Český Krumlov, Czech Republic

Letting sleeping Americans lie, I was up and out early. The amiable hostel owner gave me a map of the town and pointed out some of the sites of interest for me to check out on my exploration of Český Krumlov.

The town had looked stunning at night, with its floodlit castle and quiet cobbled streets, and in daylight it was an equally beautiful place. Located in and around the bends of the meandering river Vltava (the longest river in the Czech Republic), the town’s  collection of red-rooved buildings and churches oozed with medieval charm.

Český Krumlov’s main attraction was its aforementioned  castle, an oddly grandiose structure for such a little town, and I headed up there first. I soon found out that the castle interior and gardens were both firmly closed for Winter, but you could still wander through the grounds. I passed a bear pit – no sign of any bears outdoors though – and picked my way carefully up the cobbled path through the main gate. There had been a substantial frost last night and the paths were covered with ice. I paused at every new viewpoint I reached to be wowed by the  brilliant vistas of the old town.

As I continued to gingerly pick my way upwards I thought I would brighten up the day of two Czechs walking towards me by moving suddenly from an upright walking position to one of lying horizontally on the path via an intermediate fast-footed “ice-dancing” stage which looked somewhat similar to the middle picture on this  sign warning about the ice. Still, I could smile along with the Czechs as I pulled myself to my feet again, with nothing bruised except my ego.

Having completed my circuit of the castle grounds, I had worked up an appetite and went to find a bite to eat. One of the joys of the Czech Republic was its relative cheapness. Whilst tourist magnets such as this town had a clear mark-up, you could still drink beautiful draft Bohemian beer for 50p a pint and eat well for between £1 and £3: music to my guts. Free wifi was also on tap in a lot of places simply with a purchase of a coffee or slice of chocolate cake – or both in my case – so I took the opportunity to get a good afternoon’s work done in a cafe off one of the cobbled streets.

That evening I decided to hole up in an interesting looking bar I’d passed earlier, swapping coffee for local beer and my laptop for a notepad and pen. The place was called the Horror Bar, as it had an Undead theme. It was pretty (un)dead when I arrived to scribble, but it filled up later in the evening. The decor was best described as an artistic step-up from a funfair ghost train ride, with skeletons in rags and hangman’s nooses featuring prominently. The music was predictably heavy metal and slightly disturbing German gothrock like Sopor Aeternus, although there was the odd completely different track thrown in (the most bizarre of which was a jolly Jonathan Richman number) to prevent the punters from all killing themselves before they could pay the bill.

I took as much of it as I could, then packed up and headed back to the hostel. With no sign of the Amis – who I hadn’t been avoiding at all, honest – I called it a night, thoroughly impressed by this medieval gothic little slice of eastern Europe.