I am being crushed — and happily so — by a duvet that must weigh as much as I do. I’ve left the patio door open so the fresh night air will come in and I can hear the waterfall.
Last night we left Prague for Cesky Krumlov, a little town comprised entirely of the sort of little alleyway streets that make me love Europe, all wound around a castle painted up like a children’s puppet show set-piece.
When we arrived, the disembodied GPS system lady-voice barked orders for this way and that. “In twelve metres, turn left, then right. Recalculating route. Do a U-turn when possible. Turn right, then turn right, then…” Then Gord noticed that the centre of town was pedestrian-only, so she shouldn’t have been telling us to drive on any of these tiny, dark, cobbled alleys. We shut her off.
We left the car and carried our bags (the wheels were just too loud on the cobbles), wandering until we found the staircase alley where our hotel was. Gord called the owner, who came over in houseclothes to open the souvenir shop (mostly marionettes), and gave us the keys to our rooms, which were up an ever-shrinking staircase and under the slope of the roof.
Settled in, we tried to find someplace that was still open for dinner, and wound up in the opposite of our hotel: a shrinking stone staircase that wound down and down to a rotisserie deep underground. Our dinner there was wonderful (a fish, served whole, was as close as I could get to vegetarian, but it was done perfectly, so I quickly got over being stared at). I also had a very good dark beer, so much softer and milder than the sharp lagers I’ve been having.
Today we poked about the town and guided ourselves around the castle, since all the morning’s tours were sold out.
(I can’t do justice in words to the colourful wee buildings huddled around Cesky Krumlov’s streets, nor to this town, but I’ve been taking pictures.)
We left in the afternoon and drove through to Austria. I loved seeing the shifts from the already-unfamiliar Czech barn buildings and vehicles, power-lines, houses, and steeples to their Austrian equivalents. Then Gord pointed out something on the horizon — like clouds, but below them. Mountains!
We drove on, eventually passing through those mountains in a long tube of a car-tunnel. After a few of those, we emerged here, to this town that clings to the mountain like a climbing plant, with buildings like leaves unfolding all the way down to the water.
I can’t help thinking of the young men in World War II, coming here from small towns and encountering these old European villages for the first time. I feel like them; I have never seen anything like this place, cradled in mountains dusted with snow like the icing sugar on my apple strudel after dinner.
Gord is in great spirits, asking questions and joking in German with the hotel’s owner and staff in their lederhosen. He’s clearly enjoying sharing this part of his heritage with us, but through him and his fluency we’re also getting to experience the Austrian character, which seems to be very hospitable, with a constant kind of teasing-joking going on.
Gord’s already asleep in the next bed (Goderre has been banished to other rooms because of my reports of his snoring on our London trip a few years ago). I guess I should turn in. Tomorrow we’re to be up early to see a glacier, then perhaps see the salt mines here, which date back around 3,000 years.
