An actual holiday: the Czech Republic

Although I am on permanent holiday in Vienna, it turns out that I am still able to take regular holidays! Actually, I haven't taken a regular holiday where I visit somewhere that isn't the UK for a non-job related purpose in probably over a year, such is the nature of PhD student and ex-pat life. So it was good for me that my good friend Manu was even more in need of a holiday and recommended a trip to the Czech republic. I was very excited, as I have always wanted to see more of the embarrasingly nearby Czech Republic than just Prague.

Manu's tip was that we head to the town of České Budějovice, in the South of the Czech republic and due north of Linz about two hours on a very sleepy slow train, which we later discovered pretty much exactly followed the route of the early 19th century horse drawn railway that connected Linz and
České Budějovice. The town has another name in German, Budweis, and this may give a clue to the major thing that it is famous for outside the Czech Republic, namley its position as the home of (and only production site of) the world renowned Budweiser Budvar beer. It goes without saying that we did the tour, Manu even managing to heroically drag back 40 bottles of the Czech-only budweiser brew in his vast suitcase.

České Budějovice has a beautiful and very peaceful old town absolutely littered with very old and slightly wonky buildings, centred around a vast and very impressive main square, whose highlight is the rather over-the-top town hall with big metal dragon heads protruding from it. Overlooking it all is a large medieval tower providing an excellent view out towards the hills beyond and over the river Vltava (which will later flow through Prague) and the smaller tributary that joins it in Budějovice. My main impression of the place was that it was one of those quiet, beautiful central european towns with abundant parks and enough room for everyone to have a very nice life, though I am sure there are plenty of inhabitants who would still want to swap it for London :-)

The coolest building in town was in my opinion the Dominican Monastery, a gorgeous gothic church with baroque flourishes, filled to the brim with medieval wall paintings incuding an almost TEN METER HIGH wall painting of St Christopher from around 1450 (apparently he was often depicted as a giant?!). In the nearby village of Hluboká we saw a building that, while not as reserved, was the only thing that topped the monastery, using brute sheer architectural exuberance. The castle, home for many years to the rich and powerful Schwarzenberg family (who had a knack for winning battles of europe wide importance against enemies like the Turks and Napoleon), is currently in its third or fourth incarnation: a mock tudor-style castle modelled after Windsor Castle. The outside is stunning enough, but the insanely complex carved wood panelling and almost casual assortment of vastly expensive objects really blew me away.

Our final day and a night were spent in the nearby (and pretty famous) Český Krumlov, all winding medieval streets, piles of tourists and an impossibly fairytale castle looming high on a cliff over the rest of the small town. We were lucky to have accidentally arrived during a middle ages festival, and proceeded to eat big lumps of grilled pig (I ate so much pig fat on this holiday) and drink rather a lot of Budweiser. Our very successful party evening brought us medieval electric guitar solos, drinking companions from Britain, Canada and the Czech Republic, a firelit procession of medievally clad locals, and a lot of fun! Our journey back to Vienna the next day was subdued but satisfied...

Catch the bumper 16-photo album of what I did on my holidays right at the link!

Bis bald, 

Der Tom

Hohe Veitsch Hike

Among young Vienna based hikers, one object is highly prized: the car. Given the advantages of bikes and public transport for everday transport around the city, most of us city dwellers, especially the non-natives, do not own one. However, it is in the nature of mountainous regions that they are never perfectly accessible by public transport, and the rare offer of someone with a car opens up exciting possibilities beyond the everyday.

This blogpost reports on one such car-assisted trip to a peak I had not climbed until now. There is a whole chain of biggish mountains heading West from the Schneeberg and the Rax, made of the same tough limestone as those two peaks/plateaus. I had visited all of the major limestone mountains in this row between Schneeberg and the Hochschwab but one, the Hohe Veitsch (between the Hochschwab and the Schneealpe, much closer to the latter). We set off on a beautiful sunny summer morning in June.

After a much-more-rapid-than-the-train journey it was time to hike. Starting off in shady forest we crossed occasional hot stretches of felled trees before reaching a gorgeous flowery meadow with isolated trees. The flowers were definitely the theme of this hike, we seemed to have hit exactly the right time and from that point onward the mountain was always colourful. Skirting the edge of a large ridge to avoid going over it, we climbed a steep saddle and easily made it up to the small summit plateau of the Hohe Veitsch. Sweeping grassland with flowers gives way to distant views of the other limeston peaks in the region, and I had great fun at lunch mentally ticking off all the ones I had been on! Especially nice was the view of the whole Hochschwab massif, which I really love to walk in but have never seen a good overview of from a distance before now. The domed head of the Hochschab itself was prominent, as were the snowfields collected in the nooks and crannies of the 2000m high plateau.

We started back down, thinking to get back to Vienna nice and early. A navigating error led us to miss a hairpin bend and continue heading straight, towards the ridge we had skirted earlier. From the back of the group I was pretty sure this wasn't the way we had planned, but quite honestly, I had been eyeing the ridge enviously all day. We reached it, and agreed to take the high road back to the car. This was absolutely the highlight of the walk, scrambling along the very top of the rocky limestone ridge with fantastic views to each side, and the whole place festooned with alpine flowers and almost no other hikers in sight. A brilliant wrong turn! The walk down to the parking place was more direct than the way there and we made it back for a quick icecream in the hut there, later but also happier than planned!

The photos attempting to capture the magical flowers and views can be located by clicking your manual interface device on this text! Hope you enjoy them and maybe it will inspire you to go outside!

Bis Bald,
der Tom

PS the ridge is called der Wildkamm if anyone wants to check it out themselves!