From Cesky Krumlov to Munich

25 May

We initially had some problems with arranging transport from Cesky Krumlov to Munich. Two days prior, about the time we would normally book our onwards travel, we heard from Michelle that Vietnam airlines had changed the time of her flight and nobody had told us. We didn't know if they had notified Flight Centre and Flight Centre hadn't told us, or if they just hadn't told Flight Centre. As a result, Michelle had missed her plane out of London back to Australia. For the rest of the day, if we weren't actually doing something in Cesky Krumlov, we were in contact with her or other people about the issue and kind of forgot to plan our transport to Germany.

When we realised this the day before though, we weren't too worried. We contacted Daniel to see if he happened to be free to drive to Munich the next day, or possibly Linz in Austria. Our Plan B was to get one of the regular trains from Linz to Munich. Well, he wasn't going to Munich, but he did have a car going to Linz. At 8am. We decided that was too early for us at this late point of the trip and said no thanks. There were other shuttle companies in town that we would try in the morning, or otherwise get the train out. We knew we would have a few changes, but we'd get there.

Well, none of the other shuttle companies were running cars or buses to Linz or Munich the next morning, although one said they would be able to take us to Munich at 3pm, getting us there close to 8pm. We decided that was a bit too late, and the price wasn't any better than getting a train. (At this point we realised we should have just booked Daniel on the day we arrived in Cesky Krumlov, but because we weren't familiar with the exchange rate at that stage we weren't sure if he was offering us a good price.) So we decided to take the train. We got a taxi up to the train station (would have been a 20 min walk, minimum, uphill, and the taxi was about AU$6) and found a ticket office to buy tickets into Munich. No ticket machines in Cesky Krumlov station, and even if there had been, ticket machines often can't handle more complicated international connections. The lady was able to sell us tickets no worries, and even printed us an itinerary with the stops and changes we needed to make, including listings of the other stops we would pass through. We had good timing, as the train we needed out of Cesky Krumlov came along about ten minutes later.

The Czech regional trains were the oldest trains we travelled on for the whole trip, and the stations were the least technologicised (yes I made that word up). No LED displays on the platforms telling you where the next train was going, no ticket machines, the train carriages were the old-school ones with slide-down windows and had the destination printed on an A4 piece of paper stuck to the inside of the carriage window in a plastic slip. The train took us to Cesky Budojivice (home of Budweiser), where we got off at a deserted, unmanned, closed-looking platform for our connecting train. Double-checked our itinerary, yes, this is the right one. Ten minutes later, along came another train with the familiar Austrian QBB on the side. On we got, and it took us on to Linz, back through Salzburg. At Linz we had an hour to kill before our next train, so we found a cafe to have lunch. Before we knew it, it was time to get our final train which took us in to Munich, arriving about 6pm.

Once we got off our train in Munich, we realised we needed to take a city train to get us closer to our hotel. So we visited the Info Centre to get a rail map and some other info about the town. Munich rail defies the stereotype of German efficiency. There are two rail operators who run the two services, the U-bahn and S-bahn. Their platforms are in different parts of each train station, and directions to the platforms are not clearly marked, especially considering how large many of the main stations have to be to deal with several lines from two different rail services.

Then there's the ticketing process. If you are using a single trip ticket, you need to validate it by date-stamping it in a stamping machine before boarding. No magnetic strip tickets like you get in Paris, London, or even Sydney, and that's not new technology. We didn't notice any NFC passes being used, or the technology for them (like London's Oyster cards or Brisbane's Go card). There is something wrong when Brisbane out-technologies a German city of equal size. Day passes don't need to be validated from what we could tell, because they have the date already printed on then.

Fortunately the guy in the Info Centre told us all about this, so we got to our hotel fine. We were quite impressed with the hotel too. It's the only real 'hotel' we have been to the entire trip, a 3-star establishment with a rather spacious room, nice bathroom, mini-bar (with free beer and mineral water) and even a little stove-top. Remarkably, it was the cheapest place I could find in Munich without going too far out into the suburbs (booked via a hotel booking site, so cheaper than the normal advertised price). It is still the most expensive place place per person that we stayed the whole trip. And it didn't even include breakfast!

Canoes, Puppets, Trdelnik & Mead

24 May

For our second day in Cesky Krumlov, we decided to start the day with a canoe down the Vltava River that runs through the middle of the town. I read before we left that it was a popular activity and Daniel reinforced that during our drive.

He explained there are a lot of camp sites placed along the river, and people are able to row between campsites, set up camp for the night, then move on the next day. Some companies offer arrangements where they have everything you need at the campsite, so all you need with you as you row is yourself, a wallet, and perhaps some clothes. Alternatively you can be relatively self-sufficient and take your own tents, food etc in your boat. Daniel told us you used to be able to pull up and camp wherever you like, and while you still can, they are trying to discourage it and encourage people to stay in camp grounds.

Obviously we couldn't do a multi-day rowing trip, but we ended up choosing a one-hour trip through the town itself. The companies will either drop you off elsewhere and you row back, or you leave from the town and they will pick you up. Other popular trips are to be taken up river and you row back to the landing (about 1 to 2 hours) or to leave from the landing in town and row to a town downriver (about 3 to 4 hours).

I wasn't keen to take up most of the day with the rowing trip, but André wanted to row through the town itself, something we couldn't really do with the 1 to 2 hour trip because the landing place in town was before you got a chance to go through most of the town or past the castle. So we just went with the short town row. It was very enjoyable though and didn't require much work because the river flows quite smoothly. For people who come from upriver, there are a few little weirs which have little canals built beside them for the boats to traverse the weir. Those are mostly upriver from where we left though, so we didn't go through any of those. There would normally be one for us to go through, but it was being reconstructed so we had to get out, carry the canoe below the weir, then get back in the water. The day before we watched a group try to take their 6-person raft over the weir itself which ended pretty disastrously (getting stuck, people falling out backwards, hitting rocks, filling up with water etc). But we and the two guys nearby who were watching it happen were all laughing (the American blokes thought it was hysterical). What's worse is that they did this straight after they saw a raft of their friends get stuck doing the same thing! André and I bet they were either American or Australian. While we were eating dinner at the hospoda, the same group turned up to the hostel next door, returning from their rafting trip, and it was all we could do to stop ourselves bursting out laughing when we heard their Australian accents. Yup.

So, we went rowing the next morning with nowhere near the same amount of trouble. Afterwards we did a bit of souvenir shopping and visited a puppet museum where we also got to play with a few traditional marionettes. We found some wine called 'André', so obviously we had to buy a bottle of that, and we had lunch at Deli 99, linked with Hospoda 99 and the Hostel 99 next door! While shopping we decided we needed to have another trdelnik, but this time we had one with chocolate. As well as having sugar and cinnamon on the outside, the inside was coated with a nutella-like chocolate spread (but not too hazelnutty so I didn't mind it). André also had some mead, which he quite liked. Before dinner we walked up behind the castle to see the castle gardens which we didn't get to see the day before. It was a combination of manicured flower beds and tall forest trees, ending with a large pond covered in lilies with ducks. André was especially excited when he spotted a squirrel in the gardens, a much darker variety than we saw in London.

All up, we decided we very much liked Cesky Krumlov. It had great food, interesting history, entertaining culture and activities and overall, very cheap!

Cesky Krumlov

Unlike most first-time visitors to the Czech Republic, our czech destination was not Prague, but rather a little town of about 14,000 people in the southern state of Bohemia called Cesky Krumlov. We picked it because I was looking for a smaller destination to break up all the cities we would be visiting, wanted to see somewhere in the Czech Republic, and because I saw pictures of it on Trip Advisor and loved it.

It ended up being possibly one of our favourite places. We spent three nights there, and on our first full day had a lazy start (hooray for sleep ins!) before spending most of the day exploring the castle that towers over the old city. There is actually more to Cesky Krumlov than the old city, but it's a bit further away.

The castle doesn't really look like a castle, possibly because it's passed through a few owners who have added their own touches and because it was never a defensive fortress of any sort, but more of a palace. There are several entry fees, depending which parts of the castle you want to see. We bought the Cesky Krumlov card which ended up being a waste of money for us because we didn't go to enough of the attractions on it to make it worth the price, but we ended up only being 50 crowns down each, or about $2.50. But the card got us into the castle tower and museum free. The museum was interesting, but we didn't spend a lot of time in there because we had to catch another tour. The tower gave a good view over the old town and river so was a good opportunity for photos.

We also took two tours of the castle (neither of which the card covered)- a general tour and a tour of the baroque theatre. The theatre was the most expensive tour but also the shortest and you saw less than in the general tour. However, the theatre is special because it is one of only two baroque theatres in the world which still operate with their original sets and stage machinery. The other is in Sweden. Despite not getting to see a lot, we did get to go beneath the stage and see the timber machinery that moved the sets around, and some of the sound-effect equipment. While most of it is original, it has all been pulled apart, cleaned and repaired as necessary, then reassembled.

The general tour was also quite interesting, and as there was only André and me and two others, it was nearly a private tour. We saw bedrooms, dining rooms, sitting rooms, formal audience rooms where the royalty would have held audiences with people, and an elaborately painted mask ball ballroom. The walls are covered in paintings of people dressed for a masked ball, and the painter has specifically arranged each person to be looking at someone or something else in the room. So there are some interesting little stories between some of the painted characters around the room.

We had a very late small lunch after we came out of the castle- just a small burger to hold off the hunger until dinner! As we walked through the town, we stopped at a bakery to watch something being cooked that smelled amazing. We asked what it was and were told trdelnik. It was only 50 crowns so we decided to try one. The best comparison to something Australian I can think of is donuts. It's a dough that is rolled into a long log, then wrapped around a metal log and baked over heat so it forms a tunnel. So it's breadier than donuts, and baked, not deep fried. They can be served with a few different toppings, but most commonly it's sugar and cinnamon. Very tasty!

For tea we went to a 'hospoda' that I read about before we arrived (basically a cheap restaurant), Hospoda 99. The food was excellent, and cheap. André had chicken in a mustard sauce with potato dumplings (Daniel told us dumplings are a traditional Czech food) while I had a chicken and bacon salad, and we had a side of garlic bread. We both got dessert too- André had pancakes with raspberries and 'warm vanilla cream' (custard) and I had homemade sesame ice cream with chocolate sauce and 'caramel chips' (shards of toffee on top). The sesame flavour was a little odd to associate with ice cream at first, but I got used to it and it ended up being quite good. I also had hot chocolate which was excellent, and nearly as good as the one we got in Florence! André had a Czech beer and locally made liquer which had a very strong cinnamon flavour. And it all totalled less than $30! We returned to our pension very content that night.

Salzburg to the Czech Republic

The day we left Salzburg started early for Michelle and me as we woke early for her to catch an 8:30 flight. The night before, while we waited for the laundry, Michelle booked a taxi for the trip to the airport. So the next morning we got up, she finished packing and had breakfast (which she bought from a supermarket the day before as the hostel breakfast didn't start early enough), woke André up to say goodbye, and we headed out the front to wait for the taxi that was due to arrive at 7.

A few minutes after 7 and the taxi hadn't turned up. But then Michelle got a call from the driver who had clearly gotten confused and, we think, went to the other hotel on the cliff where our hostel was located. A few minutes later he turned up though, and she got to the airport without any other dramas.

I decided to go back to bed then because breakfast wasn't served until 9 anyway. When we did get up, we had time to finish packing and have breakfast and didn't leave until a bit after 10. We had arranged to take a shuttle bus from Salzburg to our next destination, Cesky Krumlov. It was a last-minute arrangement, but the cost was cheaper than a train, especially as we got a discounted last-minute deal, and the trip was simpler. We had arranged to be picked up in front of another hostel in town as vehicles aren't allowed up in the park where our hostel was (unless they have a permit which taxis like Michelle's did).

We were a little surprised to be met by a driver with a spacious car rather than an actual shuttle bus and we were the only passengers. Our driver, Daniel, was very friendly though, and eager to tell us all about his hometown of Cesky Krumlov. For only the second time on our trip, we had the opportunity to see the countryside from the road rather than from a train. As we drove, Daniel told us about how the Czech Republic is still working to recover from communism, and how the community in Cesky Krumlov is excited that tourists have begun to notice them. He was also very critical of the EU's demands that the Czech Republic adopt the euro within six years, especially considering the current condition of the euro.

Even from the car, we could see how communism has left its mark on the country. We passed an unused border checkpoint, and Daniel slowed down for us to take a photo of the relatively new EU Czech Republic entry sign, not the old checkpoint ("that is just ugly grey building!"). Many things also just look run down and haven't been maintained as well as in other countries and the trains are visibly much older.

We got to Cesky Krumlov just before 3pm, and Daniel dropped us right to the hostel where we had to check in for our pension (guest house). Check-in was easy enough, and the lady took us down the road, across the river and up a small hill to the pension we were booked into. There were five rooms on the guesthouse, each with its own bathroom (we hadn't had a bathroom to ourselves since Tignes!) and a shared kitchen and dining room. Our room was spacious and looked out onto rooftops of houses down towards the river, and a large high-set church across the river. Shortly after we dropped our things off, we went for a walk to get some groceries and have lunch. We were reminded just how cheap things are in the Czech republic when we bought a loaf of bread, 4 apples, 2 oranges, 1L juice, 0.5L beer, three yoghurts, butter, chips, and two muesli bars for around $15.

We chose a restaurant right on the town square (The Old Inn) for lunch where André had a salmon pasta dish and beer while I had marinated chicken with a large side salad and huge garlic bread for about the equivalent of $20. The food was excellent as well. Very happy with bellies full of excellent food for a good price we headed back to our pension. It was such a late lunch and such a large meal that we didn't even bother having dinner!