Yes Virginia There is a Cesky Krumlov

I’ve lived with the self-induced notion that I am a man of the world, well informed about its arts, sciences, day to day operations, and its hidden nooks and crannies. Imagine the  consternation and ego implosion I experienced while researching this trip when I came across a European city I had never heard about.  Cesky Krumlov?  I thought I knew Europe like the back of my hand, and I don’t forget things, at least not yet. Cesky Krumlov ? What a funny sounding name. It can’t be a real place. Well, I spent two days there and,… I’m still not sure if it was real or a Disney like confection that some promoter cooked up solely to amuse tourists. In a word, it was unreal. Beautiful but also unbelievable.

The bus station outside of town seemed normal enough. It was modern. Buses whizzed in and out. The twentieth century was clearly in charge here. I walked about a half mile down a hill to the outskirts of the old part of Cesky Krumlov which sits on a peninsula formed by a loop in a the Vltava river. I crossed a bridge onto cobblestone streets, looked up, and realized that I had somehow stepped into the Magic Kingdom. This city had , like Lvov which I visited later during this trip, somehow escaped destruction during World War II.

Yes there were tourist gangs being led around the city, but since tour buses were banned from the peninsula, people had to walk in from parking lots on the fringes, and the castle itself required a stiff walk up hill. This discouraged some of the older, less ambulatory groups from attempting a tour here. It was crowded, but it could have been a lot worse. Signs of the 21st century are rare in the Cesky Krumlov old town. Only delivery vans are allowed to travel here, and even they find it difficult to negotiate the narrow, tourist crammed streets. As you already know if you have read the earlier chapters of this blog, I am not a fan of organized group tours. Here they didn’t aggravate me one bit. Possibly I had just learned to accept the inevitable. It is more likely that I found the city so beautiful that I was able to get many extraordinary photos despite the tourist sorties maneuvering around me. I also found quiet sections of the old city where few tourists traveled.

The tourists milled around primarily on the peninsula of the old town, and directly opposite the peninsula’s toe in the castle area, but the old town’s charms weren’t limited to these bottlenecks.They could also be found on the banks of the river opposite the northern and southern side of the peninsula’s neck. Few tourists ventured into these areas. I photographed one of these neighborhood’s old synagogue, sipped a cappuccino in the rabbi’s house which had been converted into a coffee shop, meandered through a park along the river, visited the house/studio of the artist Egon Schiele, who was run out of town in 1911 for hiring local girls to pose nude for his paintings, and investigated the Museum Fotoatelier Seidel which contained the photo studios, print labs, and sales room of a family of commercial photographers. They produced a lot of different products to generate income from their photography, including hand made post cards. Business was very good at the beginning of the first and second world wars when young men would come in to have their picture taken before they went off to the front. Business dried up under the communists and survived for only a few years into the 1960’s by selling stationary and writing implements.

I then crossed back over to the old town’s peninsula where I wandered through the cobblestone streets  until I reached the point opposite the Cesky Krumlov castle.

Here I crossed the river again and began my climb upward. I’m not sure how easily the castle would have withstood an attack. In some places the walls were formidable, while in others spots – not so much. Luckily the castle never suffered a serious siege, which may be why it and old town are in such good shape. The castle was peaceably transferred from one family to the next after an owner died without issue, at which time the king would administratively assign it to a new family. The castle does now have bears living in its moat, which sounds like it might have been part of the traditional defensive system, but medieval soldiers probably wouldn’t have had a tough time dealing with them, and I doubt they were ever located in the moat until recent times. The castle itself is rather crowded with tourists but there are some side streets that radiate out from its base that are quiet and easily photographed.

Naturally there are plenty of souvenir shops selling junk, but there are also a few shops selling unusual items like metal helmets and suits of armor, or old phonograph records.

On the top of the hill next to the castle are its formal gardens. For some reason they were not very crowded, and they really should have been. They were well maintained and despite it being late September, were filled with blooming flowers.

I made my way back down from the castle gardens and crossed back into the old town where I had lunch at Laibon, a vegetarian restaurant that sat overlooking the river. While I was eating several people poled a raft up the river. The owner of the restaurant spoke excellent English and looked vaguely familiar. It felt like he was someone I saw interviewed on TV for some nature or travel show. This old brain can’t reveal anything clearer than this feeling.

I took hundreds of pictures in Cesky Krumlov. Those included in this blog are but one twist of the kaleidoscope. I would have liked to have stayed longer than two days, but I had already made reservations for Brno. I recommend Cesky Krumlov as fertile ground for other photographers, and for those just looking for a pleasant place to eat, drink, and hangout. I’ll leave you with these parting shots of Cesky Krumlov.

{If this is your first visit to My Road Less Taken note that all the pictures can be blown up to full screen size by double clicking your mouse’s left button directly over the picture. Any of the pictures in this or any other chapter of the blog can be purchased. All are giclee prints on archival paper that are roughly 12″”wide by 18″long. If interested contact me at terryfailing@gmail.com}