially tragic was that for those 512 lives and 2137 buildings destroyed, the Allied forces gained almost nothing. The Wehrmacht was able to repair the railway junction to resume full transport of troops and supplies to the eastern front through Ústí within a matter of hours, and the manufacture of weapons and ammunition was unaffected.

Tragically the bombing raids weren’t the only unnecessary mass loss of innocent lives in Ústí that year. Czechoslovakia’s ethnic German minority was Hitler’s main excuse for his invasion, and many of those ‘liberated’ Sudeten Germans enthusiastically became enthusiastic Nazi supporters and collaborators.

Immediately following the war, the understandably anti-German feeling in Czech society, and the gradual revelation of the full scale of the crimes of the holocaust made it seem impossible that the two nationalities could ever again live peacefully side by side in a single society. The transfer of ethnic Germans to Germany and Austria seemed the only conceivable solution and was approved by the Allied powers at the Potsdam conference in August 1945.

Before the officially approved population transfer began though were a series of events collectively known as the wild expulsion. Groups of armed Czechs took the law into their own hands and violently forced their German neighbours from their homes, towns and the country. The worst incidents were the Brno death march and the massacres at Postoloprty, Švédská Šance (near Přerov) and Ústí nad Labem.

On the afternoon of 31 June 1945 a group of ethnic Germans finished work at the Setuza factory (from Severočeské Tukové Závody-the elegantly named North Bohemian Fat Works) in Ústí nad Labem, and set out to walk home across the middle of Ústí’s three bridges. They met a group of Czechs, words were exchanged and it led to a violent struggle in which as many as 100 of the Germans were thrown from the bridge and lost their lives in the waters of the Labe River below. The custodian of the Ústí museum who first told me the story said that even children and babies in prams were thrown to their deaths.

The Ústí massacre is not a very well known event and seems to have been so thoroughly covered up during the communist era that many Czechs have never heard of it. If you’re ever in Ústí though, take a walk across the bridge on the downstream footpath and out near the middle you'll find a small plaque with the words “In memory of the victims of the violence on 31.7.1945”.

As you lean over the railing and think about the distance to the water’s surface, spare a moment to be grateful that the human race has matured and progressed to the point that mob violence based on a victim’s ethnicity couldn't...uh, never mind.

Where the Czech...? #154

2011-07-01T16:16:00.000+02:00

Does anybody recognise this main square?

Where the Czech...? #153

2011-06-25T23:04:00.000+02:00

Who knows where this is?

Where the Czech...? #152

2011-06-17T09:42:00.002+02:00

Who recognises this town's main square?

Another cycle trip

2011-04-10T22:06:00.032+02:00

If you meet an English speaking traveller who tells you they've done a week-long cycling tour in the Czech Republic, there's a pretty good chance (I'd guess at least 4 out of 5) that they rode either from Mikulov to Český Krumlov or from Český Krumlov to Mikulov. Which is fine, of course, but sometimes I answer questions on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree forum and when one came up recently I found myself with hesitations about recommending the Mikulov-Krumlov shuffle.

South Moravia is probably my favourite region in the country and South Bohemia is definitely in the top three good-looking regions in the room, but I just wonder if this route really deserves four times as much attention and patronage as the rest of the cycle routes in the country put together. My main concern is that, with the exception of Znojmo, all the other towns might start to look a bit the same.

Znojmo has around 35000 inhabitants, medieval catacombs, and a variety of Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance architecture; but Mikulov, Slavonice, Telč, Jindřichův Hradec, Třeboň and Český Krumlov are all smallish towns (maximum 20000 people) dominated by the renaissance architecture of the 16th century (two storeys plus attic, pastel or sgraffito facades, arcade walkways, and dating from 1500-1620). Unless you really have a specific interest in the variations and intricacies of Central European renaissance architecture (I must admit that applies to me) wouldn't this route be a bit like going to a smorgasbord dinner and having six helpings of the same dish?
In the case of the fellow that asked the original question, (lets call him Ben) I kind of thought Mikulov to Krumlov would be OK, but he expressed interest in hearing any other suggestions I might have and because I'm intending to finish my round the country ride soon, I thought it might be a good exercise to plan an itinerary a bit and see if it's any use to him or anyone else.

Ben was thinking of beginning in Mikulov and my last ride finished in Mutěnice near Hodonín, but for the purposes of this we might split the difference and start in Břeclav. Ben has a week and I have more than a month, so he'd have to skip some of the things I'd visit and I'd be able to devote more time to each place.

Břeclav

Břeclav is a good place to start because it has excellent rail connections and a well-equipped train station. Bombed in World War II, it's now a fairly unattractive town, but there is a chateau that was built to look like a partly ruined medieval castle during the romantic 19th century. Behind the chateau, cycle trail #43 heads off through the Dyje natural park towards Lednice chateau.

Lednice-Valtice area

The Lednice-Valtice area is 2 square kilometres of landscaped countryside and world heritage architecture from the 19th century. The highlights are another mock ruined castle hunting lodge called Janův Hrad, the minaret designed by Josef Hardtmuth (better known abroad for his pencils), the Lednice chateau and greenhouse and the chateau and Jesuit church in Valtice. I've done this ride a few time and i like to follow trail 41 out of Lednice, then turn off along the lake to visit Hlohovec castle, which marks the old border between Moravia and Austria. From there it's up and over a vineyard-covered hill and down into Valtice. Valtice's wine cellars are a great opportunity to sample the local drop, but bear in mind that cyclists should technically have a 0.0 blood-alcohol-content. From Valtice there are minor country roads back to Břeclav or sandy trails through the forest and past the rendezvous and monuments.

Ruins of the Great Moravian Empire

Trail #43 south out of Břeclav leads to Pohansko, which is marked on all the Lednice-Valtice maps because of the Pohansko chateau. More interesting to me though is the nearby archaeological site and reconstruction of a small encampment from the Great Moravian Empire. The Empire was the first organised nation state of Slavic peoples but you hear very little about it because most information comes out of Prague and getting a proud Praguer to use 'Great' and 'Moravia' in the same breath is like getting blood from a a stone.

Past Lanžhot, cycle trail 44 runs along the bank of the Morava river, and is a great opportunity to absorb what you learned at Pohansko, before delving into the centre of the great Moravian empire at Mikulčice. Actually no-one knows where the capital was, but the excavations at Mikulčice uncovered the largest cache of Great Moravian churches, graves, jewellery and ceramics ever found. It's likely to be the Czech Republic's next UNESCO-world heritage site.

Hodonín

From there it's not far to Hodonín, which has an impressive main square church, and museums devoted to a) local boy and liberator president Tomas Garrigue Masaryk and b) South Moravia's oil industry. You didn't know they drilled for oil in South Moravia? Neither did I - I'm looking forward to visiting to find out more about it. From Hodonín, trail #47 leads along the river valley towards Strážnice, or we could shortcut through Slovakia and the pretty little town of Skalica.

Strážnice

Strážnice is best known for the huge folk festival that takes place every year in and for its skansen. A skansen is basically an outdoor museum; in this case with a collection of typical traditional South Moravian cottages, farmhouses and gardens. There's also a renaissance chateau that offers budget accommodation, a Jewish cemetery and a small port for boats navigating the Bata Canal.

Uherské Hradiště or Uherský Brod & Luhačovice

Uherské Hradiště is the biggest town in the Moravské Slovácko region. If it were possible to single out the one Czech region that has best held on to its folk traditions and customs it would probably be Moravské Slovácko. There's a handful of wonderful old historic buildings in Uherské Hradiště, but the best way to use the town is as a base to get into the real Slovácko countryside.

One good day long cycle trip is the loop to Buchlovice chateau ( home of the garlic festival) The imposing gothic Buchlov castle, Tupesy (ceramics workshop, gift centre and museum), Velehrad (pilgrimage church) and Modra (reconstructed huts, houses and church from the Great Moravian empire).

Uherský Brod is a relaxed town with a couple of very impressive churches and a good museum to the most famous local boy Jan Amoš Komenský, better known abroad as Comenius - the teacher of nations. Luhačovice is a spa town in a lovely forested setting with some of architect Dušan Jurkovic's best work. Personally I think all places mentioned above are worth visiting, but a cyclist pressed for time would probably ride from Strážnice to Zlín either along the river via Uh. Hradiště or up over the hills via Uh. Brod and Luhačovice.

Zlín

Home of Bata shoes. The innovative Bata factories, villas and shoe museum can all be visited and office block 21 is especially worthwhile for the rooftop terrace, the elevator office and the free exhibition on the eighth floor. The town chateau has good exhibition about the local film animation industry and the annual festival of children's film happens each year at the end of May.

Vallašské Meziříčí and Rožnov pod radhoštěm

In my experience, Wallachia (Vallašsko) is the Czech republic's friendliest region. Vallašské Meziříčí is its biggest town and the pleasant old square, cool bars and cafes and the inexpensive guesthouse right in the chateau make it a good place to base yourself for a few days. Check out one of the teahouses and the coffee shop in the upholstery school.

The big attraction of Rožnov pod radhoštěm is its collection of traditional wooden buildings. In the early 20th century there were two brothers who bought any timber building they heard was going to be demolished and somehow got permission to restore and reassemble them in the Rožnov town park on the right bank of the river Bečva. There's a church, a mill, a post office, a couple of working pubs and traditional festivals or events almost every weekend from May through September.

Nový Jičín/Štramberk/Kopřivnice/Příbor/Hukvaldy

Nový Jičín and the towns nearby have plenty to keep anyone interested for few days. Nový Jičín has one of the prettiest main squares in the country, the hat museum and Starý Jičín castle ruins just outside town. Štramberk has good collection of traditional wooden Wallachian houses, the remains of a hilltop castle lookout tower and an excellent microbrewery on the main square. Příbor is Sigmund Freud's birthplace and the family house is now open to the public. Kopřivnice has the wonderfully quirky Tatra car and truck museum and Hukvaldy castle ruins are worth visiting even if you miss the annual Janaček music festival. The #502 trail connects most of these destinations.

Frýdek-Místek

I want to go back to Frýdek-Místek mostly because it has the best teahouse I've ever been to. Frýdek and Místek were originally two towns; Místek on the left, Moravian bank of the Ostravice river, and Frýdek across on the opposite bank in Silesia. The historic centre of Frýdek around the square and chateau is lovely and I'm looking forward to exploring Místek too when I go back with a bicycle.

Český Těšín

Český Těšín is the Czech part of the town that found itself split in two when a new international border between Czechoslovakia and Poland was drawn was drawn along the Olše river in 1920. Czech Těšín was cut off from the historic centre of town, and Polish Těšín lost the important rail connections that were on the western side of the river. Another upheaval came in 1938 when Polish troops annexed Czech Těšín after the Munich betrayal. These days you can just walk down and across the bridge into the neighbouring country and nobody bats an eyelid.

Havířov

You wont find Havířov mentioned in many guidebooks but it seems like a very interesting place. It's an industrial city built in the early 1950s in the style of socialist realism. In those early years the communist party was still dominated by courageous people who joined when it was a persecuted organization and I'm keen to see if I can find differences in their architecture compared to the monstrosities of the 1970s when party membership was a prerequisite for every ambitious and unscrupulous citizen interested in personal power. Even if I'm wrong about the difference in architecture, I think the extensive collection of social-realist public sculpture will make the visit worthwhile.

Ostrava

3rd biggest city of the Czech republic and much-maligned as an ugly industrial sprawl populated by unemployed former miners. But ask anyone who has actually spent time there and the overwhelming response is that they really quite like it. The nightlife is famous but I also enjoyed the cafes, bookshops, the tour of the old steelworks and the museum of mining out in the northern suburbs. From Ostrava there are good train connections to all major cities in the region and Ben would probably finish here, while I'd like to push on to Opava, Krnov and the Jesenik mountains on my way home to Olomouc.

I've probably left this post a bit late to be useful to Ben, but I hope to cycle much of this route between about Mid may and Mid June this year. With tiny villages, towns and large industrial cities; everything from Great Moravian wooden cabins to social-realist reinforced concrete; forested hills, gentle flood plains; Moravian Slovak, Wallachian and Silesian culture and cuisine, it's going to be quite a trip.

The last post

2010-09-03T10:15:00.003+02:00

It's been a difficult decision, but I think The Marvels of Mikulov may have been the last real post on this blog. It's not that there aren't hundreds more interesting things to write about (I'll actually be cycling through the nicest part of the country for the next few weeks) but it's been a difficult 12 or 18 months and I feel I need to focus more of my time and energy on things that produce an income.

The plunder of the Slav Epic was also quite a discouraging event that highlighted to me the pointlessness of spreading the word about the country's hidden gems if the best are going to be carted off to the capital anyway. I wonder if the bones from Kutná Hora will be next?

The answer to Where the Czech...? #151 is Hodonín on the banks of the Morava River where it becomes the international border with Slovakia. Liberator president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was born to a Moravian mother and Slovak father there in 1850. The wooden sculptures in Where the Czech...? #143 are part of a recreation of a fortified campsite at a Great Moravian Empire archeological site near Lanžhot, also in South Moravia.

I've very much enjoyed meeting people like Mike, Scott and Marketa, Derek, Sherry and Nina through the blog and keeping up acquaintances with others like Brett and Jay. Hope to see you all again someday.

Thanks for reading, take care of yourselves and bye for now, captain oddsocks.

Where the Czech...? #151

2010-08-27T10:37:00.002+02:00

Who knows which town centre these buildings are from?

Where the Czech...? #150

2010-08-13T10:49:00.000+02:00

Does anyone know where this building is and what's special about it?

Where the Czech...? #149

2010-08-06T16:20:00.000+02:00

Does anybody recognise this small South Moravian chateau?

Where the Czech...? #148

2010-07-23T09:36:00.001+02:00

Who knows what and where this building is?

Where the Czech...? #147

2010-07-16T09:07:00.000+02:00

Who knows which small town these buildings are in?

Where the Czech...? #146

2010-07-09T08:41:00.001+02:00

Another castle this week. Actually this one's more a chateau. Do you know where it is?

Where the Czech...? #145

2010-07-02T08:40:00.001+02:00

Does anybody know what this castle is called?

Where the Czech...? #144

2010-06-25T11:03:00.001+02:00

With last week's Where the Czech still unsolved, here's an easy one: who recognises this town square?

The marvels of Mikulov

2010-06-20T11:30:00.001+02:00

Visitors interested in architecture and history will find few Czech towns with as much to offer as Mikulov in South Moravia. One of Moravia's four old Jewish towns, Mikulov is built on a limestone outcrop above the main road from Brno to Vienna just a couple of miles inside the Austrian border. For anyone who likes a drop or two of red to help their history and architecture go down, Mikulov is surrounded by one of Europe's most up and coming wine regions.

At almost 2 hectares, Mikulov's Jewish cemetery is one of the largest in the country. The centuries of ivy-tangled gravestones include the final resting places of prominent Rabbis Menachem Mendel Krochmal, Shemuel Šmelke Horowitz, and Mordecai Benet. The cemetery's burial hall has emerged from long term reconstruction as an exhibition space and back in the Jewish quarter proper, the restored synagogue functions as a museum of Jewish history and culture from May through September.

Behind the synagogue, a long staircase leads up to the hilltop perch of the four-winged chateau that greets visitors to Mikulov approaching along the north and south roads or the rail line from the east. The chateau is open to the public and displays the living quarters and other trappings of aristocratic life enjoyed by Mikulov's nobles, the Liechtenstein and then the Dietrichsteins.

There's also an exhibit concerning Napoleon's 1805 stay in the chateau while he negotiated peace with the Austrians and the winemaking cellars hold lots of interesting historic equipment including an enormous wine barrel made in 1643 and with a capacity of 1010 hectalitres (that's enough for you and ninety-nine of your closest facebook friends to have a glass of wine with dinner every night for the next 13 years). The Mikulov chateau is a very impressive piece of architecture and I think most people would never guess it was rebuilt after being razed by the retreating German Army in 1945.

On the opposite side of the chateau peak from the synagogue is the pretty town square. Tourist information and several wine bars are located on the square, as are at least three more of the town's valuable historic sites. The intricately decorated sgraffito house on the corner can be admired from the outside at any time of day or night, but the other two need to be visited to be properly appreciated.

The belltower of the St. Wenceslas church is a dramatic addition to the Mikulov skyline, but for full effect it really needs to be climbed. The interior is also worth visiting but perhaps the most interesting corner of this church is tucked away behind a small iron door in the front facade. The crypt contains the bones of around 2000 people including members of the Dietrichstein and Lobkovice noble families.

Most of the Dietrichsteins rest in the impressive building at the opposite side of the square. The former church of st Anne was rebuilt in 1844 to serve as a tomb for generations of the aristocratic Dietrichsteins. In the reconstruction, the fire damaged church was left roofless and the main nave became a courtyard for the new tomb. The side chapels were bricked in to form corridors and house 23 grand Dietrichstein coffins. The former choir of the church is now a rooftop terrace and is included in the guided tour of the tomb.

From the terrace there are views across the pretty main square to the chateau and the church and on a hilltop across to the right are the ruins of the Goats' Castle (Kozi hradek). The Czech word Hradek indicates that it was only a very small castle, but the ruins are interesting to clamber around and the views back across town are ample reward for the uphill slog through the streets and lanes near the Jewish cemetery. If a little liquid reward is also necessary there's a good summer refreshment stand in a clearing at the top.

The other rewarding Mikulov hill climb is up behind the Dietrichstein tomb. The blue-marked path up the side of Svatý Kopeček (Holy Hill) is lined with small chapels that represent the 12 stations of the cross and at the peak is the pilgrimage chapel of St. Sebastian. The wide views across Mikulov and the surrounding hills and plains extend into Austria and the hilltop castles that guarded that side of the border.

With so much to see and do, and Mikulov's 8000 or so inhabitants typically blessed with the sunny South Moravian disposition, it's a place that deserves consideration for all but the skimpiest of Czech Republic itineraries.

Related posts:
Daytrips from Brno
Bone churches of Bohemia and Moravia

Accomodation:
Mikulov hotels
Mikulov hostels

Transport:
Bus and Train connections to Mikulov

Where the Czech...? #143

2010-06-18T11:06:00.001+02:00

Does anybody know whose these characters are?

Fake Tapes - Heroine

2010-06-14T00:41:00.001+02:00

This band are quite popular here. How do you guys like them?

Where the Czech...? #142

2010-06-11T11:02:00.000+02:00

Who knows where this Czech castle is?

A history book in your wallet

2010-06-09T22:37:00.013+02:00

Czech history may seem obtuse to travellers when they first arrive from abroad, but a shortcut to understanding it may be as close as your hip pocket. The beautifully designed series of Czech banknotes depict prominent figures from the country's history in a neat progression from the 12th to 20th centuries.

20Kč Přemysl Otakar I (1166-1230)
The old 20Kč notes have largely been replaced by coins now, which is a pity because it's one of the nicest designs. The diplomatic skills of Přemysl Otakar I brought about an era of relative peace within the volatile ruling classes of the Czech lands. Under his reign, the Bohemian crown became recognised as hereditary by the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor and other European powers and 20Kč note therefore represents the beginnings of the Bohemian kingdom as a stable political entity. Přemysl Otakar I is buried in Prague's St Vitus' cathedral.

50Kč Saint Agnes of Bohemia (1211-1282)
As youngest daughter of Přemysl Otakar I, Agnes was born into a life of wealth, comfort and influence. After several arranged and broken engagements, one of which led to a war, (English King Henry III and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II were among her suitors) Agnes retreated from aristocratic life, took vows of poverty and chastity and spent her adult life performing religious works. The convent she founded on the right bank of the Vltava river is one of Bohemia's earliest Gothic buildings and the rear of the banknote shows a view towards the ribs and arches of its ceiling. Her canonization by Pope John Paul II preceded by five days the Velvet Revolution of 1989.

100Kč King Charles IV (1316-1378)
Charles IV is considered by many to have been the greatest King of Bohemian history. Charles's mother was Saint Agnes' niece Eliška Přemyslovna and his father was King John of Luxembourg. The benefits and perspective of Charles' education at the French court combined with his deep faith and affection for Bohemia to bring a golden age of development to Prague. Rather than moving to take up his post when crowned Holy Roman Emperor, Charles made the empire come to him and declared Prague the new capital. Surviving monuments of the time include the Přemyslid tomb in St Vitus' cathedral, the celebrated Charles' Bridge and Karlštejn castle. Elements of Gothic architecture decorate both sides of the 100Kč banknote.

200Kč Jan Amoš Komenský (1592-1670)
Born in on near Uherský Brod in 1592, Jan Amoš Komenský attended the Latin school in Přerov and became a pastor as central Europe lurched towards the Thirty Year's War. During his studies Komenský adopted protestant ideals and was forced into exile by the persecution that followed Catholic victory in 1620. Komenský's writings on universal practical education brought widespread renown and he was invited to work in the great countries of Europe including Hungary, Sweden, England and the Netherlands. He was also the last bishop of the exiled Unity of Brethren which fragmented and reformed as the Moravian Church, popular in parts of the United States. Komenský is better known abroad under his Latin name Comenius and is widely considered to be the father of modern education. He's buried in Naarden in the Netherlands.

500Kč Božena Němcová (1820-1862)
The period from the thirty years war to the mid-19th century was a dark time in Czech history. Ruled by the Hapsburg dynasty from Vienna, Czech language and culture were at best neglected, at worst actively suppressed. The revolutionary events of 1848 encouraged the Hapsburg court to flee Vienna for Olomouc, where Emperor Ferdinand was persuaded to abdicate in favour of his nephew, the liberal and far-sighted Franz Joseph. The resulting easing of restrictions on ethnic minorities within the empire brought about a period of freedom that Czechs know as the National Revival. Božena Němcová became one of the leading writers of the period and is most closely associated with the 'Grandmother's valley' area around Ratibořice and České Skalice in North-East Bohemia, where her best known semi-autobiographical works are set.

1000Kč František Palacký (1798-1876)
Also active at the time of the Czech National Revival after 300 years of Austrian Imperial rule, Frantisek Palacký was a historian and politician whose 5-volumed 'History of the Czech Nation in Bohemia and Moravia' offered modern Czechs the first account of their own history from their own perspective in their own language. Alongside Charles IV and Masaryk, Palacký is considered one of the fathers of the Czech Nation (Otec narodů) and many city squares, boulevards and even the country's second university are named in his honour. He was born and grew up in Hodslavice in North Moravia and is buried at Lobkovice which is now part of Neratovice near Mělník.

2000Kč Emmy Destinn (1878-1930)
Emmy Destinn was a Prague-born opera singer who earned international fame for her roles in Strauss, Puccini and Wagner operas. She appeared frequently opposite Enrico Caruso in the opera houses of New York, London and Berlin, but her career declined with the coming of WWI. She was publicly linked with the patriotic Czech resistance and confined to the chateau at Stráž nad Nežarkou in South Bohemia until the war ended. The banknote design suggests the art nouveau movement popular during Emmy Destinn's life and is my favourite of the series.

5000Kč Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850-1937)
Most visitors to the Czech Republic won't see many 5000Kč notes featuring TGM in daily circulation, but that's OK because in every Czech town or city there's at least one statue or a square, avenue, embankment, college or university named in his memory. Masaryk served in the Austrian Parliament as a member of the Young Czech Party but when WWI broke out he went into exile and began agitating for an independent Czech and Slovak state. When the Austrian Empire fell, the Allies recognized Masaryk as leader of a caretaker government. In the first elections he was voted President of Czechoslovakia and served until 1935. Born in Hodonín on the border of Moravia and Slovakia, Masaryk passed away at the age of 87 and rests now in the grounds of the presidential chateau at Lány in Central Bohemia.

The 20Kč note is rare and there's now a 50Kč coin so perhaps Agnes' days are numbered too. The rest of the gang seem safe until at least 2014, which is the earliest realistic date for the adoption of the common European currency.

Related posts: When Czech Republic adopts the Euro...

Where the Czech...? #141

2010-06-04T11:37:00.000+02:00

Does anybody recognise this town square?

Cold war nuclear bomb shelter

2010-05-31T17:38:00.003+02:00

A toadstool of reinforced concrete growing at the base of the Bezruč gardens city walls conceals the entrance to Olomouc's newest historic attraction.

The civil defence shelter was built from 1953 to 1956 to house the city's leaders in the event of a chemical or nuclear attack from Western Europe. Because it was meant for leaders, the shelter was a particularly elaborate and well equipped version of the bunkers that ordinary citizens remember from regular safety drills throughout their school and working lives.

Entry is possible only in the presence of a guide and the visiting times are 10.00, 13.00 and 16.00 on Saturdays and 14.00 on Thursdays from mid May to mid September. There's a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 20 participants on each tour and the admission charge is a symbolic 20Kč.

Tickets are available and the tour begins from the tourist information office on the main square. The walk down into the park behind St Michael's takes about 5 minutes and it may take another five minutes for the guide to open the heavy steel doors that were the first line of defence against nuclear, chemical or conventional attack.

Once inside the bunker, the guide talks about the design of the entrance in particular and the four skins of the bunker overall. The bunker is largely steel-reinforced concrete, but one of the four layers is of soft earth, which was intended to act as a cushion against the impact of any near-direct explosion.

The first rooms inside the entrance are the decontamination showers and from there the corridors lead past rooms containing all the practicalities necessary for 82 people to survive 72 hours. Pumps, a deep well, a watertank, compressors, a complicated arrangement of airfilters and ducts, and a diesel powered oxygen generator are maintained in working order in their rooms off to the left of the corridor.

Further on are the telephone and radio rooms and in the heart of the bunker is the situation room, which would been furnished with tables and chairs, maps and a full width chalkboard. Unfortunately most of the furnishings and equipment from these rooms was lost in the years immediately after the fall of communism when the neglected shelter was used by homeless people on cold winter nights.

After the situation room and the radiation testing room the tour loops back towards the entrance and ascends to the upper floor, which was the living quarters. Around the edge of the bunker are the toilets, showers, kitchen and dining rooms and in the centre above the situation room are the sleeping quarters. Again most of the original furniture is missing, but the first time I went the guide did allow one of the parents to help his kids try on the old fashioned gas masks.

The whole tour including the walk down from the main square lasts about 40 minutes and is only in Czech but the guide explained his colleague was working on an English text and that it would be ready 'soon'. But for anyone interested in the cold war history of Central Europe, it's a well spent 20Kč even without a translated text.

Kryt civilní obrany, Bezručovy sady, Olomouc. Tickets from Tourist Information, Horní náměstí, Tel: 585 513385

Where the Czech...? #140

2010-05-28T11:24:00.001+02:00

Another chateau this week. Who knows where this one is?

Where the Czech...? #139

2010-05-21T18:31:00.000+02:00

Who knows the name of this chateau?

Mucha's Slav Epic in Moravský Krumlov

2010-05-17T09:42:00.006+02:00

Most foreign visitors to the Czech Republic will come to recognize the artwork of Alfons Mucha from the many postcards and posters on sale around the centre of Prague and other Bohemian tourist precincts.

Mucha's masterpiece though is not printed on a calendar, a set of beer coasters or a bookmark. It's not even in the Mucha Museum on Prague's Panská ulice. The works of art to which the artist dedicated the best part of his later life are at the other end of the country, in the dim ballrooms and ceremonial halls of the crumbling Moravský Krumlov chateau, just a few kilometres from Mucha's hometown of Ivančice.

Born in July 1860, the young Alfons Mucha soon showed natural talent for music and art. He completed high school in Brno but was refused admittance to Prague's Academy of Art for apparent lack of talent. After moving to Vienna his skills were quickly appreciated and he progressed to a school of graphic arts in Munich and then to Paris, eventually finishing his studies in 1889.

1890's Paris was the epicentre of the art nouveau movement and Mucha's elegant theatre posters and designs earned wide respect. Despite his renown, Mucha left Paris for lack of money and travelled to the United States where he taught painting and sculpture, married, and gained the enduring patronage of wealthy Slavophile Charles Crane.

With Crane's support, Mucha returned to his homeland in 1910, set up studio in a chateau and spent the best part of the next two decades visually recounting the history of the Slavic peoples. Mucha's sublime brushwork follows the Slavic peoples from their original homeland beside the Goths and Huns, through the major stages of their early history, right up to events occurring in his lifetime. The 20th Century collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire brought the independence of Slavic nations like the Serbs, Slovaks, Bohemians and Mucha's own Moravians and forms the subject for the final canvas of the epic series.

The aging Mucha bequeathed the Slav Epic to the Czechoslovakian people and their capital city at the time, Prague, on the condition that an adequate home was found of them and they were accessible to the public. The canvasses were exhibited briefly after their completion, but during the Nazi occupation were hidden in several locations and suffered damage from dampness. Mucha died in Prague on 14th July 1939 from the results of an interrogation by the Gestapo.

In the 1950's the canvasses were brought to the chateau at Moravský Krumlov and restored by a team including Mucha's daughter Jaroslava. From 1963 to 1967 the paintings were progressively returned to public exhibition in the chateau halls and there they have stayed.

In recent years Prague's bureaucrats seem to have remembered the Slav Epic and comprehended the potential it holds for their city's tourism industry. The few abortive attempts at finding a home for the Slav Epic in the city so far have been characterized by treatment of the great artwork as a commodity and a laughable lack of results.

Unfortunately there was no time limit in the artist's will, but my guess is that he didn't intend for his masterpiece to be ignored for the best part of a century and then shuffled into the capital at the first chance of making a quick buck. Mucha's descendants apparently intend to launch legal action to determine the true owner of the canvasses, in light of the fact that the city of Prague has (for seven decades) failed to fulfill the stipulations for ownership of the artworks. Whether the family's intention is to pressure for the city to finally take some action or actually gain ownership for themselves is unclear.

As the situation stands now, the Slav Epic remains in South Moravia on a year-by year basis, which makes it difficult for the chateau authorities to finance repairs and improvements while their only source of income could evaporate at any moment.

The Slav Epic in the chateau at Moravský Krumlov is open to the public from April through October but closes for an hour at lunchtime and all day on Mondays. By public transport, Moravský Krumlov is four hours from Prague, three from Vienna and an hour or less from either Brno or Znojmo. There's accommodation in Krumlov itself, but given the choice I'd prompt for spending the night in nearby Znojmo.

A visit to the Slav Epic is quite a special thing and the only people who go are those who really want to see it. Somehow I don't think it's going to be the same when it gets to the big city.

Related posts: Daytrips from Brno

Znojmo accommodation: Hotels Hostels

Show support: for keeping the Slav Epic in M. Krumlov (on Facebook)

Where the Czech...? #138

2010-05-14T06:49:00.000+02:00

This town has been on Where the Czech...? before. Who'll be first to tell us where it is?

Top Ten daytrips from Brno

2010-05-09T20:32:00.003+02:00

The Caves of the Moravian Karst are one of the premier natural attractions of the Czech Republic. The first part of the tour is like any other cave visit, then after coming out into the sunlight at the bottom of the Macocha Gorge it's back into the caves and into flat bottomed boats for a 20minute ride along the underground Punkva river. Don't get to do that every day do you? (28km, train and bus via Blansko to Skalní mlyn)

Boskovice was one of the four big Moravian Jewish towns before WWII. Strolling the streets of the old Jewish quarter, a roam around the extensive overgrown cemetery and a visit to the synagogue are the musts here, but the ruined hilltop castle, the collosal church of St James on the main square and a visit to the wonderful little coffee shop Kafirna Dogvill round out the daytrip. (42km, bus or train via Skalice nad Svitavou)

Moravský Krumlov is home to the Slav Epic, painter Alfons Mucha's masterpiece series of 20 paintings that took sixteen of the last years of his life to complete. The canvasses are beautiful works of art that recount the history of the Slavic peoples more eloquently than any other medium I can imagine.

Technically the canvasses belong to the city of Prague, but the soul of the paintings clearly belongs somewhere between the Balkans, the Ukrainian steppe and rural south Moravia. There are plans afoot for the epic to be carted off to the capital and commercialised, but it's just not going to be the same when that happens. Nearby Ivančice was Mucha's home town and daytrippers with their own transport could easily stop off to admire the brilliant white church that features in the 4th painting of the Epic. (38km, direct buses and trains)

Veveří castle at the western end of the Brno dam makes a good destination for a summer afternoon of cycling. From central Brno, cycle trail #1 leads along the Svratka river valley to the dam, which is crisscrossed by a ferry service and surrounded on any warm day by hundreds or thousands of sunbathing Brno-ers enjoying their local riviera. The 13th century castle itself is open six days a week in summer. (25km round trip; it's probably best to go counter-clockwise around the dam to enjoy the long slow descent back along the southern bank)

Austerlitz is the site of one the great battles of European history. Napoleon Bonaparte's 1805 defeat of the combined armies of Austria and Russia became known as the Battle of the Three Emperors. It's remembered by an exhibit at the chateau in Slavkov U Brna (where the peace settlement was signed) and a peace monument and memorial on the hill from which Napoleon commanded his troops. There's also a yearly reenactment of the battle itself in early December and the hugest toy soldiers you're ever likely to see at a concrete plant just off to the left of the Brno-Olomouc main road. (28km, bus to Slavkov u Brna, also a good daytrip for cyclists)

Pernštejn Castle is one of the most extensive and best preserved Gothic castles in central Europe. Under the powerful Pernštejn family it repelled the Swedish army in the Thirty Years War. Its halls, chapels, towers and courtyards are now open to visitors six days a week May through September and on weekends in April and October. Travellers with their own transport could call into the monastery at Tišnov on the way back to Brno. (46km, train to Nedvědice then 20mins walk along the yellow-marked trail from there)

The Lednice-Valtice area is one of Moravia's seven UNESCO world heritage sites. The 200-plus square kilometres are dotted with neo-gothic chateaux, man-made lakes, vineyards and even a 60 metre high minaret designed by pencil maker Josef Hardtmuth. Valtice is a town of wine cellars and the surrounding forests are rich with animal and plant life. Cycling from Břeclav is an ideal way to visit the area and Břeclav tourist info have bikes for hire including tandems for 300Kč per day. (65km, train to or via Břeclav)

Dolní Kounice is the most impressive of the small historic towns within easy reach of Brno. Set in the deep valley of the river Jihlava, Dolní Kounice's premier attractions are the weedy courtyards and roofless Gothic church of the ruined monastery Rosa Coeli. But there's also a chateau, the Church of saints Peter and Paul, a synagogue and Jewish cemetery and a gentle trail leading up to a hilltop chapel that offers sweeping views across the countryside south west of Brno. (24km, bus via Modřice)

Dalešice brewery is the daytrip for any beer lover or fan of Bohumil Hrabal's novels. The location for filming Cutting It Short, the Dalešice brewery grounds are the setting for one of the iconic scenes of Czech film; Maryška and Pepin's billowing ascent of the malthouse chimney. The current brewery offers tours of the modern and historic works, holds regular weekend festivals and events and quenches generous thirsts in the onsite pub. (64km on the infrequent direct buses or 88km via Třebíč)

Mikulov is another of the four old Moravian Jewish towns. While the synagogue and cemetery are perhaps not quite as atmospheric as those at Boskovice, Mikulov's other attractions are many. There are nice walks to two nearby hilltops, one of which is capped by a pair of chapels; the other by the ruins of the 'Goat castle'. The walk to the chapel hill is partly through vineyards and the wine cellars and bars of Mikulov are as good a place as any to sample an underrated drop of Moravian Wine.

A former church on the square is now an elaborate tomb for the Dietrichstein family, the church of St Wenceslas has a small ossuary to the public and the Renaissance chateau contains one of the largest wine barrels in Europe. There's so much to see and do in Mikulov it might even be better to base yourself here and make a daytrip up to Brno. (59km, frequent direct buses)

Related posts:
Top ten daytrips from Olomouc
Bone churches in the Czech lands
Top six daytrips from Prague

Brno Accommodation: Hotels Hostels

Where the Czech...? #137

2010-05-07T12:51:00.000+02:00

Who knows which ruined castle this tower belongs to?

Už Jsme Doma - Hollywood (live 2005)

2010-05-03T07:00:00.000+02:00

Mňága a Žďorp, Niceland, Please the Trees and Traband have all performed in Olomouc in the last month or so. To make my musical year complete all I'd like now is for Už jsme doma to announce a concert. Thumbs held and fingers crossed.

Where the Czech...? #136

2010-04-30T17:39:00.002+02:00

Easy one this week. Who knows where this is?

Kuks and Braun's bethlehem

2010-04-26T06:38:00.005+02:00

Crumbling stone staircases lead nowhere. Anger, lechery, cunning and the angel of grievous death guard the terrace. Desire, despair and defamation loom over the hospital hedges while headless saints and deformed hermits collect skulls in the thickly forested hills.

Kuks is an otherwise typical riverside village made remarkable by the gloomy architectural remnants of its baroque heyday. Around the turn of the 18th century, healing mineral springs were discovered at Kuks, which was part of an estate belonging to east Bohemia's richest aristocrat, Franz Antonin Sporck. On the left bank of the River Labe, the ambitious Sporck set about building a magnificent chateau and spa complex that became one of the most elegant in Europe.

Kuks' shortlived glory days ended in 1740, when a massive flood washed away the spa pavilions, glasshouses, bridges, racetrack and wooden theatre and destroyed the mineral water springs that were the reason for the settlement in the first place.

Sporck had passed away in 1738 and after the flood his descendants abandoned Kuks and relocated to Lysa nad Labem. The remains of the Kuks spa and chateau fell into disrepair and were eventually demolished in 1901, remembered only by a wide staircase flanked by reclining water-gods and the burbling cascades from their urns.

On the opposite and higher right bank of the river, Sporck's baroque hospital complex and Church of the Holy Trinity survived the floods, and are open to the public today. The church and west wing of the hospital make up one guided tour and the pharmaceutical museum in the east wing is a second.

I only had time and energy enough for one and chose the pharmacy museum. The ticket seller made a point of looking surprised, double checked and when I persisted, told me I was ‘an exception’. Once again the only person on the tour. I waited fifteen minutes before the guide appeared from somewhere deep within the complex and leaned over the balcony to find out who it was who wanted to see the pharmacies. “Me”. “Well come on then”.

The Charles University of Hradec Králové has a faculty in the building and my guide was one of the students. Her hair and painted eyebrows were darker than the middle ages and she wore velvet as if she'd just stepped away from Count Sporck's dinner table. An intriguing change from the archivally mousy guides who usually work in these places, but after a languid ten minutes of incessantly beaming smiles and drawling commentary that would make a sleeping cat sound energetic, I was wondering how many pharmacy students found their way into the discipline through a previous recreational interest.

In any case, I had no regrets about my choice of tours; the rooms displaying techniques, instruments and products from the history of pharmacy were fascinating and the preserved baroque pharmacy itself is a colourful wonder chamber of vials and vessels and elaborately carved cabinets. Photography is supposedly prohibited inside the museum, but if you ask nicely and your guide is as laid back as mine, you might be able to sneak a discreet snap or two.

There’s also plenty of opportunity for photography around the outside of the hospital and church. At the rear is an extensive formal garden of hedges, fountains and statues including some that came from the old racecourse. But at the front of the complex are the statues for which Kuks is most famous.

On the terrace in front of the church are religious statues including the eight blessings and the angels of glorious and painful death. Either side of the terrace and parallel with the front of the hospital are two dozen life-size figures - the twelve virtues and the twelve vices. The statues of the twelve vices are extraordinarily evocative and it’s a challenge to work out the identity of each statue before resorting to the information board near the ticket office.

My favourite vices were Gluttony, a heavyset lady holding a wild boar by the scruff of its neck while daintily balancing a bowl of exotic fruits in the other hand; and Laziness, who’d stopped to take a rest by leaning on a convenient cow. I felt quite sorry for Despair, an attractive girl compelled to drive a dagger into her baroquely curvaceous breast, but couldn't blame her having seen the company she’d been keeping.

On the other side of the churchfront terrace the garden wall is topped by the twelve virtues of Faith, Hope, Love, Wisdom, Bravery, Chastity, Diligence, Generosity, Sincerity, Justice and Temperance. Much more respectable than the vices but not nearly as much fun at a party.

Except for one, the virtues and vices are all the work of famous sculptor Mathias Bernard Braun. After learning his craft in Salzburg, travelling in the Italy of Michelangelo and Bernini, Braun opened a workshop in Prague and set about expanding the boundaries of Bohemian sculpture.

Amongst other things Braun and his team completed the 1710 statue of St Luitgard for the Charles Bridge in Prague. Thanks in particular to that sculpture, Braun became a sought after craftsman and Count Sporck became one of his most enthusiastic patrons. Between 1718 and 1732 Braun and his assistants completed not only the work at Kuks, but also a group of statues in the nearby forest which has come to be known as Braun’s Bethlehem.

Braun’s Bethlehem would be spookier than any of the gloomy statues at Kuks if you were to stumble across it by chance. On a high ridge in a patch of thick forest, the collection of statues were carved from the natural rocky outcrops and realistically depicted startled hermits, biblical stories and a generous scattering of human skulls.

Much of the surreal air about the Bethlehem statues comes from the damage they've suffered. The headless figures have no doubt been touched by thieves, but the natural world has also played its part in deforming and decaying the otherwise lifelike figures. Centuries of wind, rain, ice and sun have worked hard to turn the statues back into rocks and relentless mosses and lichens have afflicted the hermits and holy men with the most severe cases of gangrene imaginable. In the 1920’s the forest was devastated by a plague of Nun moths and the statues were hammered by falling branches.

Restoration work was carried out several times during the twentieth century, but it’s a massive undertaking in a difficult environment and in the year 2000 Braun’s Bethlehem was added to the International Monuments Fund directory of the World’s 100 Most Endangered Monuments.

The church and hospital at Kuks are open from April through October each year, but if you're curious to see Braun’s Bethlehem it might be good to do it soon as possible.

Where the Czech...? #135

2010-04-23T06:48:00.000+02:00

Does anybody recognise this lakeside location?

Prague tourists vandalise clock

2010-04-21T11:18:00.013+02:00

Interesting article in the news today about a group of foreign visitors to Prague.

The article said that around four o' clock this morning a group of five tourists (two Spaniards, two Americans and one Irishman) paused in front of the town hall and took out their cameras.

A masterwork of 14th century artwork and engineering, the Astronomical Clock is one of only two in the Czech lands and they haven't been making any more since around the end of the Middle Ages. Along with Prague Castle and Charles' Bridge, the Astronomical Clock is one of the most recognisable and invaluable historical monuments not only in the city of Prague but in the entire country.

So no surprise that people might pause in front of it and take out their cameras. These guys though weren't interested in imagining themselves back to medieval Prague or admiring the surface beauty of the carvings and artwork adorning the clock. While four of the group prepared their cameras, the fifth tore the steel top from a nearby rubbish bin and flung it at the clock, severing the arm of the intricately sculpted Astronomer figure.

I guess he thought the photos would look cool on his Facebook page, but to find out for sure we'll have to wait until he's finished explaining it to the Police, who were on the scene within minutes.

*Update-The group of five people were released after being questioned and Police are now searching for an "unknown vandal".

Whatever happened to the idea that when you travel abroad, you should be on your best behaviour because you're an ambassador for your own country?

*If the "unknown vandal" turns out to be Czech, I'll happily concede that the idea may be alive and well. But people who throw rubbish bins at 600 year old sculptures are twats, no matter their nationality.

Baroque for beginners

2010-04-19T08:33:00.002+02:00

One of the best tools travellers can take along on a trip is an informed vocabulary for the places they'll be visiting, and three of the best words to keep in mind for any historic European city are Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque. For most people these terms will crop up in connection with architecture; a Gothic bridge here, a Renaissance chateau there and Baroque scrolls and cherubs just about everywhere.

The big advantage of knowing the terms and understanding what they mean is that they transform a city from just a bunch of old buildings to a place with a story. A traveller who can recognise and interpret architectural styles will be able to tell how old a city is, in which periods it flourished or stagnated, which parts were home to the rich, the poor, the Jews or the Gypsies and be able to find the signs of past fires, floods and war damage.

This post will attempt a brief layman's overview of Baroque architecture as it appears in the Czech Republic. If I can think of clever names, posts about Renaissance, Gothic, Romanesque and Secession architecture might follow.

At the time the Baroque style was first developing in Italy, the Czech lands were embroiled in a religious war that lasted the three decades from 1618 to 1648. When the Thirty Years War ended, much of the post-war rebuilding was in the Baroque style favoured by the victorious Roman Catholics.

The Catholics hoped the new Baroque style would communicate religious themes to illiterate citizens by expressing dynamic movement and dramatic tension in a emotionally powerful way. Great European Baroque painters included Caravaggio and Rembrandt and the best known sculptures are those of Bernini and Michelangelo. The greatest architects to work in the Czech lands during the Baroque period were the Krystof and Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer, who were responsible for Prague's St Nicholas' and Loreta churches, the Břevnov monastery and the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Karlovy Vary

In contrast to the austerity of earlier Gothic cathedrals, Baroque church interiors are richly and majestically decorated. Elaborate murals, ornate sculpture, gilding and other opulent surface decoration and embellishment are telltale signs that an interior dates from the Baroque era. Later Baroque churches might have elliptical or complex floor plans and the saints, cherubs and angels will be twisting, turning or writhing as the sculptor expresses the drama of the moment he's captured them in.

Outdoors, giveaways that a particular building is in the Baroque style include roof domes and cupolas, pear-shaped spires, mirrored pairs of asymmetric scrolls, elaborately sculpted stone door surrounds, and elliptical or complex geometrical window openings. If you can spot three or more of these features on any historic building it's a safe bet that it dates from the Baroque period, which in Central Europe lasted approximately from 1650 to 1800.

The purest examples of Baroque architecture in the Czech lands are the UNESCO listed archbishops' palace and gardens at Kroměříž, country chateaux like those at Kuks, Chlumec nad Cidlinou and Buchlovice, churches like St Nicholas' in Prague and the UNESCO listed Trinity Column and the series of six baroque fountains in Olomouc.

Related post: Top Ten of Czech Architecture

Where the Czech...? #134

2010-04-16T16:46:00.000+02:00

Does anybody recognise this place? Bonus points for naming the characters depicted by the statues.

Scaling Sněžka

2010-04-12T06:19:00.003+02:00

Peaking at 1602 metres above sea level, Sněžka is the highest mountain in the Czech Republic. The name is a derivative of the old German 'Schneekoppe', which means something like 'snowy peak' or 'snowy head'. Shaped roughly like a three-sided pyramid, Sněžka's north face slopes down into Poland, the south-east towards the rolling hills outside Trutnov and the west into the valley of the River Úpa.

The nearest town is Pec pod Sněžkou and that’s where I based myself for the hike to the top. Actually, I stayed a little outside town, about halfway between Pec and nearby Velka Úpa. It wouldn't be quite truthful to call Pec a resort town, but most of the businesses there are involved in tourism in some way. There are ski schools, adventure equipment stores, restaurants, pubs, hotels, and at least a dozen pensions.

Pec is the Czech word for furnace and gives a clue to the reason for the first settlement in such a high and remote part of the Krkonoše mountains. In the early 16th century German colonists settled in the mountains to mine iron, copper and arsenic and after 1566 they were joined by woodcutters felling timber to be floated downstream to the silver mines at Kutná Hora. Pec pod Sněžkou's importance as a mining colony gradually faded but the furnace for arsenic (nicknamed the poison furnace) functioned until serfdom was abolished in the mid-19th century, and small scale mining continued as late as 1959.

There’s not much left of historic Pec but the most useful facilities for travellers are close to the intersection of the roads that run along the base of the river valleys. The supermarket, the best pub in town and the information office that deals with accommodation are all within a few metres of the intersection. Finding accommodation shouldn’t be too difficult; almost every second building is a pension.

The tourist information office in town helped me arrange a room at the cottage Eliška. For less than the price of a typical hostel dorm bed, I had my own room with a writing table and access to a balcony, garden and a kitchen equipped even with recycling bins. The owner told me that most of the people who visit Pec are Czech, Polish or German, and those three nationalities in roughly equal numbers. The busiest season is winter, but the summer holidays are not far behind.

To get to the top of Sněžka from Pec, you can either walk or take the cable car. The cable car started operation in 1949 and covers the 700m of altitude between Pec (864m above sea level) and Sněžka in two stages of about two kilometres each. The base station is along the valley of the Úpa at the edge of town and operates from 8am to 7pm in the summer months. The fare is 180Kč for adults, with discounts for children, pensioners and groups of more than 20 people.

To walk to Sněžka from Pec, you can choose either the yellow marked trail that leads up from the edge of town near the cable car, or the green trail that leaves from behind the pizzeria about 200m from the big intersection. It doesn’t matter too much which one you choose, because they join together less than ten minutes into the forest. I went up on the yellow and came down on the green.

The first part of the trail is steep and leads out of the river valley through thick pine forest up to the ridge that runs south from the peak. The undergrowth is of moss and ferns, but as you approach the ridge they give way to grasses and the trees thin to a clearing with wide sky and a view of Sněžka’s barren peak.

There are two cabins up here and they offer accommodation and have restaurants open to the public. If the weather is good, it’s hard to resist joining the other hikers sitting at the outdoor benches and admiring the view, and if the weather’s bad, I’m sure it would be hard to resist zipping inside for a warm drink and a sit around the open fire.

From the cabins the hiking trail flattens out and leads past the cable car relay station. The cable car seems to be used mostly by people who are too old to climb the mountain without endangering their health. Or groups of school kids who couldn’t climb the mountain without endangering the mental health of their teachers. Towards the treeline, the trees get smaller and smaller and there are glimpses of cable car passengers swinging through their tops like the shopping bags of an invisible giant.

When the trees come to an end, so does the gently sloping trail along the ridge. This is the base of Sněžka's bald head and the hiking trail becomes a steep staircase covered in loose rock. I found this the most difficult part of the hike but there are a handful of benches on which to catch a breath and the peak is in sight, so it's too late to give up no matter what your legs and lungs might tell you.

Approaching the peak there's a view over the other side down into Poland and there will no doubt be hikers heading up that way too. There are a couple of reasonably large towns down in the valley on the Polish side, and Sněžka suddenly doesn’t seem nearly as remote as it looks from the Czech side of the border.

The knee-high concrete markers with a P on one side and a C on the other mark the international border that runs precisely across the peak of Sněžka. Right at the top there a flattish area about twice the size of a tennis court, with three or four buildings on it. The square ones are on the Czech side of the border and the round ones are Polish.

The small, round, wooden building is the Chapel of St. Lawrence. The large one that looks like a comic-book space station or a clump of huge, metallic mushrooms is a restaurant, souvenir store and weather station. When I visited Sněžka there were two buildings on the Czech side of the peak (not counting the cable car terminal which is a few minutes' walk downhill) but there's now only one.

The small wooden hut that functioned as a post office and cafe was up for sale very cheaply on the condition that the purchaser remove it. Its role as a post office and meteorological station has been taken over by a modern, louvre-clad building with a raised observation deck that was getting its finishing details in June of 2008.

Public transport connections to Pec
Accommodation in Pec

Where the Czech...? #133

2010-04-09T13:27:00.000+02:00

Does anybody recognise this town?

NiceLand - Lost In Encryption

2010-04-05T01:41:00.000+02:00

This band played an unexpected concert at my local jazz club on Friday night. The concert they should have played in Havířov fell through at the last minute and on their way home from there, they managed to arrange to play a free concert in Olomouc.

They look good, sound great and are very tight on stage.

Niceland on Bandzone.cz ... Niceland.cz

Where the Czech...? #132

2010-04-02T03:07:00.000+02:00

This town has been on Where the Czech...? before. Does anybody recognise it?

Top ten daytrips from Olomouc

2010-03-29T05:10:00.008+02:00

A lot of visitors to the Czech Republic base themselves in Prague and do daytrips into the countryside from there. In many ways it's a good strategy; you get to see a lot of different places without needing to pack up and relocate every day or two, and you have the convenience of returning to a larger city where there is usually more to do in the evening than in the smaller towns and rural areas that make good daytrip destinations.

The only disadvantages I can see with using Prague as a base are that it's the most expensive and the least friendly place in the country.

Fortunately, the Czech capital is not the only place that works well as base for daytrips. Plzeň, Hradec Králové, Brno and Olomouc all stand out to me as being good bases for as many or more interesting daytrips than from Prague.

This week, we'll cover the Top Ten Daytrips from Olomouc. I've deliberately listed the two best at numbers 1 and 10 to emphasize that they're in no particular order.

Litomyšl is possibly the prettiest small town in Bohemia. The world heritage listed renaissance chateau watches over the monastery gardens and the towers and spires of the colourful square. The art, music and sculpture of Váchal, Smetana and Zoubek are favourites with locals and visitors, and the town cemetery is also very interesting. Litomyšl is a simple and very rewarding daytrip from Olomouc via Česká Třebova. (99km one way, but well worthwhile).

Štramberk is the best place to see the traditional wooden architecture of Wallachia in its original environment. The town is also known for its ruined castle, distinctive local biscuits and increasingly for the microbrewery on the main square. Nearby are the Tatra Car and Truck museum at Kopřivnice, Sigmund Freud's birthplace at Příbor, Hukvaldy and Starý Jičín castles and the attractive town of Nový Jičín with its slightly bizarre but entertaining Hatmaking museum. (Štramberk is 74km by bus via Nový Jičín. The other towns are within 10km and are well connected by walking and cycling trails).

Bouzov castle and Javoříčko caves are five kilometres apart and make a good daytrip when combined. Take the buses via Litovel and keep an eye out for the orthodox churches across the countryside on the way. If you don't want to do the full tour of the castle, it's also possible just to climb the tower or walk the trail around the perimeter for the best photo opportunities. (35km by bus via Litovel to 'Luká, Javoříčko jeskyně' then walk to Bouzov and catch the bus home again via Litovel from there).

Kroměříž is another of Moravia's seven world heritage locations. The big attraction is the baroque pleasure garden, which is one of only a few surviving in central Europe. The archbishop's chateau is also worth a visit to see where the ballroom scenes from Amadeus were filmed or for some of the best artworks in the Czech lands, including Titian's 'Apollo and the Flaying of Marsyas'. (38km by direct bus or on the train via Hulín).

The Litovel Morava natural park is best seen from the seat of a bicycle. It's also possible to walk, but the cycle trails are so smooth and wide it would be a pity not to make use of them. Bikes can be hired in Olomouc from as little as 4 Euros a day. Swimming at Poděbrady, lunch at the old hunting lodge and afternoon tea on the main square of Litovel round out the daytrip. (The near edge is less than 5km from central Olomouc and the forest reserve stretches along the river well past Litovel - 40km round trip).

For proper hiking, the lower Jeseník mountains are the place to go. Starting just outside Šternberk (18km from Olomouc), the highlights of the lower Jeseníky are Sovinec castle, Rešov waterfalls and the eerie Hill of Crosses. The further north, the steeper the mountains get and if you have time, Karlova Studánka and the highest peak in the land; Praděd are within a daytrip's reach of Olomouc. (Bus or train via Šternberk to Dlouhá Loučka, Břevenec or Ruda, depending on which trail you choose. Sovinec is about 30km from Olomouc and the Rešov waterfalls are 45).

Šternberk, Uničov and Litovel are three historic towns within 20km of Olomouc that, when combined, make a lovely flat loop of cycle trails. Šternberk was voted the Czech Republic's historic town of the year for 2008, Uničov has a gorgeous square and old town and they call Litovel the Venice of Haná because there are so many canals and rivers cutting through. Litovel's stone bridge is roughly the same age as Prague's Charles' bridge. (55km round trip, cycle hire 100-350Kč per day).

Helfštýn castle has guarded the Moravian gate since the 13th century. Today it's partly ruined and partly restored, which means that a) you can you scramble around the ruins at your own pace without a tour-guide-babysitter, but b) you can still make use of the facilities such as the restaurant in the striking dining hall of the lower palace. (30km to Lipník or Týn nad Bečvou and an uphill hike from there).

Rožnov pod Radhoštěm is best known to foreign visitors for its outdoor museum of wooden architecture. In the early 20th century there were two brothers who, in dismay at the destruction of traditional architecture, began buying old buildings that were slated for demolition and relocating them piece by piece to the Rožnov town park. A church, several pubs, working mills and dozens of farm buildings recreate the atmosphere of a Wallachian hill town and there's an exhaustive program of cultural events, including the famous Easter festival, the festival of Gypsy Song and Dance and Mikulaš. (98km by direct bus twice a day or by train via ValMez anytime).

Velké Losiny nestles in the foothills of the Jeseník mountains and is home to a striking renaissance chateau, a fascinating hand-made-paper mill and several working spas. Unlike the bigger and more famous spa towns, it seems to be possible to get massages, mud baths, pedicures and so on at Velké Losiny with a minimum of advance notice or fuss. The paper mill is under consideration for UNESCO world heritage listing. (70km, by train or bus via Šumperk).

Related posts: Top 6 daytrips from Prague

Where the Czech...? #131

2010-03-26T09:50:00.000+01:00

A more challenging location this week, after the last two photos were identified within an hour of being posted. Who knows where this is?

Liberec: The town in the tinman's hat

2010-03-22T10:54:00.025+01:00

I've had a soft spot for the North Bohemian city of Liberec since the first time I visited back in the autumn of 2001. It has around 100,000 inhabitants and all the cafes, bars, bookshops and urban life you'd expect from a city of the size. Liberec is also surrounded by impressive open natural areas; the Bohemian Paradise, the Krkonoše national park and the Jizera mountains.

A notable characteristic of Liberec is the energetic mix of old and new architecture. Cobbled streets and historic churches pepper the city centre, while the highlights of the suburbs and outskirts are the streets of 19th/early 20th Century villas, the glass and steel reconciliation library and the futuristic hotel and television tower on the peak of nearby Jested.

The Ještěd tower is probably the most admired 20th century structure in the Czech lands. Built in the late 60's and early 70's to a design by architect Karel Hubáček, the swooping circular tower takes the shape of its hilltop and curves it up to a 94 metre high needlepoint. Something like a giant Tin-man's hat on a huge earthen head. Inside is a restaurant and cafe with panoramic views in every direction and a stylishly unique hotel with luxury and budget rooms.

The other really prominent 20th century building in Liberec is the reconciliation library. Two blocks from the main central square, it stands on the site of the synagogue that was destroyed on Kristallnacht in 1938. As the largest and wealthiest city in the Sudetenland, Liberec was a flashpoint for interwar tensions between Germans and Czechs. During the Nazi occupation and under its German name Reichenburg, Liberec became the administrative centre of the Sudetenland and local political leader Konrad Henlein become governor of the entire province.

The construction of the library started in 1995 and was a joint project between the Czech and German authorities aimed at healing some of the lingering tension between the two nationalities. The former synagogue is commemorated by a triangular room on the ground floor and the soaring library interior houses over a million books across six floors and is well used by locals and university students both Czech and from abroad. The little cafe just inside the entrance is not bad either.

Across from the library is David Černý's sculptural bus stop and around the corner from there the main square is dominated by the town hall, which is a remarkable and imposing neo-renaissance palace built around 1890 to a design by Viennese architect Franz Neumann.

In addition to the council chambers, the town hall hosts the most important of events in Liberec. Weddings, state visits and other ceremonies take place there and historic figures including Emperor Franz Josef, Václav Havel, and Hitler's henchman Konrad Henlein have all chosen the balcony overlooking the square as the best place to address the public at crucial moments. The impressive interiors are open to visitors on regular guided tours, but I managed to get into the town hall only on my third visit to Liberec, and even then not to the balcony which was closed for university graduation ceremonies.

Being close to the Polish border, Liberec was one of the first places invaded by Warsaw Pact troops in the August 1968 crushing of the so-called 'Prague Spring'. Václav Havel was there at the time and in his book 'Disturbing the Peace' he recounts: “I saw Soviet tanks smash down arcades on the main square and bury several people in the rubble. I saw a tank commander start shooting wildly into the crowd.” The bronze plaque shaped as a tank track on the front facade of the town hall is a memorial to the victims of that invasion.

Other historic buildings in the centre of Liberec are the Churches of Saint Antonin and the Sacred Heart and a row of medieval half timbered buildings usually known as the Valdštejn houses. The Valdštejn houses suffered from neglect during the early communist years and only the front rooms have survived. In the 1960s, the rear rooms were demolished and replaced by a brick and concrete structure of three floors that now houses the Liberec School of Building Studies.

Apart from all its individual attractions, there's something intangible that makes Liberec a special place (to me at least). Somehow it has its own distinct atmosphere, so unlike other Czech cities that it could almost be in a different country. Perhaps the surrounding mountains make it feel especially isolated? Or the nearby triple border and easy access to Poland and the former Eastern Germany exerts a certain cultural influence that doesn't occur elsewhere?

I can't quite pin down what makes Liberec feel so unique and I wonder if it's just me or have any of you been there and felt the same?

More Information:
Liberec hotels and guesthouses
Liberec Tourist Information
All connections to Liberec

Where the Czech...? #130

2010-03-19T06:29:00.001+01:00

Does anybody know which town this church is in?

Jaromir Nohavica - Fotbal

2010-03-15T17:47:00.004+01:00

Mike mentioned Ostrava football fans last week, and that made me think of this...

Where the Czech...? #129

2010-03-12T09:26:00.002+01:00

Does anybody know where this is?

a list

2010-03-08T10:49:00.008+01:00

100 things about the Czech Republic

1. Slovakia is just next door
2. 60Kč Ice Hockey tickets
3. Cycle trails
4. Pubs beside cycle trails
5. The monastery gardens at Litomyšl
6. Vienna style coffee houses with waiters in tuxedos
7. The first time you find yourself on an empty Charles bridge and decide to really look at it properly
8. Stillettos broken off between cobblestones
9. The answer to Where the Czech...? #128
10. Coming out somewhere different every time you take the same shortcut through Prague’s Jewish quarter
11. The orange tiles from Tesco in Liberec (where are they now?)
12. Overgrown Jewish cemeteries
13. Ještěd
14. The First Republic
15. Švankmajer
16. Váchal
17. Zoubek
18. Petr Zelenka and his friends
19. The smell at the front door of the teahouse
20. ‘The drinker from Rajasthan? Very good.’
21. Karel Plihal staring into space while he waits for photographers to finish
22. Krtek
23. Kofola
24. Bazars
25. Wallachian frgal
26. Wading pools full of anxious December carp
27. Villa Tugendhat and Café Zeman
28. Anything that Dušan Jurkovič ever worked on
29. The rooftop terrace at the old Wooden Doll
30. Ema Destinnová on the 2000Kč banknote
31. The Slav Epic
32. Chocolate pie
33. Cinnamon ice cream
34. Floodlit fountains
35. Whatever David Černý is currently working on
36. Iva Bittová; late, late at night
37. Chapels filled with bones
38. 68, 77 and 89
39. Tribute bands
40. Bolek Polívka
41. Burčák season
42. Roadside cherry trees
43. Blueberries from the Jeseníky
44. Peklo near Nové město nad metuji
45. The Adršpach-Teplice rocks
46. The view down into Poland from Sněžka
47. When the foreign police say you have everything you need and they’re giving you what you’ve applied for
48. Sáro, sáro, v noci se mi zdálo…
49. The Ride of the Kings
50. Masopust in Vortova
51. Easter Monday
52. Colours of Ostrava
53. Hand made ceramics
54. Cottage vegetable gardens
55. Sunny Septembers
56. Early evening mist
57. Václav Havel in interview
58. Václav Havel in general
59. Masaryk
60. Žižka
61. Charles IV
62. Forefather Čech raising a hand to shade his eyes
63. The Pilsner Urquell brewery
64. The saxophonist from the Plastic People of the Universe
65. Tom Stoppard’s Rock’n’Roll
66. Uherské Hradiště Summer Film School
67. Glen Hansard and Jaz Coleman
68. Jaromír Jágr
69. Masonry arches
70. Masonry arches the whole way around a town square
71. Radim’s grandfather’s slivovice
72. PRIOR
73. Fruit dumplings
74. Bookbinders
75. 60-somethings who resent Havel’s ‘rabbit hutches’ speech and miss the days when ‘even gypsies had to work’.
76. Kids who think Communism had something to do with North American Indians
77. Klobasa on a sharp stick
78. Tramps
79. Už Jsme Doma at the U-Klub
80. Rejoice*
81. The Iron Curtain at Čížov
82. The Boskovice arts festival
83. Underground boat trips
84. Wondering what assertive real estate agents and sullen taxi drivers did for a living in the old days
85. Name days
86. Žatec hops
87. Bata shoes
88. Inventive attempts (successful & failed) to cross the Iron Curtain
89. Old Škodas and Jawas
90. The first time you see Loket nad Ohří from a bus
91. Windowsill geraniums
92. Early morning cakes from the village cukrárna
93. A compartment to yourself on the evening train home
94. Duelling jackhammers at 7am
95. Gočár and Kotěra
96. Luggage racks of cross country skis on the Saturday Os 3521
97. Dlouhé stráně hydro power station
98. 2Kč for the pisoar, 5Kč for the cabin
99. Shoe repair shops
100. The Buttoners

Where the Czech...? #128

2010-03-05T04:33:00.001+01:00

Does anybody recognise this structure and know who those people might be?

Traband - Černej pasažér

2010-03-01T01:51:00.002+01:00

A suitcase full of useless rubbish,
And a map wrapped up in a roll
But my train’s leavin’ from the other platform
And my ticket ran out long ago...

Brilliant!

Where the Czech...? #127

2010-02-26T11:52:00.001+01:00

Does anybody recognise this tower and the body of water it looms above?

Buty - Pusinka na prdel

2010-01-25T09:17:00.000+01:00

Where the Czech...? #126

2010-01-22T10:19:00.000+01:00

Who knows where these rocks are?

Kryštof - Obchodník s deštěm

2010-01-18T09:24:00.000+01:00

Words are just drops of rain...

Where the Czech...? #125

2010-01-15T22:12:00.000+01:00

Who recognises this place and knows what happened there?

Tata Bojs - Duševní

2010-01-11T08:44:00.002+01:00

The first Monday Music Clip for 2010 is Duševní, by the Tata Bojs...

Where the Czech...? #124

2010-01-08T14:43:00.000+01:00

Who knows where these doors lead?

Where the Czech...? #123

2009-12-18T18:33:00.001+01:00

Does anyone know which town's main square this is?

České Budějovice Budvar (Budweiser) brewery

2009-12-14T00:01:00.002+01:00

České Budějovice is the Czech Republic's most famous brewing town after Plzeň. The old German name for Budějovice is Budweis and beer under the name Budweiser is known and served across the world.

The Budvar Budweiser brewery is about 2km north of the historic centre of České Budějovice along Pražská ul, which was the old road to Prague. The tours begin in the visitors' centre which is the modern building of blue-tinted glass at the corner of the brewery complex.

Tours can be arranged at any time for groups but for individual travellers 2pm is the only chance. At that time each day begin 50-60 minute guided tours of the brewery grounds and buildings. The tour in Czech is 50Kč and in English, German, French or Russian it's 100Kč.

Inside the visitors' centre is a gift shop, cashier's desk, an air-conditioned lounge and a block of wash rooms. The gift shop sells all sorts of Budvar and Budweiser paraphernalia. Everything from bar mats, caps, and glasses of all capacities to neck ties, fleece jackets and DVDs, all emblazoned with the brewery logo or that of the second beer manufactured on the site, Pardal.

The tour begins in the lounge with a short overview of the brewery's history - brewing began in 1895, the company was nationalised after WWII and despite uncertainties about its future ownership it remains a majority state-owned company to the present day (June 2009). The other thing the guide explains while still in the visitor centre is the range of eight beers produced by Budvar on the site.

The best known are the 10, 11 and 12 degree beers, but there's also a 16 degree beer with 7.6% alcohol which is mostly sold in Russia and a special yeast beer known as Kroužkované; a specialty of brewery-owned pubs only in České Budějovice because of its live yeast culture and short shelf life. The Pardal line has a different recipe, a more bitter flavour and a lower alcohol content than traditional Budvar.

After the introduction, the group walks through the grounds of the brewery past mountains of crates filled with empty bottles to the well from which all water that goes into Budvar beer is drawn. The bore reaches 320 metres below the surface to the underground lake that determined the location of the brewery. Stainless steel pipes take the water from the well to two tall tanks where it is simply filtered and is then ready to be turned into beer.

After another short stroll, the group pauses outside the malthouse where a diagram explains the basics of the brewing process and the ingredients needed. In this case, the malt comes from Kroměříž in Central Moravia, the yeast has been cultured on site since the founding of the brewery and the hops come from Žatec, which is one of the world's premier hops growing regions, better known abroad by its old German name Saaz.

Inside and upstairs, the door to the malt room releases an aromatic steaminess and offers a view over the copper mixing and mashing tanks, the filtering apparatus and the canvas bags of hops with their chalked grades and types ready to be added to the mix.

From the steaminess of the malt room the group heads back downstairs to the cold, damp fermenting cellars, where the beer lies in barrels for 14 days before being piped up to the bottlinthe cellarg plant. The air temperature in s is about 6 degrees all year round so if you're visiting in summer it's probably not a bad idea to follow the example of the guide and have an extra shirt or a light jacket with you. The tour stays down in the cellars for almost ten minutes. After inspecting the corridors and rooms full of barrels, the guide pours cups of unfiltered, unpasteurised Budvar directly from the barrel and offers them around.

When the cups are empty the group heads back upstairs and across a covered walkway into the bottling plant. The beer is filtered and pasteurised in the same plant and the whole building is perhaps the size of a football field. The entrance is towards the end of the bottling and packing process, so the first thing you see are the bright red Budvar crates chasing each other along conveyor belts and being stacked on pallets.

Visible from further along the walkway that overlooks the plant are the labelling, capping and filling machines, the huge vats in which old bottles are de-labelled, steam cleaned and sorted by hand for imperfections. Keep an eye out at the back of this machine for the pipe that excretes the mash of old labels and garbage that comes along with the recycled bottles.

From there it's a short walk through the well maintained grounds back to the visitors' centre and the end of the tour. The whole thing takes approximately an hour and is one of the best things to do while you're visiting České Budějovice.

Budvar (Budweiser) brewery tour
Karoliny Světlé 4 (north of the centre along Pražská)
Tel. (+420) 387 705341 or 387 705347
Tours at 2pm, brewery closed on Sundays and Mondays in the off season

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See also Pilsner Urquell brewery tours

Where the Czech...? #122

2009-12-11T11:32:00.000+01:00

Which town do these three snippets represent?

Where the Czech...? #121

2009-12-04T12:29:00.000+01:00

This town has been on Where the Czech before. Do you recognise or remember it?

Tábor

2009-11-30T14:00:00.003+01:00

Tábor is one of the most attractive and unusual historic towns in Bohemia. Most Bohemian settlements of Tábor's age were founded either as a stop on a trade route or as a seat of aristocratic wealth and power. Usually they had wide straight streets laid out on a grid to facilitate the comings and goings of horsedrawn wagons to their central marketplace squares. Medieval Tábor however was founded by a religious group of people and its primary function was defense.

The Hussites were followers of Jan Hus, an early reformist preacher who was burned at the stake in 1415 for his outspoken opposition to established practices of the catholic church. Three years later, the tension following Hus' execution erupted into armed conflict between his followers and Catholic forces. By 1420, the core of the Hussite movement had gathered at Tábor and the most interesting facets of the town's current appearance survive from this time.

Tábor has an open marketplace square that served also as an assembly place for citizens and the Hussite armies. The streets leading off the square to the different corners of the old town were laid out to deliberately zigzag between sharply protruding corners to hamper and confuse the attack of any aggressors. Some end in tight t-intersections, others begin deceptively wide but narrow so sharply that no wagon or a cannon could pass and any invading army would be reduced to single file.

Many of the dozen or so streets, alleys or laneways forking away from the square to different corners of the old town are so difficult to see that you don't notice them until you're almost on top of them. Some are spanned by arches and others lead right through the houses facing the square, including the town hall.

On the upper edge of the square at the highest point of the old town stands the church of the Lord's Transfiguration on Mount Tábor. Originally a Gothic structure from the late 1400's, the church was modified by the addition of renaissance gables, and inside the minor altars are all textbook baroque from the late 1600's. The roof above the main altar is supported by rare lierne arches (the ones that look like gigantic works of origami) and the 64 metre high tower can be climbed for the best views over the old town, lake Jordan and the countryside beyond.

The old town hall is the other really outstanding building on the main square. It dates originally from the 1400's and was remodelled and restored in 1878. The clock tower and three steep gables make the town hall the most recognisable of Tábor's historic buildings. Inside are the tourist information office, the Hussite museum and the entrance to the system of catacombs that run beneath the square.

The catacombs are accessible on a guided tour that lasts about 30 minutes. All participants have to wear hard-hats and the tour progresses through damp cellars and dark tunnels that were used for food storage, beer fermentation, as a prison (beneath the town hall) and for shelter in times of strife. The tour ends across the square behind house no 7 and the route is marked in the pavement in front of the Skoch house beside the town hall.

Inside the town hall are ten rooms of artworks and historic artefacts connected with the Hussites. The history of Hussitism is explained in detail and there are original and replica weapons including an authentic 15th century shirt of chain mail shirt. Prints, paintings and statues depict all the important figures of the Hussite movement and their reformist colleagues across Europe, but the overwhelming majority honour either Jan Hus or the movement's most revered military commander, Jan Žižka.

Around the edge of the old town the stone fortifications are well preserved and from atop the western walls there's a view over Lake Jordan, which is the oldest man-made lake in Central Europe. The busy road curving away to the north towards Prague runs along the top of the dam wall and beneath it is an 18metre high waterfall that drops down to the original height of the stream below.

High above the valley on this side of old Tábor, the stone walls and bastions are surrounded now by a forest of ash, birch and linden, but smooth trails wind up the hillside to the base of the walls. The trails are punctuated by descriptive signboards in significant places and particularly the crudely pentagonal Soukenická bastion is a good example of Hussite defensive architecture.

At a glance it might look just like an oddly angled part of the wall, but on closer inspection the Soukenická bastion is very similar in design to the fortifications of Terezín, Josefov, Hradec Králové and Olomouc. Those four places were all important fortresses in the Hapsburg era and their red brick walls and bastions were considered the pinnacle of military defensive architecture when they were built. Tábor's Soukenicka bastion is 300 years older and cruder but the unmistakable similarities demonstrate just how far the innovative Žižka and his followers were ahead of their time.

For a hundred years or so following the Hussite wars, Tábor was one of the most prosperous towns in Bohemia but its fortune failed in the 16th century. It suffered fires in 1532 and 1559 and was heavily punished for refusing to support Emperor Ferdinand I in his fight against the non-catholic estates. Heavy fines and confiscation of town property left Tábor with mountainous debt and along with their difficult political position, the economy and architectural development stagnated. The Baroque architecture of the 17and 18th centuries passed Tábor by, and the historic core has survived largely unchanged since the 16th century. In 1961 Tábor was among the first Czech towns to be officially declared an urban preservation zone.

Despite its historic value and architectural beauty, one of the great pleasures of visiting Tábor is simply wandering through the unpredictable maze of cobblestoned lanes, some of which are barely wider than Jan Žižka's shoulders, if his statue on the square is a reliable guide. Of course that's a good thing to do in most historic towns, but in few places is it as fascinating, enjoyable and surprising as in Tábor.

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Related posts: Who was Jan Žižka?

Where the Czech...? #120

2009-11-27T09:28:00.000+01:00

Does anybody know where in the Czech Republic this castle is?

Jan Žižka from Trocnov

2009-11-23T09:36:00.003+01:00

Just outside Trocnov in South Bohemia, an unpaved but smooth trail leads through thick forest to a gently sloping clearing about the size and shape of three football fields. Near the upper end stands a colossal broad shouldered statue of Czech history's most colossal warrior, Jan Žižka.

Jan Žižka was born at Trocnov around 1360 and despite the youthful loss of his left eye, went on to become the most feared and respected military leader and tactician in Czech history. Žižka's guerrilla-like military skills emerged from his struggles as a small landowner against the powerful South Bohemian aristocracy of the Rožmberk dynasty and developed further while fighting on the side of the Polish King at the battle of Grunwald in 1410.

While serving at the king's court in Prague from 1411-12, Žižka became a follower of the reformist preacher Jan Hus who was lured to Constance, betrayed and executed by a religious council in 1415. Jan Žižka was a committed follower of Hus' teachings and became a prominent leader within the Hussite movement, becoming governor of Tábor in 1423.

Open conflict between the Hussites and Catholic forces had broken out in 1418 and Žižka's inspired and innovative use of limited resources against well equipped opponents won the Hussites repeated victories including the improbable defense of Prague by 9000 men against Pope Martin V's 30,000 crusaders under the command of Sigismund of Hapsburg. Despite losing his remaining eye in the siege of Rábí castle, Žižka led Hussite forces until his death in 1424.

Prague tour guides are fond of pointing out that the 9 metre high, 16 tonne horseback statue of the Hussite leader on Prague's Vítkov hill is one of the largest equestrian statues in the world (the largest are the Genghis Khan statue at Zonjin Boldog in Mongolia and the Minas statue in Uruguay). But Josef Malejovský's 1958 statue of Žižka near the old family farm outside Trocnov reaches 12 metres in height and dominates its surroundings.

Half a mile away near the bottom of the clearing is a small meadow where low stone walls mark the size and layout of the two roomed house in which Jan, son of Gregory and Johanna Žižka, spent his childhood. The description is only in Czech but explains that the lowest part of the meadow was once a pond and that the area between it and the house was a paved courtyard. Nearby a more recent farmhouse serves as a museum and sells refreshments.

As a fighter against catholicism, Žižka was a popular figure even during the communist years. He is remembered by statues and places names across Bohemia including the Prague suburb of Žižkov, Tábor's Žižkovo namesti, and Žižkovo Pole-the field near Přibyslav where he met his death in 1424.

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Where the Czech...? #119

2009-11-20T07:51:00.000+01:00

Who knows where this is?

Where the Czech...? #118

2009-11-13T02:46:00.000+01:00

Does anybody know who this is and where this particular statue stands?

A peek at Písek

2009-11-09T08:48:00.004+01:00

Písek is a pleasant riverside town of 30,000 people not far from where the waters of the Otava River join the mighty Vltava below Zvíkov castle. It's far from being Bohemia's most intact historic town, but Písek does have some outstanding individual pieces of medieval architecture and many of the modern buildings that interrupt the streetscapes are interesting and attractive in their own right.

Písek is the Czech word for sand and the name refers to the gold-bearing flat-bottomed river that was the main source of the town's wealth. Thanks to finds of ceramic utensils, archaeologists believe gold was panned at Písek as far back as the bronze age, but the earliest written record is from 1336 in the time of King John of Luxembourg.

Predictably for South Bohemia it was John of Luxembourg's father-in-law, King Přemysl Otakar II, who was responsible for the founding of Písek. His builders constructed a castle, a defensive system of stone walls, a church, a monastery and a bridge across the Otava around the same time as they were fortifying Zvíkov, 18 km to the north.

Not all of their hard work survived the centuries, but the stone bridge has weathered seven centuries of wars and floods to remain modern Písek's most valuable and beautiful piece of historic architecture. Pre-dating Prague's Charles Bridge by a hundred years, Písek's simply named Stone Bridge (Kamenný most) is the oldest in the Czech lands and one of the oldest in Central Europe. It became a graphic symbol of the catastrophic floods of 2002 when it disappeared completely underwater.

The 2002 floods damaged historic cities and towns from Český Krumlov to Litoměřice and there were serious fears for Písek's stone bridge. When the bridge resurfaced most of the retaining walls had been washed away and the paving had been ruined but the core of the structure was largely intact.

When the flood waters receded, an underwater investigation showed angels, saints and most of the rock from the bridge walls lying on the river bed. Cranes were brought in to lift the historic stone to the bank where it could dry properly and be prepared for re-installation. The missing sections of the walls were replaced with the granite that most closely matched the original. The ceremonial reopening of the bridge was in May 2003, less than 12 months after the destructive floods.

Písek's other outstanding piece of medieval architecture, the Church of the Birth of the Virgin Mary, was far too high to be affected by the floods but it has also been recently reconstructed and its forecourt is now a lovely open space with interesting but unobtrusive sculptures, a preserved medieval well and the glass covered remains of a Celtic Oppidum from the 6th century.

The church tower has dominated the skyline of Písek since it was completed in 1489, but the bulbous baroque tip of the bell tower was built only at the beginning of the 19th century after the original was destroyed by a lightning strike. The clean white core of the church was built in the 1200's, modified in later centuries and returned to its original Gothic appearance in the 1880s.

The most interesting details of the church exterior are the stone carvings around the entrance, depicting the earthly Jagiellon kings and the city coat of arms beneath portraits of Matthew, John, Luke, Paul, Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and a Latin inscription mentioning the builder of the tower and entreating “Defend we who love you Jesus, from our enemies”.

Backing up the Son of God in defence of the town were a system of stone walls and moats that encircled the old town. The staircases from the small plaza in front of the church lead down through the old stone walls and from there, Piseckeho Ul leads along the old walls to the semicircular bastions of the old Putim gate and the river, where a path follows the base of the stone fortifications along the river to the old bridge.

The white building that towers over the city walls just before the bridge is what is left of the castle. Extensively damaged by fire in 1510, the castle stood in ruins for years until gradually being replaced by new structures. The east wing was replaced by the baroque town hall in the mid 1700s and the north wing was turned into a brewery around the same time. The west wing is the best preserved part of the castle and now houses the award winning city museum. Even without looking at any of the exhibits (the gold panning one is especially good) it's worth the nominal price of entry into the museum just to see the old halls of the castle itself.

Further along the riverside path stands one of the interesting modern structures in Písek; Křižíkova elektrárna (Křižík's powerplant). He'd previously illuminated streets in other places, but when Engineer Křižík flipped the switch of his trial system on 23rd June 1887, Písek became the first town to be completely illuminated by electric lighting.

The dynamos of the original system were powered by a steam engine, but when Písek approved a permanent system they converted the waterwheels of an old mill and followed up their streetlighting milestone by creating the country's first hydroelectric power station.

František Křižík is often associated with Prague, and in the suburb Karlín where he had his workshops a major street and metro station both bear his name. Písek however is an appropriate location for his landmark achievement because he was born in South Bohemia (near Klatovy in 1847) and retained a strong connection with the region until passing away near Tábor in 1941.

The hydroelectric plant was converted to alternating current in 1926 and produced power for the town until 1986 when it had to be closed after falling into disrepair. It was refurbished and opened to the public in 1994, and a top-hatted Křižík still keeps an eye on things from high in the rafters.

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Where the Czech...? #117

2009-11-06T15:41:00.000+01:00

Does anyone know where this is?

Where the Czech...? #116

2009-10-30T11:02:00.000+01:00

Does anybody know where in the Czech Republic this photo was taken?

A trip to Třeboň

2009-10-27T18:07:00.003+01:00

If you ask Czech people about visiting Třeboň often the first two things they will mention will be the local fishponds and that it's a spa town. The carp from the nearby ponds are certainly a local specialty worth trying but the spa is of no use to casual visitors. Treatments have to be booked weeks in advance, there's nothing interesting about the architecture and the spa patients add little if anything to the atmosphere and public life of the town.

Třeboň is as beautiful as any other small town in Bohemia and for foreign visitors the most attractive thing is not the fish or the spa, but the historic architecture of the compact old town. There's a lovely main square with a sprawling chateau complex at one end, a Neo-Gothic brewery complex that looks like a small castle and narrow cobblestoned back streets lined with colourfully painted two storey houses and the whole town is surrounded by either parkland or water.

At the highest point of the old town is a striking church with an unusual double nave. The church of St Giles was built in the late 1300's and became a popular model for churches in Bohemia and South Moravia for the cleanliness and simplicity of its architectural forms, clever lighting and high standard of craftsmanship. Three preserved altar panels painted by the otherwise unidentified Master of Třeboň similarly influenced the development of Central European painting.

Třeboň's main square is long and narrow; about four times as long as it is wide. At the eastern end a busy street swoops in from the side and leaves again through the old Gothic gate tower, but the rest of the square is a pedestrian zone. At the western end the buildings of the chateau hide behind two big trees and halfway along the southern side the 31metre high clock tower of the town hall dwarfs the two and three storey buildings around it. The other buildings around the edge of the square mostly house shops and other businesses and there at least half a dozen restaurants that set up outdoor seating areas in the warmer months.

The Třeboň chateau is a sprawling complex of connected and free-standing palaces separated by crunchy gravel courtyards. Originally a fortress and castle, the chateau was rebuilt by the lords of Rožmberk in the 16th century and added to by their successors, the Schwarzenbergs, in the 17th century.

The Rožmberks were a branch of the noble Vitkovice landowning dynasty, whose power and influence in South Bohemia rivalled or exceeded that of the Bohemian king, and in 1573 Vilem of Rožmberk was a candidate for the throne of Poland. After selling Český Krumlov to Emperor Rudolf II in 1601, the Rožmberks chose Třeboň as their main residential seat. Amongst other possessions they moved their family archive which, despite being partially looted by the Swedish army during the Thirty Years' War, remains one of the most extensive and valuable collections of documents from medieval Bohemia with documents dating back as far as 1184.

The last of the Rožmberks, Petr Vok, died heirless in 1611 and after the uncertainty following the Thirty Years War, the Schwarzenberg family emerged as owners of the Třeboň castle and estates, gaining thus their first possessions in the Czech lands. The chateau palaces are accessible to the public in two main parts; the renaissance palaces of the Rožmberks and the 19th century apartments of the Schwarzenbergs. Also within the chateau complex are two restaurants, a cafe and the grounds and parks are freely accessible for visitors to wander and explore at their own pace.

Just outside town and across the Svět pond is the other prominent historic site connected with the Schwarzenbergs. Their neo-Gothic family tomb was built in the 1870's to house the coffins of several generations of their ancestors. An essentially octagonal building surrounded by hedges, gravel paths and thick groves of mixed forest, the Schwarzenberg tomb is an impressive example of the precise 19th century neo-gothic style of architecture with its turrets, flourishes and decorative touches.

The upper floor is a chapel and beneath it down a short staircase is the crypt in which 26 coffins lie side by side. The walls and ceilings of both floors appear to be made of precisely fitted blocks of pale stone, but they're actually of fired brick covered with a decorative layer of carved and stamped plaster. The plaster used is a special cement-free mix that hasn't yet needed repair in the 130 years of its existence.

The detailed 40 minute guided tour of the Schwarzenberg tomb is something like a walk through the family's history, beginning with their roots in Bavaria, their arrival in Třeboň after the Thirty Years' War, and their long history of service at the Hapsburg imperial court in Vienna. The largest coffin in the crypt belongs to Felix Schwarzenberg, who was foreign minster of Austria-Hungary when he died in 1852. Apparently the size of the coffin has more to do with politics and prestige, because he was actually quite a small man.

In the 1940's the Schwarzenberg lands were confiscated by the Nazis and the family fled to exile in the United States. Shortly after returning to reclaim their ancestral lands, the Schwarzenbergs were dispossessed again, this time by the nationalisation policies of the new communist government. This time they went into exile in Austria, from where they actively supported Czechoslovakian political dissidents.

Some of their former possessions were returned to the family in the early 1990's after the fall of the communist regime, but the majority of it remained the property of the state. The Schwarzenberg tomb itself is Czech government property; only the coffins belong to the family. Like other major aristocratic landholdings, there are ongoing court cases involving the restitution of Schwarzenberg property and it seems likely that the tomb will be returned to the family eventually.

Walking back from the tomb toward Třeboň the path leads along the top of the Svět pond levee bank past a frightful statue of the Rožmberks' local governor, Jakub Krčín. This southern road into the old town is spanned by two stone gate towers about 50 metres apart. Between the two gates on one side are the two best fish restaurants in town and on the other is the local brewery.

The brewery produces Regent beer and was founded when the Schwarzenberg counts reconstructed the old Rožmberk armoury at the beginning of the 18th century. Tours of the brewery are available for groups of five people or more and there's a good beer hall on the premises. A meal of local fish washed down by a glass or two of unfiltered yeast beer is one of the more appetising regional specialties in the Czech lands. Try the carp fillet chips.

In late October or November every year, the fishponds around Třeboň are drained and the fish transferred to tanks until just before Christmas. The fish harvests (výlovy rybníků) are a cultural tradition that dates back centuries and the weekend celebrations usually feature live music and dance, beer, wine and other specialties to go along with all the fresh fish.

Třeboň's rich calendar of cultural events also includes the mushroom celebrations in September and the Festival of Animated Film in May which is, along with the Festival of Children's Films in Zlin and PIFPAF Olomouc, one of the best opportunities to see why Czech animation is so highly regarded across the world.

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Where the Czech...? #115

2009-10-23T06:48:00.000+02:00

Does anybody recognise this pretty town square?

Biking around Břeclav

2009-10-19T14:46:00.004+02:00

For most travellers, Břeclav is one of those places like Kolín or Přerov that you pass through dozens of times without ever getting off the train. Simultaneously one of the oldest and youngest settlements in the Czech lands, there's plenty in and around Břeclav to reward any traveller who makes the effort to visit.

Just outside town near the Pohansko hunting lodge are the preserved foundations of buildings from the time of the Great Moravian empire, but most of Břeclav's current architecture is less than 100 years old, thanks mostly to the Allied bombs of 1944 that effectively destroyed the historic centre of town.

There are however a handful of historic buildings, the most impressive of which is the chateau. From the 14th Century Břeclav belonged to the noble Liechtenstein dynasty, but passed to the Žerotíns in the early 1500's. They had time to transform the old fortified castle into a renaissance palace before joining the losing side in the estates uprising and forfeiting their South Moravian lands back to the Liechtensteins. The Liechtensteins added three romantically pre-ruined towers to the castle which they owned until they had to leave the Czech lands in 1945. The chateau's communist era sufferings are slowly being repaired and a wine cellar, restaurant and guesthouse operate on the site.

The baroque church of St Wenceslas that was destroyed in 1944 was replaced in the early 1990's by a reinforced concrete church whose modern origami angles look like they belong somewhere in the new world. Just around the corner opposite the very friendly and helpful tourist information office is a former synagogue and in the outskirts of town is an old Jewish cemetery with gravestones from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

Across the river in the suburb of Poštorna is the church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The high octagonal roof of the red brick neo-Gothic church is visible for miles across the flat countryside and is as recognisable a Břeclav landmark as either the chateau or the spires of the new St Wenceslas' church.

Probably the best reason to visit Břeclav though is its proximity to the Lednice-Valtice area, which was added to the UNESCO world heritage list in 1996, because of the way it “succeeds in bringing together in harmony cultural monuments from successive periods and both indigenous and exotic natural elements to create an outstanding work of human creativity.”

The towns of Lednice and Valtice are each around ten kilometres (seven miles) from Břeclav and from each other and the triangular area in between is the core of the world heritage area. Covered in flood plain forest, vineyards, a 200 hectare landscaped park, and crisscrossed by smooth trails and quiet roads, it's the perfect place for a day or weekend of cycling and exploring. Břeclav tourist information has bicycles for hire from 300Kč per day for a single or 450Kč for a tandem.

I've cycled the area twice recently, once alone and once with friends and the only trouble we had was that there was too much to see and do in the time we'd allowed, which I guess is a good problem to have.

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Where the Czech...? #114

2009-10-16T16:56:00.000+02:00

Who knows what this building is?

SEFO - Return of the Blob?

2009-10-12T12:37:00.018+02:00

The planned Central European Forum is intended to be a modern art gallery and museum of world class, so an innovative, memorable and striking work of modern architecture is ideal. But does such a thing belong in the centre of the second largest, second most valuable historic preservation zone in the Czech lands?

The purpose of the Forum is to provide a space for Central European art as an entity. The project documentation points out that fine art in the “neighboring countries has many similar features...yet..no one has ever attempted to cover and present it systematically in its entirety”. And that “Forum is a much wider term than museum or gallery. Apart from its essential activities, various discussions, lectures symposiums and other events will be organised”.

The planned buildings of Central European Forum (Středoevropské Forum or SEFO) will be an extension of the Olomouc Museum of Modern Art on Denisova ulice where five historic houses were demolished in 1969. The site is currently vacant but if funding is obtained for the project it should be completed and opened to the public by 2014. The first proposed designs for the Central European Forum were presented to the public last week and have provoked enthusiastic debate.

The modern design is for buildings of poured concrete mimicking the height and shape of the residential houses along the street, but with a smooth finish devoid of any decorative detail. In addition to exhibition halls, the forum will include a library, bookstore, performance space, garden amphitheatre, cafe, and multimedia archives. Director of the Olomouc Art Museum, Pavel Zatloukal says "The new museum will not be a place where people whisper and walk on tiptoes. On the contrary, we want visitors to become active participants creatively and artistically" and therefore generous space will be reserved for artistic activities.

The plans for the forum are the subject of an exhibition in the Olomouc Museum of Modern Art lasting until next Sunday the 18th, or you can see photo galleries here and here and a virtual tour here or here.

Opponents to the design say that it looks like a air raid shelter and the style of architecture doesn't belong in the valuable historic centre of baroque Olomouc. The site is directly opposite the recently restored Stará Škola ( the oldest part of Moravia's oldest university) and the monumental baroque church of the Virgin Mary of the Snows.

Olomoucký Deník explains that priest Pavel Bačo will look across at the forum every day and quotes him as saying the design is “like a fist in the face. That style of architecture doesn't belong here and it would be better to build nothing at all than something like that. If there's a petition against the design, I'll support it”.

There's an impassioned discussion on t his website but like most internet discussions the commentators say more about themselves than they do about the subject. Between the pointless insults, the consensus among opponents to the design is that it doesn't suit its surroundings. Some compare it to a crate of milk bottles waiting to be collected, a mouthful of teeth with one missing or a row of recycling bins. Supporters say it's outstanding and original and compare it to the Kunsthaus in Graz, the Guggenheim in Bilbao or the Eiffel tower.

One prominent supporter of the design is city mayor Martin Novotný who likes the suggestion of the five buildings that previously stood on the site and says that the design is memorable enough to become its own logo. Mayor Novotný was however careful to point out that his opinions don't represent an official reaction from city hall and that a vigorous public discussion can only be good. The National Historic Preservation Authority is yet to publicly comment.

For my part, I'm really not sure what to think. It's reassuring that the same architects are those responsible for the wonderful interiors of the Olomouc Archdiocese Museum, I'm a fan of Prague's dancing building and I'd be pleased to see architect Kaplicky's blob library go ahead. Any city would be proud to have a museum like Graz's Kunsthaus or Bilbao's Guggenheim.

The thing about daring projects though, is risk. Sometimes you get away with them and sometimes you don't. If this version of the SEFO project goes ahead successfully, Olomouc will reclaim its place among the cultural capitals of Central Europe. If it turns out looking like grain silos or an air raid shelter, it will spoil a prominent part of the historic centre and confirm the prejudices of smug Praguers who think that everything past the end of their Metro line is an overgrown village populated by mullet-wearing bumpkins.

While I'd like to think Olomouc has the pizzazz to bring this off, I'm not completely convinced. What do you think?

Where the Czech...? #113

2009-10-09T15:21:00.002+02:00

Who knows where and what this building is?

A pilgrimage to Pelhřimov

2009-10-05T06:30:00.002+02:00

Pelhřimov is best known as being the city of world records and the home of Poutník beer, one of the best brews in the country. But its old town centre has a fine collection of historic architecture including churches, gate towers and some lovely residential buildings, particularly the ones facing the main square.

The town was apparently founded in 1225-26 by Bishop Pelegrin of Prague who passed through on a pilgrimage to Rome and was so taken by the beauty of the place that he founded a settlement. The symbol of Pelhřimov is a pilgrim at the gates of a fortified city and the town's name is derived from the name Pelegrin, so there seems to be substance to the legend even if no written records.

At its beginning Pelhřimov was a wooden town and the architectural highlights that survive today are all from later centuries. The preserved parts of the old town walls and the upper and lower gate towers are from the 14th century, as is the church of St Bartholomew. The valuable town houses range from the 16th century to a rare cubist reconstruction from the early 20th century. Just on the northern edge of the old town are St Vitus' church and a free-standing bell tower which were rebuilt for the Jesuits in the early 1700's.

St Bartholomew's church towers over the upper end of the main square but its entrance is from the western end that faces away from the square. The original Gothic torso of the church has been preserved but was covered with a striking pattern of deep red and white sgraffito when that became fashionable in the 1500's.

The main square is surrounded by attractive old houses representing architectural styles from early Gothic to the present. The beautifully crooked and asymmetrical house at number 17 is the oldest on the square and once belonged to the city burgrave. Renaissance arches and baroque scrolls decorate houses on all sides of the square, and the imposing facade of the Hotel Slavie was refurbished in the art nouveau style in the 1920's.

The most architecturally interesting building on the square though is the house at number 13, which was rebuilt in the Cubist style in 1914. Architect Pavel Janák redesigned balconies, windows, the gable and added subtle cubist relief work to the facade. The hard edges and acute angles of cubism might sound out of place amongst historic facades from the 16and 17th centuries, but it's a clever, subtle and original design that fits in surprisingly well. Along with the burgrave's house it was the highlight of the square for me. Unfortunately the style that might best be called Drab and Insensitive Post-revolution Commercialism is also present in building of the bank over on the corner where Palackého Ul enters the square.

Along Palackého is the lower gate tower and its five floors are home to the Museum of records and curiosities. Inside are displayed and explained the biggest, fastest, longest, oldest and smallest of everything from motorcycles to scarves to feats of strength and endurance. There are also quite a few huge items of clothing that seem to have been sewn by their companies purely for the purpose of getting into the museum, but the real curiosities like cross-country water skis(!!) were the most interesting part of the museum for me.

Pelhřimov is 105km from Prague, 50km from Tábor, 30km from Jihlava and direct buses travel to and from those towns several times each day.

Connections to Pelhřimov
Museum of Records and Curiosities
Accommodation

Where the Czech...? #112

2009-10-02T10:17:00.001+02:00

Does anybody know what and where this building is?

Temelin nuclear power plant

2009-09-28T03:43:00.002+02:00

The Temelín nuclear power plant between Protivín and Týn nad Vltavou in South Bohemia is probably the most controversial modern structure in the Czech lands, and with recent developments it seems like it will be in the news for some time yet.

The second of the Czech Republic's nuclear power plants, the construction of Temelín began in 1987. In the uncertainty of the early 1990's the government scaled back and built only the first two of the four planned production blocks. Temelín's current owners, ČEZ (the Czech Energy Company) now want to expand to the original four blocks, and have called for tenders for the project which it hopes to complete by the year 2020.

The expansion of the plant has raised concerns in neighbourin g Austria, where a vocal section of the community has long voiced their disapproval of what they see as dangerously antiquated Soviet technology uncomfortably close to their northern border. From time to time the more fervent activists get so worked up as to block the border crossings at Dolní Dvořište and Železná Ruda or to picket the Czech embassy in Vienna. It's hard to take Austrian complaints seriously though while they continue to voluntary purchase surplus Czech electricity, a substantial portion of which (at least theoretically) comes from Temelín.

Temelín and ČEZ have been in the Czech news because of a controversial and overpriced contract awarded to a shady company whose former director was recently jailed for planning the violent abduction of his replacement. The understandable Czech wariness of Russian influence is also a large factor in the public debate about the expansion. Supporters of the project say that an expanded Temelin will reduce future reliance on fossil fuels from the east, but opponents worry that the involvement of Russian companies in the project could have the opposite effect. The recent expulsion of two Russian diplomats for spying on sensitive Czech Republic energy concerns seems to indicate that there's at least some substance to their fears.

From 1991 onwards, the construction of Temelín underwent dozens of inspections by experts from the International Agency for Atomic Energy and their recommendations prompted further modifications to the design. The replacement of the control and warning system with a new digital version and a complete upgrade to inflammable cables were the greatest changes and Temelín became the only nuclear power plant in the world to use only inflammable cables. The new systems were supplied and installed by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation and on the recommendation of IAAE inspectors, Westinghouse was also chosen as the supplier of the fuel, but that contract ended several years ago and the Russian company Tvel will supply Temelín's nuclear fuel for at least the next ten years.

Somehow I'd gained the impression that it would be possible to tour parts of the power station when a group of more than five people gathered, but I apparently misunderstood. Tours of the site are available but only to school groups or groups with some kind of professional interest. Even then, the identities of the visitors are thoroughly checked weeks in advance. As the receptionist pointed out 'touring a nuclear power plant is not an everyday thing'.

There is however an interesting and informative visitors' centre in the Vysoký Hrádek chateau near the eastern tip of the powerplant's four square kilometres. Control panel simulators, fuel rod casings and working models of various power sources are all on display but the two things I liked most were the 15 minute 3D film and the working tabletop model of a cloud chamber.

A cloud chamber is an instrument that creates the right conditions to show radiation, in this case the background alpha, beta and gamma rays that are in the atmosphere all around us all the time. It works by creating a mist of evaporated alcohol which condenses when hit by alpha, beta or gamma rays, something like the vapour trail that follows an aircraft wing in the right atmospheric conditions. The different types of radiation variously looked like wriggly worms of five to six centimetres had shed their skins or as if pellets from a toy gun had been shot through the cloud. The less frequent gamma rays were more like shots from a real gun. I found it quite fascinating and could have watched for hours.

If you're passing through South Bohemia and would like to take a peek for yourself, the Temelín visitors' centre is open year round, seven days a week from at least 9am to 4pm (longer hours in summer). Admission is free of charge.

Where the Czech...? #111

2009-09-25T10:01:00.001+02:00

With last week's challenge unsolved here are two photos for you this week; to solve it you need to identify both places...

Wine harvest festivals

2009-09-22T00:31:00.006+02:00

Vinobraní is the name given to the traditional autumnal wine harvest festivals of the Czech lands, and the 2009 season is in full swing.

A traditional vinobraní in a small vineyard sees family members and friends travel from all ends of the country to help bring in the year's grapes and prepare the new wine. A small house or large weekend cottage near the vineyard is the focus of activity, and there seems to be as much or more eating, drinking, singing and laughing as there is fruitpicking or wine making, as well as catching up and sharing burčák with neighbours and friends not seen since the same time last year.

But there are also public vinobraní festivals that anyone can go along to and the biggest and best are held in South Moravia, the country's main wine growing region. Znojmo and Mikulov both had their festivals on the weekend of the 11th and 12th, Mělník and Bzenec were this weekend just gone and Velké Pavlovice's vinobraní was way back at the beginning of the month. But the season being in full swing means it's not over yet. On the 3rd of October the Valtice vinobraní will take place at the UNESCO-listed chateau and coming up on the 25th and 26th of September will be the Litoměřice vinobraní and the Valtice burčák festival.

Despite being little known abroad, burčák is a favourite and much anticipated drink in the Czech lands. A lightly alcoholic drink made from partially fermented white grape juice, burčák is only available for a short time each year and in South Moravia, they sometimes say there are four seasons; winter, spring, summer and burčák.

Good burčák should be golden and slightly cloudy and is best a few days after the beginning of the fermentation process. It's also possible to make burčák from red grapes, but because of the way red wine is left to steep and colour, it's difficult to find outside the wine growing regions themselves.

They say that burčák cleanses the blood and that to do its job properly, you need to consume as much burčák as you have blood. And at every vinobraní plenty of people gleefully set about doing just that, because it's sweet and easy to drink in great quantities. But take it easy the first time. Burčák contains living yeast cultures that continue to work in your body when consumed, and drinking too much too quickly might see you cleansing more than just your bloodstream.

That said, it's a natural product high in vitamin B, and when Mrs. Oddsocks was at the doctor last week, she was told “Burčák is healthy, drink as much as you like”.

Na zdraví!

Where the Czech...? #110

2009-09-18T07:00:00.000+02:00

Anybody recognise this old Czech town?

Burčák, mushrooms and falling leaves

2009-09-15T05:53:00.002+02:00

By this time of year, keen observers will notice two things have appeared in great quantities in the Czech Republic. One is the cloudy, bottled liquid for sale at markets and streetside stalls and the other is the wicker baskets that people seem to have decided to carry all at once.

The cloudy liquid is Burčák, the still fermenting young wine express delivered from the vineyards of South Moravia, and the baskets are for mushrooms.

Collecting mushrooms from the forest is such a popular pastime among Czechs that they are considered the world leaders. According to the Czech Agricultural University's 2006 report on the state of forests and forest economies, 70% of Czechs go mushrooming at least once a year and each household collects on average more than 8kg of mushrooms in a season.

For short term visitors to the country, keep an eye out for mushrooms on sale at street markets or as special offers on restaurant menus. They're a local delicacy as much as anything else you might like to try during your stay, and anything on sale publicly like this will be good. Some of the varieties are extremely poisonous, so if you do stumble across and decide to pick wild mushrooms by yourself, please, please, please ask somebody knowledgable to check them for you before you even think about going anywhere near the kitchen.

The muchomurka variety is one to be especially careful with. The pink muchomurka is an edible mushroom, but it's very, very similar in appearance to the red muchomurka, which is a strong psychotrope and the white, tiger and green muchomurky which are among the deadliest mushrooms in the world. It might sound simple enough just to eat the pink ones, but the colours of the mushrooms do not always correspond to their names and especially the tiger muchomurka can be tricky to distinguish from the edible pink variety.

For anyone who is around the country a bit longer, mushrooming is an activity you can probably take part in, even if you don't realise it. Keen mushroomers guard their favourite locations carefully, so nobody is going to tell you where to go, but if you let it be known that you can be ready early on the morning after a decent rain, you'll probably find that most of your Czech friends will be happy to take you along.

On a vow of secrecy of course.

Where the Czech...? #109

2009-09-11T16:00:00.000+02:00

Anybody recognise this town square?

Optimistic - The Ecstasy of St Theresa

2009-09-07T07:52:00.000+02:00

An oldie to finish off this series of Monday Music Clips...

Where the Czech...? #108

2009-09-04T10:45:00.000+02:00

Does anybody know where this is?

Nedavno - Jarret

2009-08-31T07:16:00.001+02:00

Nice animation in this one...

Where the Czech...? #107

2009-08-28T07:02:00.000+02:00

Does anybody recognise this street and know what's special about it?