This post is for my dad.

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Another travel weekend was had this past weekend as we readied to go to Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic.

We were planning on leaving Sunday morning really early to catch a train to Krumlov. It takes about 4 hours to get there, so we decided to take the 6:15 train so we would arrive around 11.  That still left us lots of time to do things before they closed.

I personally slept awful the night before. I dozed off for maybe 45 minutes all night, which was super frustrating for me. I’m not sure why I couldn’t sleep, but when my alarm went off at 4:45, I was definitely not in the mood to go anywhere.

However I did get myself out of bed and to the train station for 6:00.

There was a group of 6 people going to Cesky Krumlov. At 6:15, only 4 of us were at the trainstation. We were panicking, calling the other 2 students to see where they were. We tried to hold the train up as long as possible – the conductor got off the train and was yelling at us. Eventually, we had to let the train go, and we were now stuck in Steyr.

We were pretty frustrated with the other students because now we would have to wait for the next train. We kept calling them until one of them finally answered.

We found out that the other 2 students got on an earlier train by mistake, and were on their way to Krumlov already. So we had missed the train we needed to take for nothing.

As you can imagine, we were pretty mad that they didn’t let us know what they did. We got even more mad when we found out that the next train connection to Krumlov wasn’t for another 3 hours.

The main thing we were mad about was that we waited and missed the train for them because we agreed to go as a group, but they just decided to get on the train and not wait for us??! Do they not understand what “travelling in a group” means?!?!

So the 4 of us caught a train to Linz 30 minutes later, and spent 3.5 hours in the Linz trainstation waiting for the next Krumlov connection. It was a long time to wait….

We passed the time sitting in a McDonalds at the station, and playing a version of “Head’s Up” on Hazel’s phone. We had a lot of fun playing it, and so passing the time wasn’t too awful. Eventually we were able to get on a train to Krumlov.

We finally arrived in Krumlov at 3pm. So it took us 9 hours to do a 4 hour trip. We were definitely not impressed to see the other 2 students in Krumlov.

We dropped off our things at the hostel and headed to Cesky Krumlov Castle. At the castle, we were able to go to the Castle museum and climb the watch tower before they closed.

From the top of the tower, you were able to get a really good view of the town.

 

The Castle itself is pretty impressive. Its pretty huge, and sits on a cliff overlooking the rest of the town (you can kind of see it in a couple pictures above). It looks pretty formidable, which I think is a key factor for any castle.

 

 

At the back end of the Castle is the Castle Gardens.

This was one of the coolest things I’ve seen.

The gardens are HUGE! They are 150 x 750 meters according to the info in the castle. Because I am not 50 feet tall, I couldn’t take a bird’s eye view of the gardens, but I found one on Google.

It wasn’t as green as it will be later into Spring, but it was still really fun to explore. In the middle (pictured as a red circle thing on the map ^^)  is an old Baroque-style outdoor theater. I have some pictures of that too.

 

 

We had to run out of the gardens because they were closing the gate for the day. After this, we walked through the center of town and went to an old medieval-style restaurant for dinner. Andrzej, a boy travelling with us, has been to Krumlov before, and was raving about this restaurant. So we made sure to make a reservation. And it definitely did not disappoint!!

 

You felt like you were in an old medieval celler, complete with a giant open fire where they cooked all the meat served in the restaurant. It was super busy, and it was good we made a reservation – while we ate people were constantly coming in only to be turned away because there wasn’t enough room for everyone!

I myself ordered a “Mix of Meat” plate, which was a plate with a small steak, a small chicken break, and a pork chop, all grilled on the open fire (which was right next to us!). I also got the baked potato and traditional Czech Potato Pancakes. It was amazing.

Definitely some of the best food I’ve had so far. It also came with cabbage salad and onions, and horseradish and Dijon mustard. My bill was 280K (Czech Crowns/Koruna), or $15 CAN. That’s crazy cheap for the amount of food, particularly meat, that I got. Czech is known for being pretty inexpensive.

After dinner we walked around in the dark in the streets, stopped at a couple tourist shops, wandered around, etc. We eventually made it back to our hostel where we stayed up past midnight playing cards – I taught some of the kids “President” (Scum, Trump, whatever you may call it) and they were hooked haha.

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Our original plan was to go to Cesky Budejovice, another town close by on Sunday. But because of our travel troubles, we didn’t have nearly enough time in Cesky Krumlov as we wanted. So it was obvious to us that we would spend Sunday in Krumlov as well.

We started with the Monastery, and went to 2 of the exhibitions there. The first was a tour of the Chapel, Church, and some of the art and interior of the Monastery. The second was about “daily life” in the Monastery, and some Monastery history. It was pretty interesting. Nearly all of the museum was in Czech/German, with a couple info boards with english translations. It was still a really nice way to spend a sunday morning – I learned about another church, and felt pretty good about it.

In the Monastery Church, we weren’t allowed to take pictures. I think we weren’t allowed to take pictures in other rooms, but I did anyways. Now, I was in the church with Niamh and Hazel, who have become my regular travel partners. So they are familiar with my “sneaky photo” habit – I like taking pictures in places that I’m not supposed to. When we walked into the church, there were 2 “security” people watching us to make sure we didn’t touch anything, or take pictures. When we were away from them, Niamh whispered that I should try to take a sneaky picture. The problem was that my phone was in my back pocket of my jeans, and I knew if I reached for it, the security people would get mad at me. So at one point, Niamh stood directly behind me, took my phone from my pocket, and secretly handed it to me. From there, I slipped it under my arm, and faced away from the security people to take a picture. It’s the only one I could chance, but I made sure it wasn’t blurry. After I took it though, I had to hide my phone under my arm by crossing my arms tightly as I walked out.

I may be a bad person…..

This church was definitely not as ornate as some of the other churches, but that’s a sign of what people had back in the 14th century. Tthere was still a fair amount of gold decorations and paintings/frescos, and it was still beautiful, but in a more simple way. And I liked that – sometimes worshiping isn’t about the fancy stuff. When I think of our meeting houses and chapels, they aren’t decorated or anything. But they are clean, well maintained, and help people focus on Heavenly Father. I think that sometimes the grandeur of other churches is too “showboaty” for me – it doesn’t seem like worship is the main focus anymore, its more about appearances. And so I was particularly moved by this church. It was a nice experience for me.

 

After the Monastery, we went to the Church of St. Vitus, which is the big church that you would have seen in some of my pictures of the city. We made sure to check what time Mass was, so we didn’t accidentally walk in while it was going on.

This was another place that I’m not sure if I was allowed to take pictures, or if the sign meant “no flash” pictures, but nobody stopped me, so I took some. They actually had 2 organs in this church, which was an interesting feature. It also had the baptistry font/tub at the back in a gazebo-type thing, which is unusual because most often the font is in a side chapel or side hallway. So this church was interesting.

By this time, it was around lunch time, so we stopped at a nice looking restaurant to get something to eat.

And I can bet you can’t guess what I ordered..!!!

RABBIT.

Yes, you read that right. I got Rabbit, with gnocchi and bacon, all in a Dijon Mustard sauce.

And it was amazing. And less than $13 CAN.

Czech Republic has had the best food I’ve eaten, hands down. If you’re in the area, definitely go there.

 

After lunch, we walked across town to go to the Jewish Synagogue. I personally have never been to a Synagogue, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. On the inside there were a couple museum-type rooms with information about Jewish people in Cesky Krumlov and Czech. It was nice to go to as well – I learned some history about the town and WW2, and got to spend more of my sunday in a church. It was also pretty plain, which was kinda nice.

 

Cesky Krumlov has several museums in town, however many of them were museums we had little interest in. They include: the museum of torture, the marionette museum, the wax museum, the moldavite museum (minerals), just to name a few.

So after the Synagogue, we were essentially done in the town – to our satisfaction. The train we wanted to take was not for a couple hours, so we entertained ourselves the best way we knew how!

We also went back to the hostel and played cards too. We didn’t spend all our time at the playground – we aren’t children!

We eventually got on the train, and made it back home around 11pm.

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Some special mention stories!

• When we were taking the train to Krumlov originally, the train stopped in Cesky Budejovice where we had a 30 minute layover. Now, its a thing that you have to pay to use washrooms in some places – the Linz trainstation, as an example. So in the Budejovice, we had to pay to use the washroom.. kind of.
  We walked in, and there was a man in a window that began talking to us in Czech, which we didn’t understand. Eventually we figured out that we needed to pay him to use the washroom. None of us had Czech Koruna yet, because we were going to go to an ATM in Krumlov and take money out – you get the best exchange rate at ATMs usually. He accepted Euros though, which was fine. However, it turns out that we were paying for toilet paper, that he handed us once we paid him. We each got 3 squares (maybe?), and then he waved us on to the stalls.
  That wasn’t weird at all……
• At the end of our trip, we stopped at a small pastry shop in Krumlov where we saw people buying these weird-shaped sweet things. Its called a “Trdelník”, or Chimney Cake. We had seen people all over town walking around and eating these things. The dough is similar to cinnamon buns, and were covered in cinnamon-sugar. We also added chocolate sprinkles to ours. Trdelník is a special  Czech pastry, so we made sure to get some to try! As we were walking back to our hostel with our treats, lots of tourists (mostly older people – mostly American accented people) stopped us and asked us what it was and where we got it. They had also seen people with them everywhere, just like us haha.
  
  

  

   

• On Sunday while we were out and about (Saturday too) we saw TONS of tourists, mostly Asian. We remarked that the population of the city was essentially Asian tourists and us. There were honestly SO MANY OF THEM! It really did feel like we were some of the only white people in the city – everywhere you looked, there was a group of Asian tourists with their selfie sticks taking pictures of random objects haha. In facts, there were several tour groups going around with guides, and the guides were holding “Viking Cruise” signs. (Is this the company you guys travel with, Mom and Dad? If so, I thought that was interesting).

 

I’m going to finish with just a bunch of pictures I took around town, and some selfies of our group. Selfies ended up being kind of a joke as we went along – probably inspired by all the Asian tourists around haha.

Cesky Krumlov is honestly one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. It had all the look and features of old eastern Europe, but not as much of the wear and tear of bigger cities. It is known for being a Medieval town, and it was really awesome to walk around. I wanted to take pictures of every street we walked down – and I mostly did haha.

 

In total, I spent less than $50 CAN while in the Czech Republic – its awesomly cheap there 🙂

My souvenir collection is also starting to form! My dad will be happy to know that I bought 3 patches in Cesky Krumlov to add to my collection. I also have started collecting key chains for my keys, which I like very much 🙂

 

And, in other news, I have discovered a new kebap place close to my house that is AMAZING. It’s owned by an Italian family, and when you walk in and order, they bake the bread to order. So when I go in, they cut some dough and throw it in the oven for the sandwich. So the bread is homemade and fresh, and the veggies are also really fresh. Plus its HUGE. Its almost as big as my head! AND, its the cheapest one I have found as well – only 3 euro. So its the biggest, cheapest, and freshest kebaps I know of. That’s a pretty sweet deal!

Just so you can see the comparison haha.

 

Hope everyone is doing well!! Miss you all, and know that I’m thinking of you!

Tschüss!!

 

emma.k