Chillin' in Cesky Krumlov

[May 15-18]

I wouldn't say that I'm a sports fan. I enjoy athletic pursuits, and find the social phenomenon of fan-dom fascinating, but I don't keep up on who's beating who in the standings. Usually if I'm feeling bold enough to mention a professional athlete by name, I discover that they already retired. Four years ago. So it's not unusual that I'd miss an opportunity to, say, watch the Czech Republic's hockey team meet Canada on the ice.

On our last day in Prague, we'd heard that the Czech team bested Sweden in the hockey world championships semi-finals to earn a finals match against Canada, the world champion of the past two years. The streets were told to be full of revelers celebrating the win, and their cacophonous enthusiasm would carry on to the championships, where the Czechs asserted their dominance in a 3-0 win, once again driving the masses into the streets.

We'd meant to watch the match in a bar, in the company of people who knew, and could pronounce, the names of the players. We'd even tried, briefly, to find a place showing the game, and yet we ended up back at our room, where we watched snippets of play on our satellite TV, before switching entirely to one of the only English channels in the 100 or so offered -- MTV Germany. We turned in early, and listened to the pockets of celebration drift past our darkened pension.



That was how our time in Cesky Krumlov went. Great town, great opportunities, and no followthrough. But there's a reason that we weren't waking up at seven to make the opening of the museums.

By the 15th, we'd managed to spend two full weeks staying with five different friends. I'm not complaining -- let's get that straight first -- but it takes a lot of effort to play houseguest. It's not quite as much as being someone's host, but the continual need to be convivial, to be presentable, and to not trash the bathroom in the morning requires that you're on your toes whenever you're at home. It's tough to relax completely and make the most of a personal visit.



So when we finally found some time to ourselves, it didn't matter that the 15th was the biggest day of the year to some slice of the Czech population pie. Our room was large and quiet, and had both mediocre cable television and a drying rack for clothing. The medieval beauty of the town on the river could wait.



When we did take to the town, it was gorgeous, if occasionally draped with clouds. The way the spires reached out of the creases in the landscape, giving the town a third dimension that pulled it from the map, invited you to explore it. It felt like we were always looking down at an alley of ivy-wrapped homes, or up at the tourists watching us from the viaduct, wondering how to get to the other side of an Escher drawing.



In fact, the town itself was the only real attraction we saw over three days, despite having taken photos of a guide book on the area. You see, we'd zoom in on these photos on our digital camera -- essentially a tiny computer -- panning back and forth over the text. After a while, we'd put together a coherent paragraph describing some museum or palace tour, and then skip whatever we'd read about in favor of an early lunch.



At some point, we dragged ourselves out of the routine of eating, wandering, and sleeping. A bike ride, we thought, would be a nice athletic activity to jumpstart our exploration of the area. The rentals started at 24 hours, and at $15 per person per day, the bike ride became something to avoid merely out of principle. Surely they have the technology to rent bikes for a portion of the day, at a proportional cost, rather than gouging the tourists for unused hours.

Instead, our active activity became hiking, which is really just walking in the so-called wilderness. Given that we found hills and forest that had been neatly partitioned by the paths of horse trails and dirt roads, it barely qualified as a true hike, but at least it wasn't just another walk down the river. We passed snails making the most of the recent rainfall, three or four horse ranches, and a middle-aged couple who returned our smiles at an abandoned church with suspicious narrowing of their eyes. I took that look to mean that we were outside of the normal tourist bounds, which made me feel at least a little adventurous.



After the hike we found our way back to the river's bends, where we caught a drink in the last cloud break of the day. (In the above pic, Marita acts out our first meeting. I'm the big beer.) Three days of rest felt like a prefect amount of time to get ready for our next big stop, Budapest. The next morning, we rushed to a 5:00AM bus in the rain, took the last two seats minutes before the wheels started to turn, and bid Cesky Krumlov, in all its underexplored glory, goodbye.