day 20 - august 24th

i woke up early saturday morning, knowing i had a long and steep day ahead of me and wanting to get on the road before the headwinds kicked up, but was foiled by 1. lack of breakfast at the hostel, and 2. my bike locked in a bike shed i didn't have a key to. argh!! i did get to watch a lovely morning out the kitchen window, read my guide book a bit more, and chat with the sonoma folks, though, and when breakfast finally arrived in the arms of the fill-in hostel worker, it was good (no cucumbers! no tomatoes! no slices of cold-cut ham!).

a word to the wise: i got more and more excited about my camera as the trip wore on, so there are more and more pictures. i'm trying to restrain myself, but ...

i didn't have food with me, but i did admire the apples along the way.

shortly after setting out, i entered the national park.

where i went down and down and down a steep hill in the forest until i came to this great little suspension bridge

and then found myself at sobes, an ancient vineyard that makes white wines, right in the middle of a national forest that's famous for its snakes and other creepy crawly things. there was a whole crowd of people tasting wine at 10 am. here's a beautiful picture of it in wintertime.

and while the river and bridge was beautiful, the climb back out ... was tough.
stopping to read the visitors regulations gave me a nice break and a nice laugh


those unleashed dogs, always needing to be frisked. who knows what they might bring in.

i admit it took me a couple tries to figure out which way to go here, on the other side of the national park:
but once i did i found myself in the woods whizzing by these AMAZING BUNKERS! when i realized i was in fact on the iron curtain.


i was heading (uphill and upwind) towards cizov, population 300, where the last remaining bit of the iron curtain fence still stands.
today reminded me a lot of the rocky mountains - high altitude meadows (ha! at 300 meters!), wildflowers, pine trees, and big clouds in the sky.

a tagalong:
me, going uphill. again.

drumroll ..... the iron curtain!


everyone thought i was crazy for taking these pictures, but they had really cool bike racks.
in cizov, looking to austria

the other thing there was in cizov was a great little interpretive center, which actually was more about the flora and fauna than anything else - reminded me very much of little nature centers in the u.s., with lots of stuffed animals and displays with rocks and things. but it had one of the most amazing kids' stories ever, linking the habitat of the praying mantis to ecosystems theory and geopolitics. (does anyone know what happened in september 1956? i can only find reference to multilateral trade agreements, which maybe is the relevant event, but maybe not.) anyway, i'll do a separate post with that book.

after cizov i cycled down to a resort lake, with what looked like vacation homes

a really cool pedestrian bridge and threatening rain.

i still didn't have a raincoat, having passed up several chances to buy one in berlin and prague ... but don't worry, there was a bustling tourist trade here in town where i bought a $15 sweatshirt (hey! where is that sweatshirt now?!?) from a vietnamese proprietor. did you know that there are immigrant workers in czech republic from vietnam and cuba? me neither. $15 doesn't sound like a lot, but keep in mind that's what i paid for lodging that night. anyway, it seems it was enough to propitiate the rain gods.

just on the other side of town was a beautiful castle. i sat on the side of the road and ate lunch (leftovers i snagged from breakfast)

and then realized that, yes, i was going up that hill. here's the back side of the castle. i love the little metal guy on the main tower.

proof! i have no idea what that weird thing on my forehead is.

and i kept climbing. you can see the very tip of the castle turret there behind me. doesn't look like such a deep canyon from this angle, does it?
through a cute little town with public art, around the time i'm realizing there's no way in hell i'm making it to slavonice, my intended destination.

i took the first penzion i saw - they were pretty scarce here - a few little towns later. the sign on the near edge of town was very promising (and they even have a website!)
but the experience was completely surreal. up on a hill on the far side of a tiny town, the penzion is in an old barracks-type building that was almost completely deserted.


luckily someone else was going in at the same time who showed me where to go, because there were no clues here
down a side hallway, through 2 doors, there was a little bar in the back with 3 bedraggled men drinking and watching tv. they were quite surprised to see me. i was definitely the only customer that night, though i did manage to sneak a look at the guest list and see they'd had another customer only 3 nights before. the man, who turned out to be nice but didn't speak any english (and his german was worse than mine!), turned on the hot water heater for me and showed me a room at the far end of the hallway. it was all clean, but felt like the shining a little - ok, a lot.

it was only 4 pm and i was ready for bed ... but instead i got to explore a really cool castle, in the process of being renovated. it was neat to see what they looked like before gads of money is poured back into them.












i wonder who lives here?
a young goose made friends

the countryside was gorgeous, reminding me of the rolling hills of the palouse.
there was one tiny restaurant in town, a pub i wish i could have taken pictures of. a bell rang on the door when i walked in; a couple, one the waitress/proprietor, was sitting in the corner watching a soap opera in czech; a glassy-eyed drunk man ogled me (and later other women); each table had a flyswatter, and i soon found out why; there was a complete bear skin, with a gun hanging across it, on the wall, along with many other animal heads. there was no menu, but i asked (via my phrasebook) for a food recommendation, and i got an actually pretty good goulash (i'm not sure i would have had a choice had i spoken more czech, anyway) and beer. the place started filling with all 9 of the local residents by about 7, who mostly were gathering to talk and drink - men at one table, women at another. i had the feeling i was in someone's regular spot, and they were running out of tables, but no one sat with me. i was exhausted from all the hills, and grateful there was nothing else in town to do but go to bed, very alone in the hotel, where i slept from 8-7!

day 24 - august 28th

today i waved a fond goodbye to my trusty bike. i had enough time before my bus to check out more of the castle, went on an inside tour, and went on a tour of the theater. the theater is one of the only (the only?) fully restored original theaters of shakespeare's era - it was preserved because the royalty who lived here at the time built it and then basically abandoned the castle. now, every single thing in it has been restored, even nails - taken out, cleaned, replaced. it was so amazing - something like 20 moving set parts, sound effects, tall wooden benches the riff-raff sat on, beautiful boxes for the royalty, with a private sky-walk entrance direct from the castle. it was cool and quiet. the stage was even built with perspective so it looked huge. but no pictures, though you can see it here.



in the castle gardens was a plein air stage, also really neat (and a bit more contemporary)



afterward, i walked down to the bus station for the 3 hour ride back to prague. i wanted to see the municipal house, so i went straight to sign up for a tour (amazing - pics in separate post) and was also convinced into a concert in the main, beautiful hall. the concert was fun, short (they played vivaldi's four seasons and something else - but really everyone was just there fro the hall). the violin soloist was young and rockstar-ish: tight black shiny pants and shirt. with his cell phone in his pocket. classy.

afterward, i headed back to marek's apartment, where i surprised his brother who'd forgotten i was coming, but then we had a long nice talk about the US class system and health care.

[in medias res] biking!

unfortunately the computer i'm at now doesn't have a slot for my picture card, because i have lots of pretty ones. i took the train from berlin to prague on weds, which was amazingly easy and the new hauptbanhof is beautiful. the ride was pretty, through farms and along a river where people were canoing and kayaking and swimming. prague, though, is just amazingly beautiful and romantic. i walked from the train station outside town (not so nice - while i was sitting looking at maps a man alerted me - i'm pretty sure - to the presence of a large rat about to bite me) through the outskirts - not so beautiful as the inner city, but i got to see that as i approached, which was nice. met my new friend marek (who will be my neighbot in nj and in the soc dept for a year) at his house, we made good dinner with veggies from his girlfriend's and parents' gardens, and he took me out to a neat little local pub (the kind i'd never even know about otherwise, and probably couldn't go in alone as a woman) for good beer. there's usually only 1 beer on tap, he says, because otherwise it doesn't taste good. he's in for a nasty surprise. thurs i spent walking all over the city, where english and german were as common in the tourist areas as czech. charles bridge is overrated, but the rest of the city is not.

friday morning after some very nice czech women helped me determine via sign language that i was at the right bus stop, i managed to buy a ticket to brno, transfer and buy another ticket to mikulov, which is a fantastic little town with the lichtenstein family castle (until they had to sell it to the dietrichsteins around 1575). also the main jewish center of moravia, wiht a very old synagogue. the town is gorgeous, but i spent an anxious hour looking for a place to stay (filled with lots of austrian tourists, as it's just across the border, especially cyclists who are doing the bike wine tours or the greenways trail). the place i found was fantastic with a private room and bath and a view of the castle ... where there was a very loud rock concert until 1 am. when people figured i didn't understand czech, they automatically switched into german, which didn't help me much. i had a very good dinner of cream soup with beef brisket in it, and on top of the brisket was a slice of lemon topped with cranberries and whipped cream!

picked up my bike this morning - no problem there - and was lucky to find a greenways map (in czech and german) at the info center. the ride was beautiful, especially once i figured out how to read the maps - the trail is great, well-marked, mostly even paved, through farms. saw giant cat-sized rabbits, pheasants, and a dead mouse, and many birds. had a great lunch for 87 crowns (about $5) in a roadside place where the proprietor declared my "anglicky" (english) "catastrophe!" but then seemed pleased with my selection-via-dictionary of cevapcici (spicy meatballs) - and so was i. watched the olympics for half an hour with all the town's old men. (how can it be true that the us won gold in women's soccer? with an 06 rutgers alum?) then made my way off the trail for the last 20 km towards znojmo, where i am tonight at a nice hostel. when i checked in the girl took my id and sighed wistfully, "an american passport". i forget that that still means something important/good. just bought gelato (is there anywere in europe you can't get it?) from an egyptian man who spoke enough english to tell me that california is beautiful, but not enough to tell me what flavor smetana is (it's cream). now off to another dinner adventure. i can treat myself to one of the nicest places in town, where entrees run 140 crowns ($7), and the menu is in czech, german, and english!

day 19 - august 23rd

the day i'd been waiting for since june! i met the bike guy at the tourist info shop before it opened, and we got in his car to drive to the bike place, which turned out to be literally across the street from where i'd stayed that night. but i can't blame him for wanting to bring me there personally; it was a warehouse, under active construction. anyway, he showed me my bike, ran through the list of things i was supposed to have (map holder, panniers, pump), and within about 5 minutes he was off to another job, i was outside the closed shop with my bike, and completely on my own. anyway, the bike was perfect, the panniers were tiny but luckily i didn't have much stuff, he gave me a bottle of water before which it hadn't occurred to me to get any, and i felt - very incongruously - that i was setting off on a rafting trip!


anyway, i suppose the similarities aren't entirely missing: on my own for 5 days, largely in silence and in nature, navigating by map, and all that. of course, it didn't occur to me until the end of the 2nd day that perhaps i ought to stop by a grocery store and get some trail snacks and more water ...

i started out on the prague-vienna greenways system, which really is more a system of trails than a trail. i was exceedingly grateful for my excellent system map, though it was only in german and czech, which included a regular map as well as an elevation map. the paths were also very well marked, and on these signs you can see all the different symbols for all the different paths that crossed here:

a lot of the paths looked like this. this is actually an access road for the farm plots on either side (here growing sunflowers), partly paved. i saw 4-5 other cyclists and no cars today.


shortly outside mikulov, from the trail, looking back at the castle.
the cyclotourists are becoming big business for these little towns, most of which have at least one restaurant and one penzion.
most of the day i spent crossing farmland and then small forests. the temperature was perfect - overcast and cool - but it threatened rain all day, and there was a nasty headwind. at least it was flat.


i was in moravia, white wine country, and there were little vineyards everywhere.

english was rare, except on stop signs, where these were standard:
more sunflowers
and this pretty little road, paved and cool and blocking the windeven by bike in farm country, a lost and lone shoe:

i was following route 48 to hranice
making hay
pretty sunflowers
part of the route took me on secondary highways, which looked like this

and where there were the tiniest churches ever

on parts that were actually paths, there were frequent interpretive signs and maps of the area, though mostly only in czech

where i stopped for lunch, with austrian cylcotourists, and where the proprietor pronounced english "catastrophe!" but where his wife made me a fantastic lunch of spicy meatballs (civapcici), and where i had a half liter of beer for 8 crowns.
i made my way into znojmo for the night just before it started to rain, and found a beautiful new traveller's hostel with a gorgeous view. i actually took this photo from the main church, but it was exactly the same view as from the kitchen table, which was literally straight down below the wall. (it finally made sense to me that the hostel website says it is "directly below The Church of st.Mikulas!" and gives a GPS location rather than an address.)



the church was beautiful
with the most interesting pulpit everand an organ i would have liked to hear


the view of the railroad bridge, the other direction
the church from below, with its terraced gardens, and just behind that yellow construction paper on the front house is the hostel
the church from the other side of town
a pretty little shop

in honor of my college

high culture
a typical street scene
mmmm.
the square.fair trade is everywhere
another beautiful room
at the hostel, i met an interesting couple from sonoma who'd been traveling for a year. they pointed me to the local hippie vegetarian restaurant, with an AMAZING huge menu in english (including a section for "very cold meals" - ie, ice cream), where i made new friends, a couple my age from sydney, who'd cycled 4000 km from verona and were headed to berlin. she'd just finished her sociology ph.d. they told me that today was by far the worst day they'd spent on the road, with the headwind, which reassured me (though didn't set me up with the right expectations of the next day). and i got to check my email from the hostel, so i went to bed a happy camper.