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** CZECH REPUBLIC 2009 - Weeks 3~5 ** |
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 CZECH REPUBLIC
2009 - South-east Bohemia and Southern Moravia:
Our final days in SE Bohemia were spent in the
mid-Vlatva valley, and the town of České Budĕjovice which had undergone rapid
industrial growth in the 19th century and is still on the face of it an
unattractive town. But there is a significant reason, some might say the only
reason, for coming here: it's the home of the Czech Budweiser-Budvar
At a traditional Czech pub just off the square, we enjoyed our first taste of the town's world-famous Budvar beer, both the svetle lager and dark beer with its crisply dry roasted barley taste. The #2 trolley-bus from just behind the square conveyed us rapidly through the modern suburbs to stop at Budvar opposite the blue-grey modernistic structure of the Budweiser-Budvar Brewery for our 3rd brewery visit in so many weeks. Water from 300m deep artesian wells of such quality as to need no chemical treatment is the reason why České Budĕjovice flourished from medieval times as a brewing centre. Again we looked down from a viewing gallery onto copper-capped mash tuns and fermenting vessels, but the most impressive sight was the fully automated bottling plant which turns out 1000s of bottles of Budvar each hour for distributions to customers (Photo 2 - Automated bottling plant at Budweiser-Budvar Brewery).
Tabor, South Bohemia's second city, has its origins in the most turbulent period of Czech history in the Hussite Wars of religion which followed Jan Hus' trial and execution by the Catholic church for heresy in 1415. The most radical of Hus' followers founded Tabor as a fortified refuge against Catholic persecution, and the town gave its name to the militarist wing of the Protestant Hussites, the Taborites, who led by their formidable war-lord Jan Žižka, terrorised Catholic lands. The Taborites established a religious commune here based on their puritanical, some might say bigoted beliefs; for example they banned all alcohol! But despite Reformist defeat in the wars of religion, Tabor prospered: grand Renaissance buildings with stepped Gothic gables still grace the main square, and the statue of the fiercesome Žižka still imposes his war-like authority over the town (Photo 4 - Renaissance buildings and Jan Žižka statue at Tábor). The nearby Camping Malý Jordan provided a shady and peaceful base for our stay, set alongside the oldest artificial lake in Central Europe dammed in 1492 and named the Jordan lake to continue Tabor's biblical theme.
 the bridge'. By the
early 20th century, emigration driven by discriminatory lack of education and
employment had reduced the number of Jews in Třebíč to some 300, most of whom
were finished off in Auschwitz, murdered by the Germans. Post-WW2, the area of
the former ghetto was in dereliction, and by 1975 earmarked for demolition to
make way for flats. Ironically with not a single Jewish citizen remaining, the
ghetto has been conserved and restored by the Třebíč authorities.
Architecturally the former ghetto is remarkably intact with two synagogues,
school rabbinate and 150 houses, all crammed into the restricted area of cobbled
street and alleyways. Restoration work is still in progress: those houses
already completed now look incongruously yuppified, while the semi-derelict
shells of those awaiting restoration are occupied by the town's Roma population;
ironically the ghetto has exchanged its former deprived and discriminated
against minority, the Jews, for another, the Roma. This 'yuppification' into
twee little 'des res' gave no impression whatsoever of the utter squalor in which
so many Jewish citizens were forced to live, 3 or 4 families to a house,
excluded by their Christian fellow citizens from normal life and crammed into
the confined ghetto as in so many European towns and cities. We walked among the
lanes of the ghetto where one of the former synagogues now functions as a
Protestant church and the other serves as a recital hall with an exhibition
documenting the history of Třebíč's Jewish community (Photo 10 -
Synagogue in Třebíč former Jewish ghetto).
Seeing the results of this so-called 'restoration', we were left wondering
whether the area would best have been demolished in the 1970s; certainly the
yuppified cottages to be seen now bear no resemblance to the inhuman squalor in
which Jewish families were forced to live.
Continuing south towards the Austrian border, we
reached Znojmo, a large industrial city with sprawling suburbs of the usual
paneláky (tower block). The town developed around the border fortifications
established by the Přemyslid princes in the 11th century. Wine production became
the traditional industry with vines flourishing on the south-facing slopes
towards the border. Ethnic tensions between Czechs and Germans erupted after
Czechoslovakia's independence in 1918 and the fledgling state's authority had
to be enforced by the military.
While close to Znojmo, we wanted to visit some of the wine-producing villages of the South Moravian Wine Road ( Moravské Vinařské Stetzy) to taste and buy wines. In the village of Vrbovec, we found the cellars (sklep) of Mr Jiří Písař to buy bottles of his 2008 Tramin. See the Písař Wine Cellar web site And on the slopes above the village, we paused to photograph the South Moravian vines, the 2009 grapes ripening in the warm August sunshine (Photo 12 - Southern Moravian vines near village of Vrbovec). In the next village of Hodonice, we stopped at a cottage advertising Burčak, semi-fermented grape juice called in France Bernache and increasingly popular as a refreshing drink. The cloudy fizzy drink was siphoned into 2 litre plastic bottles from a large demijohn set up under the porch (Photo 13 - Siphoning off Burčak, partially fermented grape juice). Transporting the bottles and opening them without a sticky fountain was the problem. We later completed our South Moravian wine tasting and buying in the Pávlava Hills near Mikulov with bottles of Moravian Muškat and Riesling (Photo 14 - Wine tasting at Pavlov).
The
closest campsites to Brno, Česka's second city, are 8 kms to the west; those at
Ostrovačice seemed the most likely to be on a bus route into the city. Camping
Oáza was exactly what the name implied: set in a large paradise garden behind
the hospitably welcoming family's home, it is a jewel of a site. And sure
Here we were able to see for ourselves the garden
plot where Mendel grew his hybridised peas by the thousands and systematically
counted their differing traits of seed, flower and plant size (Photo 16 - Gregor Mendel's garden
at Brno Monastery). In one corner of the garden stood
the statue of the rather unassuming man himself. This had originally been
erected outside the Abbey in Mendlovo Square, but in 1950 the Communist regime
tried to destroy it; his principles of heredity ill-fitted the opposing views of
Lysenko, then the party-line among Soviet scientists. The statue was spirited
away to re-appear in the monastery garden where it now stands. Ironically the
Communist authorities failed to recognise that the square itself was and still
is called Mendlovo. Masaryk University at Brno now sponsors the Mendel Museum
set up within the west wing of the monastery to explain his principles of
genetics and subsequent 20th century work in this field including
By our second day in Brno, we were seasoned
travellers on the city's reliably impressive public transport system. The #8
tram dropped us outside the marble-fronted fin de siècle railway station, once
the grandest in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Narrow cobbled streets led
up towards the land-mark slender spire of the Cathedral. A settlement on Petrov Hill had been founded in the 11th century, but Brno's real expansion came
with 19th century industrialisation, particularly textiles
With navigational finesse, Sheila guided us south from here on a labyrinth of minor roads over wooded hills, through a seemingly endless series of remote farming villages and bewildering array of road-works and diversions SE of Brno to find the memorial to the Battle of Austerlitz. On 2 December 1805, the combined armies of the Austrian and Russian Empires were given a decisive bloody nose by Napoleon's numerically inferior army. The monument on Pracký Hill marking the battle's centre point is an art nouveau structure erected 100 years later in 1912, overlooking the killing fields, now peaceful plough-land. Within 2 years of the building of this token to peace between Austria, Russia and France, the three countries would be at war again, this time with even more catastrophic consequences. We stood by the monument, gazing out over the field of battle and staggered by its vast extent stretching for miles around. By noon when the three emperors sat down to lunch to conclude a peace treaty, 24,000 men lay dead or dying. Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace gives a gruesomely graphic account of the battle. (Photo 19 - Austerlitz battlefield memorial).
We continued south almost again to the Austrian
border to the attractive town of Mikulov set amid the limestone hills of Pávlava,
another of South Moravia's wine-growing regions. And at the village of Nový Mlýn,
we were welcomed with ebullient hospitality at Camping Pávlava, a wonderfully
peaceful family-run site and one of the best of the trip, with an East of here, the River Morava forms the frontier with Western Slovakia. With the now open borders, it was easy for us to pop across for a nostalgic re-visit to the other republic, and to do our shopping at a Tesco store in Skalica. This Slovácko region of the Morava valley was the site of the first coherently organised settlement of Slavs in the 8th century AD, the Great Moravian Empire taking its name from the River Morava. It was the Moravian leader Rastilav who summoned Saints Cyril and Methodius to Christianise the Slavs. The nearby pilgrimage church of Velehad supposedly was the site of Methodius' arch-bishopric, and the old centre of Uherské Hradešté the capital of the original Slavic Empire, Velká Morava. The region is still ethnically mixed with the local Slav dialect being indistinguishable from Western Slovakia. The Slováská Museum in Uherské Hradešté displays the elaborate folk costumes and seasonal folk traditions of the region (Photo 20 - Folk costumes from Slovácko region, Uherské Hradištĕ). We had now in our 5th week of travel within the Czech Republic reached our concluding point in South Moravia; what a feast of experiences this had brought with so much to report on. We now turn northwards into Northern Moravia, a region notorious for its intense industrialisation and resultant pollution during the Communist period, and for economic depression post-Communism. But it's also renowned for its beautiful hill country, its Wallachian culture, traditions and wooden architecture, and its elegant cities like Olomouc. After this we shall move on into Eastern Bohemia and head for the hills along the Polish border. Join us again soon, and in the meantime - na shledanou.
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Brewery. To
be fair, the town's cobbled central square of námĕstí Přemysla Otakara II, named
after the town's 13th century founder, is as delightful an open urban space as
any, surrounded by an array of arcaded Renaissance and art nouveau buildings,
its centre graced with the Baroque Samson Fountain (Photo 1 - Námĕstí Přemysla Otakara II at České Budĕjovice).
But one of the most intriguing features is the
130 year old trade dispute with the American Budweiser Corporation. In
1876, a German-US emigrant brewer Adolphus Busch, 'borrowed'
the name Budweiser since German sounding beers sold well. The commercial dispute
over the name between the US and Czech Budweiser brewers (Budweiser
was the former German name of České Budĕjovice) has rumbled on over
the years, and the threatened take-over of the Czech firm by the US giant in the
1990s was only averted by consumer reaction. České Budĕjovice's
independence survives for the time being, but in the judgement of serious beer
lovers, the Czech product's quality and taste beats the American tasteless
swill hands down. Again generosity in the sampling cellar made our visit
to the České Budĕjovice Budveiser-Budvar Brewery a noteworthy occasion,
long to be savoured. Our trip was positively developing into a brewery-cum-pub
crawl. Visit the Budvar Brewery's web site:
models gave some understanding of the workings of a pressurized water reactor
to generate electricity. Unsurprisingly however, the displays were
disappointingly reticent on the controversial subject of disposal or storage of
nuclear waste.
We continued south to reach Jindřchův Hradec
(with its unpronounceable name). This area of South Bohemia's marshy flatlands
between here and Třeboň has been filled since medieval times with large fish
ponds where carp, the traditional Czech Christmas lunch, are farmed. The town of
Jindřchův Hradec has a delightful central square with richly sgraffito-ed
merchant houses and ornate Trinity column; nearby the chateau built by the Lords
of Hradec stands guard over the Jindřchův Hradec fish ponds (Photo 5 - Chateau and fish-ponds
at Jindřichův Hradec). But we had another
reason for coming here: the town is home to the Jindřichův Hradec
Narrow Gauge Railway (JHMD). Dating from 1897, the 760mm gauge line runs 32 kms
south to Nová Bystřice on the Austrian border and 79 kms north to Obrataň. For
details and timetables, see the web site of the 
We camped at Autocamp Jindřiš just outside the
town, with its broad, flat grassy terraces on the low hillside overlooking the
farming village of Jindřiš. The helpful welcome we received from the quietly unassuming owner could not have been bettered, and certainly set an
example of hospitality which other campsite owners could do well to follow; and
he charged a very reasonable 280Kč a night, less than £10. All during the sunny
afternoon, the little trains of the JHMD chugged past on the hillside opposite
beyond the village, the steam engines' whistles and the diesels' klaxons
providing an entertaining background accompaniment. Camping Jindřiš was
certainly the best campsite of the trip so far and one of finest
remembered in every respect: its sensational setting overlooking the village
backed by dark pine woods and within sight and sound of the little trains puffing
across the hillside became part of the delightful scenery for our 3 day stay
(Photo 7 -
Evening light at Camping Jindřiš near Jindřichův Hradec).
And in the evening as a pink sunset succumbed to dusk, a sliver of new moon rose
above the yellow daisies of the embankment, silhouetted against the darkening
sky (Photo 8 - Daisy flowers and new
moon at Camping Jindřiš). This was one of the
clearest nights recalled, with such myriads of stars making
individual constellations indistinguishable and the white band of the Milky Way
clearly visible across the night sky.
This was one of those campsites you are sorry to
leave, but it was time to move on, and shortly before reaching Telč, we passed
into Southern Moravia. The town of Telč had been destroyed by fire in 1530 and
the local feudal lord, Zachariáš z Hradec (another Groucho Marx character?)
rebuilt the town which we see today virtually unaltered apart from a bit of
Baroque tarting up. Stepping into the central square, our instinctive reaction
was 'Wow!' The cobbled square was lined with arcaded pastel-coloured
houses with decorated gables and the gilded Marian column lit by the afternoon
sun (Photo 9 - Arcaded Renaissance houses & plague column at Telč).
One building covered with graffito designs bore the date of 1555, re-built after
the great fire. From the tower of St Jakob's church, the full extent of this
perfect model of Renaissance urban architecture could be seen, enclosed between
the town's two fish ponds and dominated by the Hradec chateau. In the covered
gallery behind the church, a memorial gave the location of death for the town's
WW2 victims: Buchenwald, Sachshausen, Treblinka; it told its own story. We
stayed that night at Camping Javořice in the nearby village of Lhotká,
delightfully set in the orchard behind the Novák family farm. They have published
an excellent web site describing the history of their farm and its forcible
confiscation in 1957 by the Communist regime and mismanagement under
collectivisation; the farm is now an enterprising family concern again with its
hospitable campsite. See the
Znojmo was annexed by Hitler in 1938, but on
liberation in 1945 ethnic Germans were booted out. They now swarm back as
day-trippers and the evident sex emporia and brothels which tarnish villages
south of Znojmo show a seedier form of cross-border commerce. Znojmo's main
square, Masarykovo with its plague column is lined with a fine array of
Renaissance houses, but its upper side is marred by a monolithic concrete
supermarket, an inheritance from the Communist period, which must rank as one of
the most philistine pieces of non-architecture in the whole country. A
narrow lane leads to Znojmo's Cathedral of St Mikuláš, a beautifully plain
Gothic church, and alongside this, the small chapel of St Václav superimposed on
an earlier Romanesque church built into the city walls at the time of the 16th
century Turkish threat. Znojmo's castle occupies the hill opposite. Most of the
buildings have been used since 1710 by the Hostan Brewery, another fine local
brew; a pathway threads around giving a magnificent panorama of the cathedral (Photo 11 - Sv Míkuláš Cathedral at
the border town of Znojmo). Rather modestly peeping out
above the castle museum is the conical tower of the Romanesque St Catherine's
Rotunda built as part of the castle's 11th century defences and later converted
to a chapel. If you needed just one reason to visit Znojmo (and in fact there
are many more), this would be it. Its interior walls and apse
are decorated with
the most wonderful 12 century frescoes; some are of religious themes, but the
most important panels show the 19 Přemyslid princes. It's almost a visual political
statement promoting the Přemyslid dynasty, a unique depiction of the origins of
Czech statehood. Sadly photography was not allowed.
The
undistinguished town of Moravský Krumlov would receive few visitors were it not
for its mouldering chateau housing 20 spectacularly huge paintings by the Czech
artist Alfons Mucha (1860~1939). He is better known for his graceful art nouveau
posters of Sarah Bernhardt produced in the 1890s in Paris (see left). Mucha
later dismissed this period of his work as over-commercialised, to devote time
to a major artistic undertaking. Over the next 18 years, he produced the series
of 20 huge
paintings 8m by 6 m, the Slavic Epic (Slavensko Epopej),
celebrating the history of the Slavic peoples from their early migration
westwards, the turbulent Czech wars of religion and suppression under the
Catholic Habsburgs, culminating with the re-emergence of the new state of
Czechoslovakia in 1918. Mucha also designed postage stamps and banknotes for the
new state. He died in 1939 after interrogation at the hands of the Germans for
his Czech nationalism. The paintings were donated to Prague's National Gallery,
and after WW2 were displayed in Moravský Krumlov until suitably large exhibition
space could be found in the capital; the gigantic canvasses remain there today
hanging in the chateau's two large halls. Mucha clearly saw his Epic as his
life's work, to awake in the people of Czechoslovakia an awareness of Slavdom,
albeit with a Czech bias. The 20 gloomy and melodramatic paintings each portrays a
significant episode on Czech history, including Jan Hus preaching his final
sermon before his execution at the hands of the Catholics in 1415 (Photo
15 - Alfons Mucha's
Slavic Epic painting of Jan Hus preaching). The 20th
painting shows the allegorical apotheosis of the Slavic Czechs after 300 years
of suppressive Habsburg dark ages, with the foundation of independent
Czechoslovakia in 1918: the figure of a youth with hands unbound holds aloft the
wreath of freedom. Within 20 years, abandoned by its western allies,
Czechoslovakia would be overrun by German barbarism and then burdened with 40
years of Communism. Despite the intrinsic gloom of Mucha's paintings, we could
not but be impressed by their scale and their place in Czech history.
enough, the #402 bus stopped right outside to take us into the paneláky-land of
Brno's suburbs amid the tower blocks. Our instructions were: get off when
everyone else does, go down the steps to catch a #6 or#8 metro-tram from Starý
Liskavev Osavo station; one ticket serves both bus and tram. Following the
tram's electronic display of stops, we got off at Mendlovo námĕstí, not the most
salubrious part of the city. But here in the Augustinian Abbey, Gregor Mendel (1822~84) conducted his cross-breeding
experiments with pea plants. By
systematic observation, recording and analysis of the results of successive
generations of hybridisation, Mendel developed his principles of heredity based
around what was later called dominant and recessive traits. Despite publication
of seminal papers detailing his analytical methods and conclusions,
Mendel's work was largely ignored by the scientific establishment of the
day, and in 1868 he gave up his research to become the monastery's abbot. Only
after his death was the significance of his work appreciated, leading to his
being dubbed the Father of the modern science of genetics. And it all happened
in a monastery garden in Brno where we now stood. It was simply the being here
where genetics began that mattered.
Crick and
Watson's discovery of the structure of DNA and sequencing of the Human genome.
Whether the complexities of genetics are your thing or not, it's well worth a
visit. See the museum's web site:
Later
that day, we got off the tram at the aptly named Krematorium stop to see
Mendel's grave among the 1000s of others in the city's Central Cemetery. In a
remote corner, we found the grave, its lettering almost obscured by age and
weathering. The cemetery also has the grave of another of Brno's famous sons,
the Czech composer Leoš Janáček ( 1854~1928) who by coincidence was
organist and choir master at Mendel's monastery and whose music accompanies this
edition.
and engineering.
During the Communist period, Brno was a key industrial centre with further rise
in population to 400,000 creating the need for new housing. The acres of paneláky which now surround the city are an unsightly legacy of this period. We
spent the day happily ambling around the centre, concluding in the central
Námĕstí Svobody (Freedom Square). Current day insensitivity of city
planners has meant that the square's heritage of fine Renaissance, art nouveau
and Functionalist architecture has been sullied by incongruous glass box
monstrosities. This unattractive architectural pot-pourri ill serves Brno's
image (Photo 17 - Architectural pot
pourri at Brno Námĕstí Svobody). A display of
placards told of the dreadful events of the Prague Spring in 1968 when
Soviet-backed Warsaw Pact tanks and troops intervened forcibly to crush Czech
attempts to assert their freedom. It was fascinating observing young
modern-day Czechs reading about these tragic events as if such recent
history in their nation's emergence from the Communist dark ages were fresh news
to them. Beyond the square, the lofty spire of the beautiful Gothic church of St Jakob rose above other lesser buildings, its interior a forest of slender Gothic
columns and lacy vaulting. After such a feast of a day, an hour's tram and bus
ride brought us back to our camp at Ostrovačice.
Minor roads took us NE from Brno to the
Karst limestone region of Moravský Kras. There a narrow wooden valley led to the
Karst show caves. The most spectacular of the caves, the Punkevní jeskynĕ leads
through spectacular calcite formations to emerge into the fearsome, gloomy depths
of the Propost Macocha abyss, a monumental 500 feet deep pot hole. The route
then descends further into a 500m long flooded passageway inundated by the
underground River Punkev, where you are conveyed by boat to the river's eventual
emergence into daylight (Photo 18 - Calcite formation in
Moravský Kras Caves). This whole experience ranked among the
most thrilling of cave and pot hole visits during our years of travels. You
could then ascend by cable car to the upper rim of the Propost chasm to
peer down into the evil-looking black depths of the collapsed dolina, simply
awesome in its scale.
enterprising web site in English:
