audrey's travel blog: day 21

i got up early, partly to get on the road and partly because what else was there to do in town? i ended up being very glad, though, because it was beautiful. it felt like fall. fog rising from the town pond with the castle under renovation behind it:

the fields were gorgeous:

and i got my first taste of the iron curtain:

i'd always imagined it to be more metaphorical than literal, but i passed these bunkers every 300 meters or so all day long. marek tells me they predate the 1968 soviet rule, though.

so, just another day on the highway:

with its highway shrines

i think this is slavonice, where i'd intended to stay last night. i got there before the breakfast place even opened.

but in time to snap pictures to prove how young people start biking. no wonder i got laughed at for falling, if even 2 year olds can keep their balance.

the pretty town square.

i had breakfast at a funky little cafe/diner, the kind i might have found in seattle. they had a fun menu (but i hadn't yet found the closeup feature on my camera)

i made friends with the dog sitting next to me, had the best tea ever (dilmah), and saw their super neat bathroom-cum-gallery:

the very impressive sgraffito art in the square

and a sign of the impending destruction of this area by bike tourism:

i was only 1 km from austria here, and tried to find the border crossing, but couldn't figure out one intersection and realized i'd somehow already been in town for 2 hours. so i moved on, to this scenic view

and more hills, halfway up one of which i found this. shawna, what's wrong with that tree?

and at the top of which i found a super cool old castle, with even cooler bike racks:

turns out this is the seat of christianity in the region

i continued climbing ... and climbing ...

here's me, at what i'm desperately hoping is the continental divide. it was. looking back:

and looking forward:

i was rewarded just 100 meters on by another bunker. i didn't, however, pay my 20 crowns to go in.

it turns out that there were cross-border football matches here. sports never fail to bring cultural understanding ...

the next main town i came to (whose name i'm too lazy to look up right now) also had a pretty town square but was a bit more bustling-townish, with a bike shop downtown, and this pretty pretty school:

i stopped to sit on a bench and eat my authentic czech chocolate bar

which was good but turned out not to be czech at all

the town church is something like 700 years old, but still function just like a normal everyday church

the town had a nice series of interpretive signs.

including a picture of the church sans tower, a result of war

the town was/is the seat of a major textile plant (mom, these are for you!)

yes, there are town names without vowels.

the signposts were like this all the way. i was heading from slavonice (where i had breakfast) to jinrichuv hradec. long day!

but especially this part was so pleasant. i did part of this day/30km loop.

more pretty:

the way in to town was lovely - along a little brook, past little houses for a few km.

i even passed a goose farm!
jindrichuv hradec had a cotton-candy pink castle. here's a view of it from directly below, at my hostel:

i came into town through the main town gate.

to this view. the main square is just up the hill between those 2 buildings.

my hostel - BIG! - clean, and homey.

i even got my own nicholas cage calendar

and who knew - when i signed in, i saw the names of my aussie friends from znojmo! i figured they were WAY ahead of me, but the proprietor said, no, they're in the backyard! we ended up having a lovely dinner together.

the hostel seemed also to be some sort of art gallery

the view of the canal from the lovely backyard of the hostel

and the view of the castle, from there, at sunset

and i finally figured out the close-up function

the bustling town square

i got yelled at for taking this picture, by vietnamese shop keepers who thought i was photographing their inventory. but no, it was the sign:

i liked this city a lot. it was the first city i'd been in that really felt like it had both tourists and locals, and had a thriving middle class, as well as a super pretty castle: