a drinking tour of Cesky Krumlov

Cesky Krumlov

Any visit to Czech Republic isn’t complete without a visit to Cesky Krumlov. I’ve certainly mentioned this before and have gone over more of the cultural affairs. Before, as I knew it as some sort of sleepy touristic town, this past weekend I’ve discovered that it’s also not a bad place to party and that it can potentially go on all night long. For my friend’s birthday, I decided to make the trek again, naturally using the Student Agency bus, which is the cheapest, quickest and most direct route to town, and it also has individual televisions and free coffee.

We stayed at a place that’s just on the edge of town, Hostel 99, next to an old bridge that must have served to protect the location some time ago. Hostel 99 comes complete with its own restaurant and bar and a deck with a fireplace and a killer view. However, there’s a caveat to that deck: the neighbors below are known for calling the cops after 10—a norm all across the Czech Republic it would seem. The sign further advised, “Down the street is a little town called Cesky Krumlov, there are a lot of bars that stay open all night long there.”  

It was a strange thing for me to read, as I had already had my vision of Cesky Krumlov, which was only further modulated by our recent visit to Hallstatt, where everything shut down after 7:00. But Czechs are heartier partiers than Austrians, there’s no doubt about that.

The Drinkathon Begins

We began at the Eggenberg brewery restaurant, which is naturally right behind a Catholic Monastery, now the remnants of an old Crusader Order. The monastery construction was started in the 15th century, with the last phase completed in the 17th century. The Communists abolished the monastery and it was in disrepair until about a decade ago, when it was restored and now used as a museum and for conventions.

The Crusader Monastery

The Eggenberg brewery makes a decent enough local brew. It’s not too creamy, not too bitter, but neither is it so outstanding. It is however, the mainstay beer of the town. While the brewery restaurant also doesn’t have that outstanding of food, the interior is a great hall with a nice medieval feel to it. Here we racked up beers 1-7.

Inside the restaurant

Live Music

Next stop was Cikanska Jizba, or the Gypsy Bar in English. It’s a small tunnel of a bar, with a busy wait staff and a four-piece gypsy band squeeze around a table, with a guitar, an accordion, a violin, and a bass. This was perhaps the highlight of my evening, given my own love of live music. They prattled on for several hours as we drank up more Eggenbergs and I had a pretty tasty pizza. Not only do they serve pizza, but also other meals from the Roma kitchen. Beer count: 8-12.

heading to the gypsy bar

Billiards

Then we went to Barrel Bar, which resembled something of an underground cave. I mean, the top part was a bar, complete with a large post of John Travolta from Pulp Fiction, but then you go down some steps and you’re in a cave with a pool table. We crossed a bridge and turned right to get there, and it was located next to one of my favorite restaurants to eat game meat, Rozmberska basta. At this point I was about 13 beers in, so it seemed like a good place to nap against a wall while everyone else played billiards. One other guy we were with already had his power nap at the brewery, so he was racking up everyone’s cash. A few rounds were on him.

time to rack up the money

Dancing

We ended the night with only a few of us still standing. We went to a dance club behind the Egon Schiele museum, City Lounge. It was a dance club just as memorable as the name makes it sound, a place you could probably find in any city anywhere in the world, where you can expect to pay double price for your cocktails and meet lots of bros with popped collars.

the packed dance club

I remember the place as empty but my friend says it was full of people dancing. Yet, looking back at my pictures, my memory seems to serve better. I think they were empty probably because they had run out of beer and it was four or five in the morning. Any place that doesn’t have beer won’t keep my attention long, so at this point I went and made it back to the hostel. 

Cesky Krumlov is also a great day time and family place, and you can keep reading about it here.

a brief on Cesky Krumlov

Cesky Krumlov on a cold morning

My first visit to Cesky Krumlov was a romantic overnight stay last winter - and I've been back three times. Overnight with a lover is really the best way to see the beautiful crown jewel of South Bohemia. Cesky Krumlov is settled on the tight bends of the Vltava River with several scenic bridges spanning over the sanguine stream, and two large hills littered with cottages and Baroque blocks and one precipitous climb with a castle grasping on the ledges of granite. In the winter, when we were first there, the nights are quiet and the lights dot the darkness like candle flames, the reflection of the water flickering as the gentle wind blows. In the summer, during the days the streets are packed with tourists and the river crowded with kayakers, making their journey through the castle riddled hills of the Czech Republic. 

The night lights

The town and castle were founded in 1240 by the Vitkovci clan to protect an important trade route on the southern road leading from Prague to the Alps. The town was built in two stages. When the castle was built, the town Latran was built underneath it, mainly for the administrative staff and servants of the castle. As it expanded, it grew across the river to a “green meadow”, where no previous settlement had been. In fact, that expansion and term led to the name of Krumlov, which itself comes from the German for “crooked meadow”, or Krumme Aue – to Krumlau to Krumlov, "crooked" because of the river.

One branch of the Vitkovci, the House of Rosenberg, came to prominence and took over the castle. The Rosenbergs have a weird family history for Slavs, though it followed the fashion of the time. Many of the old Greek families traced their origins back to the gods, the Roman families often linked their families to the Greeks of myths (or the gods), and the medieval nobility linked their own to the Romans. The Rosenbergs linked their family to the Ursini family, who were said to have resided on Mons Rosarum (hence, Rosenberg). Ursa itself means bear, which led to the family deciding to take on the care of some friendly bears in their moat, a tradition that continues even today.

The crooked meadow

The House of Rosenberg came into decline, especially after several pricey renovations of their castles. Finally, in 1601, Peter Wok von Rosnberg had to settle his debts and sell the castle to Emperor Rudolf II Habsburg. Several wars and a Swedish occupation later, a future Emperor handed the property over to the Eggenberg family. The Eggenbergs died out and the property went where all properties in Bohemia eventually went, to the Schwarzenbergs.

Though Cesky Krumlov can be reached in 3 hours by a Student Agency bus and can be handled within a day, I’d recommend staying the night. Take some time to meander through the cobblestone alleys and streets, have some shisha in the Moroccan flavored Dobra Cajovna, and in general just enjoy the medieval beauty and atmosphere of the old town. Most of the restaurants there are delicious too – there’s always some fresh game at Rozmberska basta, while Kolectiv serves up a fine enough breakfast. For beer, there’s the local Eggenberg brewery which has been supplying the town with brews for the past 500 years.

A Paval work

There are three main attractions in the city. For those of you liking castle tours, the Cesky Krumlov castle is one of the best (the best in the area is in Hluboka, if you can, go there for the tour). Even better though is what’s literally underneath the castle. Within the old wine and storage cellars (and perhaps dungeons?), there is now housed a museum of statues by the Czech artist Miroslav Paval. His work looks like Rodin slipped on a Freudian banana peel and came out with a sexualized statue representation of Dali’s paintings. Which is to say, in a word, awesome. Though most plaques accompanying the scuptures of perverse, mutated figures with seemingly anal fixations have right out political descriptions, one takes notice that there must be something else going on inside of Paval’s mind. However, I still like what he has to say, such as on his statue “Guardian of the Intestines”:

“Up to that point, they were used to living in socialism, ie to go once per year to the Baltics for holidays, to have free weekends, to work only eight hours per day. After the change of regime they suddenly found out they had not enough free time. Successful entrepreneurs stared spending most of their time with their good-looking secretaries and soon after divorced their wives. They used unfair business practices as part of their strategies to be successful. What started to appear in society can be called a new form of aggression – my territory, my carrion, my intestines.”

Lastly not to be missed is the Egon Schiele museum. Mostly the museum has local and national modern Czech artists. But as you get lost in the bizarre layout of the winding corridors, you find a large collection of Ex Libris plates, chocked full of art nouveau occult symbols, and then up finally to the namestake of the house: Egon Schiele’s rooms. There are mostly copies of his work with a few originals, and some of his clothes, along with texts about his life. Schiele was a protégé of Gustav Klimt and spent much of his life in Cesky Krumlov, where his grandmother was from. Most of his art looks starved and deranged and features an almost melting quality, as if the skin and the souls of his subjects were under and intense and putrefying heat. His best works are his nudes, which look like vapid connections to their representations, with hollowed husks of hips and emptied, sagging breasts.

If you only have a day to hit Cesky Krumlov, then do it. But try at most to spend the night and see everything the town has to offer. There’s plenty to do there and around.