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.

day 18 - august 22nd

today i made my way to the prague bus station, where i suddenly found myself in a world apart from tourist-prague, where no one spoke english and i felt totally out of place. a nice woman helped me make sure i was at the right bus stop, but i'm certain she was pitying me as i left.

the ride to mikulov was quick and pretty. i changed busses in brno, at a big depot, where i got on what turned out to be a local inter-town bus, with women shopping and teenagers going to each other's houses.

in case you're wondering, this is approximately what i did on this leg. today praha to mikulov by bus, biking from mikulov to cesky krumlov, then back to prague by bus:

View Larger Map

we passed a lot of farmland, traveling on the main highways. one of the many many fields of drying sunflowers.

i got into town around 2, and was starving and had no place to stay. i ate a sandwich from a local store, total lunch about $1.50, and then set out walking the town. it was a friday night and full of people already, so it was harder than i thought to find a place, and since i had little context for how this worked, i got worried. but i finally found this penzion


managed to communicate cost with the proprietor, who was watching the olympics, agreed to pay 550 crowns, more than i intended but then - what's that, $30? and got a lovely private room with its own private bath
a water glass, for men


and a lovely view of the castle.mikulov is a lovely little town, full of tourists, lots of austrians, and a pretty castle.


the square, with Goat Hill in the background
mikulov is in the middle of moravian wine country. the view from the castle:

and apparently we're never far from agribusiness.
the castle grounds had some interesting modern art

the roof of a house just below the castle, with art - turns out it's also a gallery


a pretty little staircase
mikulov was also the historical center of jewish life in moravia, and has a synagogue and jewish cemetary. here's the entrance to the synagogue:

i had a HUGE dinner of something traditional (can't remember what, but you can bet it included boiled potatoes and slices of cucumber and tomatoes, which at that point were welcome but whose novelty wore off very quickly), and fried cheese - which really is a big slab (4x4x1 inches, maybe?) of cheese, breaded and fried, and a glass of local white wine. on my way back i came across a big stage being set up in the castle grounds, with 3 english-named rock bands playing, but i headed to bed as i was going to pick up my bike in the morning!