urban bicycle journeys

Prague has gotten a lot of press over recent years, describing it as a wonderful city. I wonder, what is Czechia like beyond Prague? I doubted that few Americans go beyond the Prague city limits.

My sister-in-law Kristi two or three years ago had been looking for a job opportunity to take her secondary school mathematics teaching skills to somewhere exotic. She and my brother Alex, a journalist and writer, moved to Prague almost two years ago, where she has been teaching at a high-end English speaking school. They have a young daughter who is now five, as well as a son who just graduated from boarding school in Virginia.

We were to be cycling through a country that has undergone several seismic shifts in the past hundred ten years. It was always a dream of some to have a Czech homeland. It did not become independent from the Holy Roman Empire until 1918. In 1938 that new country of Czechoslovakia was overrun by the German Nazis who murdered or drove out virtually all its sizable Jewish minority. Most of territory we now call Czechia had had a German speaking minority for most of its recorded history, and in the aftermath of the Second World War most German speakers were expelled, a few being murdered in the process. Czechoslovakia in those same late 1940’s become Communist, part of the Russian led East Bloc. It was behind the Iron Curtain until about 1989, for forty years mostly cut off from The West. The Czechs had to deal with swings from capitalism to communism and then back to capitalism. In 1992 Czechoslovakia split into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. That is a lot of tumult over just about a hundred years!

There is some movement to call the country Czechia in English instead of Czech Republic. I think the names are interchangeable.

I had been in Prague almost a week, walking around the city with my brother Alex and some of the time with my sister Betsy, who was also visiting.

My friend and cycling partner Lyman flew in on a Saturday, and that same evening, the night before our cycling departure, Alex, Betsy, Lyman, and I went to the opera; Dvorak’s Armida. I am not a huge opera fan but the intimacy of this older small venue won me over.

I left Alex and Kristi’s apartment by bicycle at about nine on a Sunday morning. I biked about a mile to Lyman’s hotel in the more central part of the city. We both had Bike Friday folding bikes that we had brought over in suitcases on the airplane.

This is a map of the bike ride we would do over the next ten days.

Prague sits on both sides of the Vltava River. We started our trip by cycling south and upstream. Prague is NOT a bicycling nirvana. Streets of central Prague alternate between bumpy cobblestones and ubiquitous tram tracks. There was no bike path for the first mile or so as we paralleled the river. Instead, a lane was marked for both cars and bicycles, and we nervously joined with other bicyclists. The wind was at our back.

Following the words “mountain bike route” plotted on the website Mapy.cz we were able to get off the busy street and onto a bumpy cobblestone lane that followed directly alongside the river. Within a mile we transitioned to a bike path which then followed the river on the east bank for at least twenty or thirty kilometers south. This path allowed us to leave the city without any further car traffic or even stoplights. For a while the bike path paralleled both the Vltava River and tram tracks.

Prague and indeed all of Czechia is famous for its trams. In New Orleans we call them streetcars. In much of America they were called trolleys. I learned that the Czech model Tatra T3 was the most produced tram in the world, manufactured in Prague from 1960 to 1997 and were sold all over the former Communist East Block. We could still see occasional T3s along the bike path.

We passed newer models as well. Some of the Portland OR and Seattle WA streetcars are made in Czechia. Should New Orleans consider such modern looking streetcars?

We continued south through suburban Prague on the bike path along the Vltava River.

About 12:00 or 1:00 PM we stopped at a snack bar/beer garden along the bike trail. The trail had been crowded on this warm Sunday. This guy unabashedly flaunted his less than sexy physique.

It was only 12:30 PM and we had not cycled all that far but beer and a hot dog seemed appropriate; a beer each and we split one large hot-dog looking thing, the sausage sticking lengthwise out of a French bun. The outdoor tables were all taken so we sat on a nearby stump, enjoyed the people show on this glorious sunny day. One older guy on an electric bike managed to fall over right in front of where we were sitting. We thought he might be really hurt but he slowly got up with assistance from whom was likely his son.

We following the trail further south. I saw a number of skilled inline skaters.

The biking was so delightful that I missed a turnoff where we needed to cross the river. We biked all the way south to a place called Vrane nad Vltavou where the east bank road essentially ended. We had to backtrack by bicycle ten kilometers north to a bridge to cross over to the western bank of the river, as the main highway was the only route in a narrow section with steep slopes on both sides. Cycling on this highway was mildly stressful. We stopped for ice cream at an outdoor space that adjoined a gas station. Several other patrons had friendly little dogs. The ice cream was all soft serve.

The ice cream scene was nice but we were soon back on the busy highway.

The village of Davle gave us an opportunity to get off the highway. My map showed almost no hotels out here in the Prague exurbs, so there was little incentive to bicycle further. Why not stop now while we were ahead? Utilizing Google maps we had found a place that looked to be both hotel and restaurant. At about five on this Sunday afternoon I walked into the empty main dining room of the Pizzeria Grado Penzion (with its pizza oven) and said (in English) that I wanted two rooms. It took them a couple of minutes to even understand what I was saying, but the guy offered us a special situation, two rooms connected and sharing the same bath, all for about eight-five US dollars total. As we were to find in all of Czechia, everything was clean and modern. It was hot and there was no air conditioning in the rooms, but they cooled off after we opened the windows. The downside was traffic noise from the highway.

It’s Miller time! We ordered two beers and sat out front.

We each regrouped and showered in our rooms and then came back somewhat later to our table on the sidewalk in front of our pizzeria. Soups are the best low cost items at most Czech restaurants, even at one that professed to be Italian. I ate cabbage soup, him minestrone, each for about two or three dollars each. Unlike a low cost place in America each soup came with real chinaware and real cutlery. Each serving was presented with a small cup of croutons. Every soup I ate in Czechia was obviously homemade.

My brother Alex had warned me that the Czechs were not particularly good at cooking non-Czech food, but the pizza we shared as our main course was fine. The restaurant even delivered each pizza half on separate plates. Sitting on a small town Czech street, life was good.

There we no people around on the street, save a raucous party of about seven people at one other table at our restaurant. We walked down to the river just to check out the town in the gentle early evening light.