Tell me, What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? – Mary Oliver
Česky Krumlov seems like a fairy tale invented by Pixar or Disney. But this place, dating from 1200AD, managed to create itself centuries before those modern myth factories existed. It’s hard to believe such a thing happened long before our era of ready-made fantasy, our age of canned dreams. Gasp-worthy pictures are everywhere you point the camera.
We left our Prague apartment and sat waiting for the tram. It was a drizzly morning – not uncommon during summertime in fertile Central Europe. We ate a quick lunch at the bus station while reading movie posters starring people we’ve never heard of. A guy was smoking just outside the window, by the “No Smoking” sign. Busses from this station go to any number of nearby countries – Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Russia – but we’re going to the southern corner of the Czech Republic.
We passed through the busy streets of Prague to the highway heading south. The rain intensified and splashed bold strokes of modern art upon the bus windows as a fellow passenger gazed thoughtfully on the passing landscape. Regularly-spaced billboards along the highway are painted with the Czech flag, lest we forget where we are.
It’s still a misty afternoon when we arrive at our rental apartment. We’re on a quiet lane running along the banks of the upper Vltava River, the same river that flows through Prague. The apartment is well-equipped, comfortable and cozy, and includes one of those clever bathroom radiators (like most European lodgings) that doubles as a towel warmer. A warm towel is a fine way to end a shower.
There’s something nice about walking in a light drizzle and we’re ready to explore after several hours on the bus. It’s a quiet afternoon, except for a rain-soaked blackbird singing to the world from a chimney top. The place is far more picturesque than we’d expected, and we’ll look forward to several days of walking these ancient cobbled streets. But for now, we’re in search of a hearty dinner before retiring to nestle under several blankets and rest up for a full day to come.
In the morning there are voices and shouting outside our window, but we see nobody on the street. I step out into the beginnings of a bright sunny day and see numerous water craft floating on the river below the bank. These rafts, kayaks, and canoes are filled with people from any number of nearby countries. They’re calling to each other in words I don’t know, but it’s clearly a joyous morning to be floating and laughing lazily by our doorstep. We’ll find that river floats are a big item here in this town nestled into a multi-S curve of the Vltava River.
The storm has passed, and it’s a fine sunny morning for a stroll in clean rain-washed air. We decide to find a store to buy groceries so we can make breakfast and lunch in the apartment. A quiet lane curves upward from the river past Hobbit-house gardens, doorways, and gates, to a small plaza. One expects to see trolls lounging under the trees.
At a small local grocery the doors are labeled “Push” and “Pull” in both Czech and Slovak. Other signs throughout the town are written in both languages, a vestige of the “Velvet Divorce” in 1993 when the former Czechoslovakia separated amicably into two countries. We carry an ample supply of foods back to the apartment and conjure up a delicious lunch. Everything is labeled in Czech, but the pictures clue us in.
Česky is a small town built for wandering. It’s filled with gorgeous bits of architecture, charming cafes, and interesting signs we can’t read. It’s a great step back into the Middle Ages – with a big bite of tourism tossed in. And waterways are always present as we cross bridges and canals that are all part of the same winding river. We watch the boats run various sluices that are scattered around town.
And around every corner there’s a glimpse of imposing castle walls and the elaborately decorated tower that dominates the tallest hill crest. My Lumix pocket camera with 30x zoom gets pictures of selfie-takers on the tower rim. We’ll visit the castle on another day, and we’ll climb that same tower so people can get secret pictures of us doing similar strange things. But there’s so much else to do first.
The oddly-named Česky Krumlov is a small town we’d never heard of until we researched places other than Prague to visit in the Czech Republic. This one rose to the surface with mention of a small museum featuring Egon Shiele, the radical Expressionist artist who fell in love with the place where his mother was born, although the local population soon became less enamored of him and his Bohemian lifestyle.
I have a lingering interest in Schiele from my university days when I produced a full-scale copy of his portrait of “Albert Paris von Gutersloh.” Egon's friend Albert was a fellow Expressionist artist in the exciting and turbulent artistic milieu of early 20th century Vienna. My own modest (and much cheaper) version of the portrait currently hangs in our Kino Bay home over our dining table.
The Egon Schiele Art Centrum has several works by Schiele that are of interest – at least to those of us with an interest in Schiele. There are dresses on display to illustrate some of those shown in his paimtings, and other items that pertain to his work. He was noted for his “raw sexuality,” and he ran afoul of the local authorities here who felt some of his more-challenging and explicit nudes had crossed a line into pornography – especially when he showed them to under-age girls. That sort of thing may have been acceptable in the urbane and sophisticated warrens of Vienna, but it didn’t play well here in the hinterlands where the locals ran him out of town. He later spent a month in jail in nearby Neulengbach for similar reasons. Artists often challenge our conventional norms, and they sometimes pay a heavy price for it. As Claude Debussy wrote in 1904 to his soon to be ex-wife, Lilly Texier: “An artist is, all in all, a detestable, inward-facing man.”
Tragically, this talented and conflicted artist died at the age of 28, along with his pregnant wife, from the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 which killed about 20 million people in the closing days of the First World War. The same war that generated and spread this devastating flu also destroyed the old order that Schiele and his contemporaries railed against, as the sclerotic Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, along with the tottering Ottoman and Russian Empires.
For more about Schiele: https://www.widewalls.ch/egon-schiele-male-nudes-galerie-st-etienne/
The cavernous exhibit spaces in the Centrum also hold innovative works from other accomplished artists that we were not familiar with. And they were well worth the time we spent there.
After all that, we were ready for a pair of frosty beers and some dinner. It was a hearty platter, good and filling, although a bit more meat-heavy than we’re used to.
Each new day in Česky begins with much to see and do, whether it’s shopping, ice cream, clowns, or wandering various narrow, shadowed, and intriguing side streets. An old crone in a window reminds us of the ancient fairy tales and legends that permeate a place like this.
On our first night in town I realized I had forgotten the prescription eyedrops I’m supposed to take each night. In the hustle of packing and leaving Prague, that little blue zipper pouch remained behind in the fridge. We spent a few days emailing to Jan, the apartment owner, trying to come up with a plan to get the packet to Česky. Finally, Jan said he and his buddy Tomáš were looking for a reason to take a day-trip down to Česky anyway – about a 4-hour drive each way – and they’ll just bring it to us. We were more than delighted to see them arrive, and fronted them to a hearty lunch at a sweet little riverside cafe (Jan is on the left, and Tomáš on the right). You meet such fine people all over the world – especially when you step out of the tourist zone.
We spent the rest of the day wandering narrow streets, with more boats and rafts sluicing down the river, or poling across to find the closest saloon. And as another evening sets, we’re again faced with the serious decision of dinner. Lucky for us, the choices here seem endless.
Another day dawned crisp and clear, and we were finally ready for that climb up to the castle. It’s considered to be a much larger castle than might be expected for the size of the town and is listed as the second largest castle in the Czech Republic, after the more famous one in Prague. While nearing the castle we glance over our shoulder to see more boats sluicing down the river.
Castles are protective enclosures, meant to be difficult to access, and the entry to this one, the ancient home of the Rozmberk-Rosenberg family, is a stiff climb up the hill. At the entry there’s an overlook into the bear pit below, and signs saying not to feed children to the bears as it gives them an upset stomach. The bears, that is.
A lavishly decorated wall greets us where we buy the tickets, and then we’re inside the musty rooms of the castle itself. We find the usual detritus of ancient wealth, the coats of arms, illuminated manuscripts, an ornate cast iron heating stove, ship models and photos, intricately decorated firearms, expensive platters and cutlery. And there’s a peek into how people in those days handled the less-pleasant aspects of human existence with cleverly concealed chamberpots, the ‘porta-potties’ of their day.
One cabinet contains a few odd musical instruments, including a mega horn of sorts, with a crumpled end. The explanation says it was used with a tissue paper insert by the local band to reproduce the scratchy sound of the jazz records they had because it was thought that’s how jazz was supposed to sound.
And presiding over it all are two massive portraits of William of Rosenberg and his brother Peter Vok of Rosenberg, the family who ruled this place from 1302 to 1602. The Rozmberk-Rosenberg family sold out to the Habsburgs, and they turned it over to the Eggenbergs. The Schwarzenbergs acquired Česky in 1719, and owned it until 1947. That’s a lot of time to collect an attic full of stuff.
After sufficient time in the collections, we climbed multiple flights of stairs to join fellow gawkers at that lookout in the tower. The view over the village below was, as we expected, worth the climb. Several Asian girls (on a college graduation trip?) were enthused to be clambering through the old castle and viewing the village below.
After descending the tower, an open passageway, with yet more views of the village, connects the castle to expansive gardens on the adjacent hilltop.
Broad gardens edged with tall shrubs, filled with flowers, and kissed by sunshine can make for a special day. These gardens are also used for various musical and dramatic events, so it was only modestly surprising to share a pathway with a fellow carrying a large wooden dinosaur skeleton. We were careful not to do whatever the signs were telling us not to do, while wandering like children among the pathways and marveling at the exuberant fountain.
In the end, once again, it was time to descend that pathway under the connecting passageway back into the heart of the village.
Because, guess what? It was getting to be dinner time again, and we were ready to enjoy a hearty Eggenberg or two, a proud and ancient local brew. We’re still in beer country for now and want to make the best of it before we return to the very good wines of southerly Europe. Don Marquis, writing his newspaper columns in the 1920s about Archy and Mehitabel – and bemoaning the general lack of beer – put it this way: “Prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into.”
A week passes quickly and it’s time to leave the charms of Česky Krumlov behind. We’d rather stay a few more days, but there’s so much more on our agenda this summer. There are other places we have yet to experience, and we have to fit it all into the 90 days allowed to non-EU residents under the Schengen rules. We could probably bend the deadline, but don’t want to cause future problems traveling in these 22 European countries.
So with bags packed, it’s an uphill trudge back to the bus stop. We pass those same ‘Hobbit-houses’ we saw early in our stay – but this time, dragging our bags, we’ll stop a few extra times to catch our breath. (At the highway, a sign points the way to ‘Kino,’ which means ‘movie theater’ in this part of the world; we’re not ready to return to sweet Bahia de Kino in Sonora, Mexico, just yet.) At the very top we get one fine last look over the rooftops of the old village to the castle and tower beyond. We will definitely recall the enchanting village of Česky Krumlov with fond memories.
Our next stop will be Bratislava, Slovakia, on the broad Danube. Be sure to stick around for that one. — PRW