Cesky Krumluv – An Accidental Vagabond

Midnight Wanderings in Cesky Krumluv

Published on November 20, 2014March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

It was midnight when I decided to visit the Krumlov castle. It was dark and cool. I only felt small twinges of fear as I ascended a curving stone staircase that lead from the medieval village toward the castle. There wasn’t a need for this fear because the castle grounds were safe. It is not a common experience, for me, to feel able to wander alone in the darkness safely. I stopped to look through the black bars of an iron fence that was on both sides of the small bridge that preceded the main doors to the castle. On either side of this bridge 6 to 7 meters down (roughly 20 feet) were the bear pits. The famous bear pits. Not just famous to the castle but famous to me personally. To myself and friends from Garmisch, famous to the memory of a lost friend. Alex had fallen into the bear cage over 16 year’s ago.

I had been living in Germany at the time. Alex and a few others from Garmisch had taken a trip to Cesky Krumlov. I’m not certain exactly what had happened, but what I had heard was that he had been climbing on the wall and slipped and fell into the pit. He had broken his back, and it was amazing that he had survived. As I stared down and tried to gage the distance of his fall, I thought about the the bears’ reactions to this young German man falling into their dens. I felt a sudden wave of sadness. He had survived that fall, but five year’s later he would die in an avalanche. Too many young people from Garmisch had already died. Alex, Carley, Stephano, Sue…my dear friend Sue. There had been others.

I left the pit and wandered aimlessly the length of the castle. I thought of ghosts and history. I had the castle to myself for most of the evening aside from one couple that had followed behind me. They had their arms wrapped around each other for warmth and affection. They passed me as if I were invisible. I was an apparition silently standing in a haunted the palace. While I walked the streets of Krumlov after midnight, I felt like I could lose my fight or flight awareness that I had to carry with me when walking at night alone. It was exhausting always thinking of an escape route. Here I could just be with myself in the peaceful evening. The night itself is not bad, many beautiful things live in the darkness, it is man that makes the night terrifying.

The streets were narrow and each pathway took me through a a sliver of history that I did not know. I reached a church and began to walk the steps. Fresh urine dripped down the top of the stairs, the scent pungent and the piss was still inching over a step. It could’ve been a dog, it could’ve been a man. I heard a noise. I had a eerie feeling. I was probably being paranoid, but I decided to save the church for the next day. Still, my nervousness did not ruin my midnight explorations. I stood on a bridge and took pictures of the castle under the lights. Two drunk musicians were laughing and singing. One held out a beer to me. “Ne” I said with a smile.

In Czech he said, “you speak Czech?”

“Ne?” I said.

“Come have a drink with us!” He sang joyfully in English.

“Ne.” I said with a smile.

They shrugged and continued to weave and sing down the street toward a hidden pub.

I took one last night photo of a saint with the full moon in the background.

Life was beautiful. It was time to sleep.

Eat Dragon Tongue in Cesky Krumluv

Published on October 26, 2014March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of
the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
Walt Whitman

The name of the restaurant escapes me. Names escape me but memories flood. It can be the smallest rainstorms. Perhaps a long frozen winter, a warm spring day, small rain, and then a flood that washes out the reality of your current moments and takes you back, drifting into your past. Anything can do it: a sound, a touch, a taste.

***

Zezo had recommended the place, and I remember it began with the letter L. It was down a narrow pathway like every place in Krumluv. All the roads are cobbled and all the roads are winding. A beautiful maze.

I sat outside under the bright light of the moon, and ordered something called Dragon Tongue made from tempeh. I had bulgur on the side and a small green salad. It had seemed a year had passed since I had eaten anything so healthy. It bordered on bland; low on the salt, and very clean and healthy. It sounds by my description that I didn’t like it, but I did. It reminded me of the eighties when the first of the vegetarian places were popping up here and there. You could get carob, and vegetables, but not much variety in flavor. Again, it sounds like I didn’t enjoy my dish, but I did. It was simple and relied on the natural flavors of cranberries, and tempeh, and bulgar with very little salt or spices. The way vegetarian food used to taste when it was just food and not a cuisine. It was quite nostalgic. My first experience with vegetarian food was when I was in seventh grade. I don’t think I had ever heard of anyone not eating meat. I was more in awe of the idea then anything else. I had a fairly typical response in my head: if you don’t eat meat then what do you eat? My mom and I would go many days without meat, but only because we didn’t have any money. Then it would be pickle and condiment sandwiches which I never equated as vegetarian. Oddly enough, my first vegetarian food experience was mixed with getting saved by Jesus. I’ll end the suspense right here and now, and let you know, I’ve been saved more than once, but it doesn’t seem to stick. When I was twelve The Heinkes (yes of the California fruit juice family Heinkes Fruit Inc.) made one of many attempts. This time they had sent me off to a Seventh Day Adventist church camp. Cowboy camp. I had slept in covered wagons; rode horses; learned that I was way behind in shaving my legs (and subsequently something was wrong with me because of that); had prayer meetings every night where secretly a newspaper article of Simon Le Bond’s sunken yacht was passed around and cried over. As we were meant to pray to Jesus for forgiveness the girls’ begged god to save the lead singer of Duran- Duran. Their prayers were answered, but I’m not sure how many of the girls were saved. I learned that some people do not eat meat, and I also learned who was Simon Le Bond (I pretended I already knew just like I pretended I could ride a horse). Seventh Day Adventists’ do not eat meat, and so it was my first experience with fake chicken nuggets, and fake ham served at the fake luau where I learned I would have rather had been in the fake surf camp then cowboy camp, because there was a real blonde boy in the surf camp who was real cute, and I didn’t like riding horses. In all honesty, camp was a kind of hell, except for the food. All that bullshit rounded out into pure curiosity towards vegetarianism. All these random thoughts triggered by eating Dragon Tongue under the light of a full moon. This is exactly the kind of thinking that can happen when you are traveling. You are in new places, and yet there you are with you. You in your past and you in your future. Look up from your meal, and hello, it’s you. It is also very hard to lie about knowing of Simon Le Bond and knowing how to ride a horse- you will be found out.

It amazes me the power of the sense memories.

As I sat silently eating my meal, the Vltva continued it’s ceaseless flow around the base of the castle’s bluff, and my mind continued to flow into strange and far away places. The tempeh began to taste how I imagined a dragon’s tongue to taste. The more I chewed the more I imagined I was eating the actual tongue of dragon. I suddenly felt ill, and slightly crazy, since it was impossible to eat a real dragon tongue. I blamed it on the castle, and The Game of Thrones, and my freakish imagination, and of course the moon.

I had ordered mead which was served very hot, and I drank it erasing my image of chewed tongues. The waiter had warned me that the mead could be very strong and to let him know if I needed to add more hot water. It was strong. A hot honey alcohol that made me feel a little tired. I really just wanted the mead to go with the dragon tongue because it made sense to me. Very Beowulf, I had thought to myself. I sat and listened to the river roll and drop into rivulets and swirling pools. I stared up at the castle lights that threw a blonde shine over the small medieval village. It was already ten thirty and I contemplated walking to the castle since Zezo had said it was open 24 hours. I wasn’t sure if it was safe for me to walk alone in the night to an empty castle. The village seemed safe, but I was trained by the very nature of being born a woman to be cautious.

The restaurant cleared out and I ordered a cappuccino. The waiter was extremely friendly and his English was very good. I suspected he had lived somewhere native English was spoken because he had even said one or two colloquial sayings, like ‘gotcha’, and ‘you know’. Could he have lived in America or Canada? I wondered. His name was Marek, and as the evening slowed he stopped and chatted with me. The usual small talk that you make with customers, but the more we spoke the more the conversation drifted from polite fiction into real life.

And how easily we can get to know something about people, when we are open to truly meeting them. And how much we can learn about ourselves. And what did I learn from Marek? The beginning of an ongoing gratitude, because while people may have traveled similar paths with similar intentions you quickly learn that governments can control the path you are on, and not every government is so kind- and my birth country has many boarders.

Take a Train Through Bohemia: Drawing Maps with a Stranger

Published on October 15, 2014March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

You know I’ve seen a lot of what the world can do
and it’s breaking my heart in two
because I never wanna see you sad girl.

Don’t be a bad girl.

a photo of a train station in Trebon, Czechia taken through the train window.

The Czech man and I shared the train car in silence for about an hour. I am not sure what prompted him to break the silence but he began to speak to me even though I could not understand him. He knew I was going to Cesky Krumluv because I had shown him my ticket before I sat down. I handed him the ticket said, “prosim?” And then pointed to the seats. “Ano, ano,” he replied. I sat down and we smiled those strange tight smiles that you smile when you know that you can not communicate. There is a holding back in the smile because the next instant behind a genuine smile is the impulse to speak. The smile is lost and stuck in a sort of limbo. It doesn’t know if it should stop smiling. There is no where else for it to go. There we were stuck in awkward silence with these lost grins. There was a moment in China when I had first experienced this lost smile. I stood waiting for an elevator in my apartment where the school had housed me, and as the doors slowly parted I saw the kind face of one of the Chinese head teachers at my school. We both greeted each other with a surprised, “ni hao,” and behind this simple hello brimmed the communication, “Hey, what are you doing here? So surprised to run into you here.” Our smiles were bright and open, but just as quickly as the elevator doors slide open and then closed we remembered that we could not speak the same language and our smiles fell into the same tight smiles as the one I shared with the Czech man on the train. That silence of inability is strong. The desire to communicate is visceral and real. There is a poignant moment of realization that the moment is lost like our smiles.

“Cesky Krumluv?” He said.
“Yes. Ano.”
“Ceske Budejovice…”

…And he began to pantomime instructions to me. “Smer”, he said. I had seen this word many times in the train station and metro and I had guessed that the word meant exit. “Ceske Budejovice smer…” and somehow out of only recognizing one or maybe two words I figured out that I needed to get off the train in Cseke Budejovice and transfer to another train. The beauty of all of my understanding of the word smer is that I was incorrect in my translation. The word means direction, but my guess of exit is what saved me from missing my transfer. To clarify my understanding of what the man was telling me I handed him my journal and had him draw his communication. I needed to transfer in Budejovice, but where was I to find my connecting train? I decided to worry about it once I arrived.

A hand made map of directions written in black ink. — Clear enough instructions.

Once the man knew that I understood him he began speaking to me more freely as if I could clearly understand the Czech language. I realized at that moment that I didn’t even know how to say, “I don’t speak Czech.” I continued to smile at him and nod my head, and in truth, I was straining to understand. In retrospect it is amusing that I would attempt to understand words that attached no meaning to my native language, yet I still tried.

“Cesky Krumluv…Ceske… Historicky.”

Any word that I slightly recognized caused me to jump with a small jolt of excitement.

“History? Ano. Ano.”

He grabbed a magazine from his bag. The cover had an image of what looked like a viking and the title ‘Historike Ceske’. He leafed through the pages and showed me a picture of a castle, and then he began naming off places. Then an amazing thing happened. I understood that this man was telling me of all the historic places in Bohemia that I should visit. He also told me how many kilometers by train or walking it would take to get from one place to another. Again, I had him draw me a picture. In my journal he made a scratch pad map of where I should visit and what places to stop to transfer to the next place. We spoke in this manner with drawings, and his use of one or two English words and my understanding of one or two Czech words for thirty minutes. Once we had exhausted our abilities to communicate we both returned to our silence and watched the sky and the trees quickly stream past our window.

Directions to Cesky Krumlov written in a journal.

I felt free as I often do on trains. There is a magic to traveling by train that I never experience or feel when I’m on a plane or traveling by car. Although, all forms of transportation delivers you to a place it is on a train where I feel like I am truly traveling. It is on the train when I feel truly free. It breaths life into the saying, “It is not the destination, but the journey,” for me. I’ve had the experience more than once in my life that it isn’t the moment when I am in a new place or the moment when I am leaving a familiar place that brings me happiness. It is when I am in-between. I am nowhere. I am leaving and going simultaneously. Time is crossing paths with the future and the past and it is in this moment where I am present. Now. Now I am going. I don’t dream of the next place or long for the place I had left. I am only here on the train listening to the wheels singing against the rails, and watching the trees and the life outside, the entire world, flow by like a river. I flow with it into nothingness and everything, and that is when I am free. My home is the train.

We are familiar with the notion that the reality of travel is not what we anticipate.

The Art of Travel- Alain De Botton

Botton, Alain De. The Art of Travel. New York:Pantheon Books,2002. Print.

P.S. A tip on traveling: The best thing to take when traveling from Prague to Cesky Krumluv is the student agency bus. It is cheaper and faster than the train, and it takes you directly to the city center. Still, there was a personal advantage to my making the mistake of taking the train. I just happen to love trains.