urban bicycle journeys

Five days earlier we had started cycling away from Prague on the Vltava River and had proceeded south and upstream. Now Lyman and I were leaving Ceske Budejovice for the next town along the river; Cesky Krumlov. Cesky Krumlov is billed as being the most picturesque town in all of Czechia. It was only about thirty kilometers away and I felt guilty for plotting such an “easy” route but the day’s cycling turned out to be much more challenging than it looked on paper.

Leaving Ceske Budojovice for the first few kilometers there was a lovely bike path along the Vltava River.

I admired a modernist building across the river.

We transitioned to a country road with virtually no car traffic that was almost too perfect.

There are small religious shrines all over rural Czechia. Most consist of a cross with some other memorial, all of it usually not much bigger than a phone booth, sitting alone aside a field. Sometimes it was just a cross, as this one that we had seen the day before.

Some of these little shrines have benches that invite a passing bicyclist to sit and admire the countryside. Some even have shade. We stopped to rest at such a place and I pulled out my new ukulele.

I have seen concerts by many of the major rock stars on the 1960’s-70’s (not the Beatles, of course. My sister-in-law Kathryn is still about the only person I know who saw the Beatles live) but I still think my best rock and roll experience was seeing the band NRBQ at Tipitina’s in New Orleans in about 1985. Myself, my wife Tootie, and our late friend Steve Johnson had a perfect spot where we could get close to the stage but still see above the crowd. The band was ferocious. Coincidentally, on this day June 17, 2023 the current incarnation of NRBQ was playing at the venue Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill/Carrboro NC just a few blocks from my home. Tootie was going to that show this very evening. It seemed appropriate to play an NRBQ song here out in the middle of nowhere, Czechia.

Cesky Krumlov (population 13,000) sits on the Vltava River surrounded by steep slopes on all sides. Unless we took the major highway we had to cycle up an intense incline on a bumpy gravel road, which went up and over what seemed like a small mountain. It was challenging. There was an equally steep but at least paved downhill as we descended into Cesky Krumlov at about 1:00 PM. We found a restaurant where we could get lunch. It straddled a very steep hill.

Cesky Krumlov is indeed an impressive place.

In our five and a half days on the road in Czechia we had not seen many tourists and I really did not feel like a tourist. Here in Cesky Krumlov tourists ruled the landscape. I now know that many of these people were brought here by the busload on day trips driving down from Prague. There were tour groups and tour guides of seemingly every nationality, all taking pictures.

That evening for dinner once again we tried to be healthy. There was a vegetarian restaurant with seats outside by the river. Its proprietor is a glad-handing English speaking Czech guy. He does a good job, although when we left I still felt hungry!

After dinner we walked up to the Cesky Krumlov Castle, which dates to 1240. The castle was stunning, as was the view of the town looking back from there.

As other places had been, the breakfast buffet at our low cost hotel was impressive.

When we took our bicycles outside to leave there were tour groups on the street by the hotel.

We had to bicycle away from Cesky Krumlov the same way we came, up and over that mountain on a steep rocky dirt road. Once back down the mountain we passed a group assembling for rafting on the river.

We were headed now in a general northeasterly direction, with a plan to cycle back to Prague over the next four days, on a different and more easterly route than on the way down. The cycling that morning was delightful, at least for a while. This video by Lyman is only a few seconds long.

The buzz killer was rain. Out here away from a town, the impossible-to-predict Czech summer weather turned on us. We both carried rain jackets but the temperature was just under seventy degrees and we were cold. The rain had briefly stopped when we stumbled into the walled town of Trebon.

An unexpected development was that restaurants were all crowded with bicycle tourists, most of whom appeared to be part of organized groups. All the places to eat looked full but we found somewhere far off the street. Trebon is surrounded by lakes and the local speciality seemed to be fried fish. With potatoes and beer, or course. It rained really hard all during our meal and we had to keep changing seats, as the umbrellas overhead were leaking.

The rain stopped and we made the incorrect assumption that we were free of that danger, and fortified by beer we decided to cycle the thirty additional kilometers to the next large town Jindrichuv Hradic. As we were leaving our current town on this early Friday afternoon in the central square there was an outdoor public music performance, a woman playing keyboards with various accompaniments. It might have been a music teacher and her students. This video is only fifteen seconds long.

The two hour long bike ride to Jindrichuv Hraldic was delightful until it started raining again. These particular woods looked mono dominant. This day would be the longest one day bike ride on our trip; about eighty kilometers.

Maybe it is because the name is so difficult to pronounce but I sense few tourists ever come to Jindrichuv Hradic (population 21,000). There is a walled city entrance to the historic center, where we found a nice hotel. For about the first time in Czechia, we saw a lot of vacant storefronts and failed retail businesses.

We found a restaurant that was really busy, a good sign. It had advertised itself as Italian but we had a nice warming Czech dinner; I had meaty kebobs with gravy and mashed potatoes and a dollop of dijon mustard.

After dinner we walked around the town.

Back in my room I looked up famous residents or natives of Jindrichuv Hradic. High on the list is Kurt Adler (1907-1977) who came to the USA in 1938 as an already accomplished classical music conductor and went on to be the choral director and conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1943-1973. His family’s story shows how much stress the town of Jindrichuv Hradic has gone through. I had read nowhere else that the town’s name had been changed from Neuhaus, not that I necessarily have a problem with that. From Wikipedia: Kurt Adler was born in Jindřichův Hradec/Neuhaus, Bohemia (now Czech Republic), during the Austro-Hungarian Empire to a bourgeois Jewish family. He was the only child of Siegfried Adler (born June 26, 1876 in Luka u Jihlavy, Bohemia), a textile factory owner, and Olga (Fürth) Adler (born April 3, 1882 in Sušice/Schüttenhofen, Bohemia (now Czech Republic).^[2] Both parents were murdered by the Gestapo during World War II, after they were deported in 1942, from Vienna, Austria, to Izbica concentration camp, which served as a transfer camp, to the Bełżec extermination camp in Poland on May 15, 1942.