another weekend, another city.

I've returned from another weekend trip - to Cesky Krumlov. It's a little medieval town/city in southern Bohemia that's still very much as it was in the middle ages, tiny cobblestone streets and bears in the moat and all. Well, the bears aren't quite in the moat, more like in a trench that goes in front of the main gate and there are nice little iron fences to keep people from feeding the bears. They looked rather satisfied with their breakfast of bread and fruit placed on a rock near the bridge. Kind of slow and bumbly.

Cesky Krumlov is actually the filming location for that oh so lovely horror movie Hostel. I don't intend to ever watch it, (or really any horror/gore movie at all), but it's still an interesting fact, and it may give you the idea of the windy narrow medieval streets that cars still manage to drive down, most of the time. I'll post a photo or two once I get them up onto flickr.

We were pretty lucky, the weather was cool but beautiful saturday, and given that it's February, it was fairly empty compared to the hordes of tourists that arrive during the summer. The hostel that we stayed in was almost a hobbit-hole, the door was low and stooped and arched, and it had a big carved wooden dragon curled around the door's window.

Part of the beauty of Cesky Krumlov is that the Vltava river winds its way in and out and around the city center and castle, the same river that ends up going through Prague and then later into Germany as the Elbe. The water added a whole different layer of connections between the parts of the city and the rolling mountains that surround it. It reminds you as you walk by a passageway down to the river and hear a burst of the roaring gurgling water, that before ancient beautiful buildings rose around cobblestone streets, the river winds through and flows on. I also learned, walking though there, that it's pretty much useless to try to replicate that city somewhere else. It might look the same, but it wouldn't feel the same; it wouldn't mean the same thing. What makes Cesky Krumlov what it is is the layers of earth water stone bricks iron stucco tiles paint time and the lives of its people, from the first group to the infants being pushed around in strollers over the cobblestone. It's more than just tilty old buildings leaning over narrow cobbles with souvenir shops sticking out every window. Sorry disney, you'll have to try a little harder.