the museums of Orlik and Zvikov

Orlik Castle

It’s surprisingly cold in the newly re-branded country of Czechia. The climate has been on course for the change, though to something slightly more comfortable than all the warming mumbo jumbo. Last year, I remember sitting up in my attic apartment at night, soaking in sweat, unable to do much but drink water and breathe heavily. This year, I’m quite happily relaxed in blue jeans on my balcony, sipping coffee while I watch all the plebeians pass me by down below. But summer isn’t over yet, as there are still some things to be done and castles to be seen, and truly some borderline summer spirit to take you there.

The current cool cloudy clime is still the perfect time for a visit to Zvikov and Orlik. This would be my third time there and indeed, my second time to write about it (the first time was covered here). I won’t cover much information that I covered there on this blog, but rather something we managed to do that I’d never done before: the tours.

Orlik

Our first stop was Orlik, or the “little eagle” in English, beginning with our customary langose. I’m not overly sure what a langose is, but it’s flat, fried, and topped with copious amounts of cheese and garlic. Frankly, I’m not even sure if it’s any good, but I keep ordering the stuff so it must have some merit. 

We then went on our merry way to the castle grounds. My first instinct is always to go down the stairs at Orlik and follow the moat to a small peninsula, where you pass by a door where there’s always a hundred or so people streaming out. What was that door? A secret entrance? I couldn’t tell, since as I said, there were a hundred or so people streaming out an egress that could barely fit a kitchen stool.

Back up the moat and to the tour. The tour costs 120 czk for the straight Czech and 200 total for that with a booklet that will let you decipher the tour guide’s speeches. The castle is well worth the tour and is now on my top three list of castle tours. 

Orlik castle was the main manor of the noble Schwarzenberg family, who still wields power in the Czech government today. The house tour shows you the living period of the most famous of the Schwarzenbergs, Karl Philipp, who led the victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig. However, the man also served as the Austrian Ambassador to the French Empire and had been an acquaintance of the Corsican Fiend, even receiving the best gift you could receive from a friend: their own bust. The bust of the Little Corporal is on display in the gigantic lounge room, which is situated next to the dining room, by far the chambre sans pareil of the chateau. The room is paneled entirely of hand-carved wood, taking the master craftsman from the locality over four years to complete. The ceiling, the walls, everything. It’s truly a masterpiece of woodcarving and shouldn’t be missed by any fan of the trade, and it certainly makes the entire tour worth the price.

The next most interesting thing are the Halls of Terror (name is mine). In one hall are rows and rows of hunting guns, and in another, an unparalleled assemblage of animal heads. It seems that the Schwarzenberg family tradition was to provide a fresh gun for each guest and store the gun for later use by that guest, and they’d go out hunting in the immediate lands. The guns were all notched with their score and on the plate of each beast’s head was served the name of the hunter and date of the conquest. 

Orlik from the front

From Orlik, we went on the ferry down the Vltava. The schedule is on this site and costs 240 czk for a round trip. On board you can find beers by the can, so no need to come prepared, and there’s also a beer garden on the Orlik side.

Zvikov

Zvikov I’ve already written about as well. It’s a mystical little place with the ruins of an old fortress. The boat lands in the back, but it’s best to hurry on and walk through the place and pretend to walk in from the front, which is certainly the best way to enter, where you walk over a bridge that’s easy to imagine having once been a drawbridge. There are ruined towers galore here and a museum that’s well worth a visit—again, before I’d never taken the visit, but this time decided on it, as it was just 70 czk. 

Zvikov from the front

The first floor of the museum has a couple of art galleries and for the castle and history buff is a bit of a disappointment. It’s the second floor that makes the place shine, with the old wooden rooms and the stairs up to the top of the tower. Moreover, I learned about why the castle stopped being occupied. It once served as the storage facility of the crown jewels of the Bohemian King, an honor that was later transferred to Karlstejn. Part of the palace had crumbled down off the cliff, and this part included the royal bedroom of the King. Figuring that this wasn’t a good precedent—especially for his crown jewels—the King abandoned it and it declined in its usefulness.

The walls near the dock

Grandmaster Bouzov and Kanye

Bouzov castle from the village

I’ve long held my beef with Czechs and their castles. As I’ve mentioned before, when I first came to Prague, I wasted an entire day looking around for Prague Castle. Why? Because it’s not a castle. At least, not in the sense that us Americans have come to think of castle, which is something that kind of looks like a fortress, has lots of stone, and with flags on top. Okay, Disneyland did a lot to create this image, but their castle really is more of a castle than Prague castle, and has even more of a castle history – think Neuschwanstein, never really a fortress, always really just something that looks cool and came out of Wagnerian fairy tales. Prague Castle is an administrative center, has many palaces inside of it, and has a wall. That might make for the biggest "castle" in the world, but it also makes for castle that looks more like a palatial complex than anything else. In Prague, there is a castle, but it’s not the castle, it’s Vysehrad, which means “high castle”, and it’s a bit of a ruin, but have fun. 

However, the Czech Republic is full of the real deal of castles. Everywhere from the decorative Disneyland type playgrounds for ye olde riche, like Hluboka, to the old ruins of castles, like Rabi, to the kept up fortresses of old that were also administrative centers and the houses of old knightly orders, like Bouzov, which is today’s subject. The castle sits on a wooded hill, maybe a twenty-minute drive from Olomouc. By public transit, a bus from Olomouc to Litovel and then to Bouzov will take you near an hour, along with a good hike up a hill and a dubious time schedule. Luckily for the un-carred, this part of the world isn’t intolerant of hitchhikers, and they even have a mild tradition of it. So if you’re really determined to make it to this castle, then that might be your best bet.

A bit of history

castle gates

Bouzov was founded back in the 1300s and were most famously owned by the Lords of Kunstat and later the Teutonic Knights. The famous Czech king, who is perhaps the third most famous Czech in Prague after Charles IV and Zizkov, Jiri z Podebrady was born here. Jiri (read: Yeezhee, where Kanye West must get his name) is often called by Czechs speaking to foreigners “George from Podiebrad”, which kind of confuses us, since we read his name on the metro station as JZP. He was a King of Bohemia back in the 15th century and leader of the Hussites. Jiri was both a Bohemian to the core and a modern day nationalist. He proposed to the Pope – who he was at war with – to sit down and have chats rather than wars (the Bohemian side). But he was also a bit of a nationalist, since the whole point of those sit downs was to plot against the “abominable Turk.” The Pope wouldn’t have any of that peacenik nonsense and thoroughly excommunicated Kanye's predecessor, who was soon to die during a war with the Pope-serving Hungarian king.

the inner courtyard of the castle

Bouzov remained a Hussite stronghold through the 30 Years War, during which it served as a prison for captured Swedes. The Swedes were rampant during that period and something had to be done with them. Unfortunately, this was not enough, as they would later lay siege to Prague, raping and pillaging everything outside of its so-called castle. It’s to be noted though that that was the time before it was redecorated into its current Baroque affair and actually did resemble something like a castle.

After the decline of the Hussites, Bouzov castle eventually burned down and the domain fell to the Grandmaster of the infamous Teutonic Knights. The Teutonic Knights were a German crusading bunch responsible for bringing in the Baltic pagans to the Catholic Church. Having succeeded in their campaign, they eventually got some land, went a bit nuts and started attacking everybody, from the Balts to the Russians to the Poles to the Germans. They built some of the best military castles in Europe though, and for that, many of the aforementioned countries owe them many a tourist dollar.

A bit of a tour

the fountain

The castle as you can see and tour it now is preserved in this later Teutonic period. The beginning of the regular tour starts in the Grandmaster’s office. It moves on through some bed chambers and along a wall, then down to the servant’s quarters. From there, the tour continues to the kitchen, where you can sort of imagine castle life centuries ago, and how the servants were able to get about the castle without ever being seen, and how there were even rudimentary ordering and calling systems for the servants, in the form of a dinging call box that would tell the servants what room needed aid. The tour rounds out with the central well that has a German inscription that translates as something like, “This was a really ugly well. You should thank me for having it replaced with this beautiful piece of art”, and then on to the chapel and the armory.

This was one of the best preserved and prettier castles in the Czech Republic (now known as Czechia) that I’ve visited and that says a lot.

no curtains in moravia

statue in Litomysl

We stood in line at the U Veterana cukrarna, or sweets shop. It seemed to be the busiest sweets shop in the entire village of Slatinice, families and crowds pouring in and out of the place, weaving through the tables, forming the worlds’ longest cukrarna line in the short history of the Czech Republic. It was understandably long, as this was truly the center of this small village’s life. Not only was it a cukrarna, but it was also a hotel, an automobile museum, and a wellness center. It was massively understaffed – the only employees there were in the cukrarna, but otherwise clean. When we went up to the room, which had beautiful wood paneling and quality wood furniture, but there were no curtains and the room faced directly into the street from the second floor.

In my broken Czech I made the complaint, “There are no curtains.” But the lady didn’t understand. “No curtains,” I repeated, showing her the word in my dictionary. But it didn’t seem that that was a huge problem for her. Still speaking in Czech, I explained, "People from the street can see into the room."

She nodded. Claimed she would ask about it. But did nothing.

So we inquired about the pool. We came to this hotel specifically for the pool and hot tub. Apparently the pool was full and closing at 5 – it was already 4:45 – and the hot tub cost 25 euros. It was a basic whirlpool that was in the same room as the pool. But anyway, that wasn’t open past 5 anyway. All the hours listed in the brochure that we had from hotel room were for the “summer hours”. Why it made a difference for a hot tub and indoor pool was beyond me.

How did we get there?

We decided to make the trip by using my new obsession. Get a big destination – in this instance Olomouc – find some interesting things to see on the way there and repeat the process for the way back. To do this I was entirely at the mercy of Google maps. I just tapped on random places that seemed to divide up the driving time pretty well. So the route there was decided – Hradec Kralove, Litomysl, Slatinice (only for the hotel), and finally Olomouc.

Hradec Kralove

Main square

Driving into Hradec Kralove, I was kind of reminded of Kutaisi back in Georgia. It was a city that for a long time was a bit forgotten and outshone by the main city of the country. Now there’s some re-invigoration there – there are lots of huge music festivals centered there, like Rock for People and Hip Hop Kemp. But on the hole, it’s a bit run down and untouched, as though that’s how Prague probably looked just after Communism fell. It’s market square depressed us. Of course, we were there on Easter Sunday, so it was altogether as barren as an old maid. But it was mainly just a giant parking lot with chipped concrete everywhere, a far cry from the typically beautiful Czech square paved with cobblestones.

street in Hradec Kralove

The name of the city means “Castle of the Queen” and was a dowry town of Elisabeth Richeza of Poland, who lived there as the wife of two different Kings of Bohemia back in the 13th and 14th centuries. It was a strongly Catholic Bohemian city throughout the 30 Years War, with a brief occupation during the Great Swedish Landgrab. The German name of the city was Koniggratz, which is where the name of the famous battle between Austria and Prussia took place that decided the dominance of Prussia in the newborn German Empire.

Litomysl

Row of buildings in main square in Litomysl

The land here was flat and on going. The villages seemed to repeat themselves, crowded and huddled together with a church always somewhere in the middle. Finally, we came to Litomysl, which seemed to open like a flower before us. We stopped for a nice walkabout from the main square, all the way up and down, and then up to a massive Baroque palace. The main square was interesting as both sides had covered walks, the buildings overlapping over the pavements. We first spent some time at a chocoleterie, where I drank what seemed to be a melted chocolate bar. We ended at the castle, which was a truly impressive site.

Litomysl Castle

In the 12th century, Litomysl became an important religious center of the Premonstratensian Order, which had famous monasteries throughout Bohemia and Moravia. A monastery was founded on the central hill of the town, which became known as the Mount of Olives, and it became important enough to attract the attention of the noble family of Persnstejn, namely Vratislav, who had spent much time in Italy. He later met a Spanish noblewoman who he married and had the Italian-styled palace built in her name.

The galleries inside the castle

Litomysl Castle became especially famous as the birthplace of a certain composer born in its brewery. Bedrich Smetana was born in the hop scented vaults under the castle brewery, where his father worked as the chief brewer under Count Waldstein. He had a nearly uncountable amount of brothers and sisters and was early on brought to Jindrichuv Hradec in the south. He later moved to Prague to take part in the 1848 uprising and became a noted composer of the Czech national spirit.

After Litomysl, we made our way to the hotel, where we discovered it was too late for the pool and too early to enjoy a curtain-less night.

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.

water castles and ravagings

Blatna Castle

The goal of the weekend was to take my wife skiing at a beginner slope to help her learn. We wanted something not so far from Prague and something a little romantic, so the idea was to find a nice bed and breakfast, or castle as it goes, to stay in somewhere near a ski resort. The place I came up with was Kasperske Hori. My mistake, I’ll admit, was thinking that in the beginning of February, ski conditions should be pretty ripe. But then was the week long heat spell, a sort of savage Indian summer that reaped its way into the deep winter, with temperatures going past 40 all the way up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit (for non-Americans, read that as somewhere around 10-20 degrees Celsius). By the time we drove to South Bohemia, there was not a flake or patch of snow in sight, despite Kasperske Hori even having snow-making technology. When it’s that warm, it ceases to be even worth it trying to crank up those blowers. 

We only had to make some minor adjustments. As we set out, I decided that we should hit up some random towns that I hadn’t heard of before and see what views we could see, before hitting our final destination of the Schlosshotel Zdikov Zamek. We’ve already seen the mainstay of the region – Cesky Krumlov, and been there a number of times, so why not try something different and less touristic?

Blatna

Our first stop then was Blatna. The town dates back to somewhere in the 13th century as a chapterhouse town of the Knights Templar, though what’s left of the old town seems to be only a few streets with two quite nice walking arcades – it was burned down completely in the 1800s. From the two arcades, which are linked together by a huge tower and a church, you can walk down to the “water castle”. Blatna gets its name from the Czech word for “marsh”, and once you’re at the church with a view of the castle, you can see why. There is indeed a marsh surrounding the castle, with a beautiful walking trail going through the marsh, and plenty of places to jump around and find weird spots for a picnic. The castle itself, being once a chapterhouse of the Knights Templar, is home to many legends, including one about a Templar treasure being hidden either in the castle or somewhere nearby. It’s last renovation turned it into an English Gothic manor, so that the main tower looks something like an English cottage. The true beauty of the place though is the Rozmitalsky Palace, a decaying, falling apart manor that’s nearly as tall as the tower, with dark stones and beautifully huge windows and an amazing wood terrace that has a great view of the marsh and surrounding park. 

Rabi Castle

Our next stop was Rabi Castle, which is the largest castle ruins in the Czech Republic – and a place I admittedly had never heard of before. Construction at the castle began in the 13th century and it reached its full height in the 1500s. It was the site of some major battles during the Hussite rebellion, with the famous one-eyed Jan Zizka – after which the Zizkov district in Prague was named – taking the castle and losing his other eye there. For most of its tenure as a strategic place, it was held by the Rosemburg family, who also held the castle at Cesky Krumlov in the early years. During the 30 Years War, that terrible period when everyone was quite confused on German lands and much of the European kingdoms decided to traipse about and take advantage of the local Slavic ladies, the castle was ultimately destroyed by Ernst Graf von Mansfeld from Luxembourg, who changed sides more times than one hand can count. 

The entry of Rabi Castle

After Mansfeld’s ravaging, the Hapsburg emperor decided that Rabi didn’t need to be a castle anymore and that the place would be illegal to be repaired. Since then, it’s been left to the pickings of local villagers, with the limestone especially being useful in building houses. It became a local landmark in 1920, and has been something of a museum and site for medieval festivals ever since.

Unfortunately, when we were there, the castle was closed up for winter, with the locals, I assume, not realizing that there would be a purpose of having it open in what is usually a snow covered season. It’s now on our list of places to go back to though.

Kasperske Hori

The final stop before our own ravaging of a castle was the town of Kasperske Hori itself. Where we should have stopped for coffee was Susice, quite an established town that ran the length of the River Otava. If we do this trip again, that will be the next plan, as Kasperske Hori wasn’t that overwhelming of town, which is to say, it was a bit underwhelming. It has the ski resort, and it does have a beautiful main square, but that was about it. Though the cafe in that yellow building on the right has some great blueberry cake.

From Kasperske Hori, it was only a 10-minute drive, which brought us finally to Zdikov Zamek just as the sun was setting.

the castle has never been the same

I don't see no castle!

 I didn’t stay long in the Czech Republic the first time I visited. I stayed for about two weeks – part of it was a quiet and the other part was a riot. I was traveling all across Europe, a rucksack on my back and pulling along an accordion in a hard case tied down to a luggage dolly. It was rough. Over the cobblestone streets of Prague and the rest of the old towns of Europe, that accordion was bouncing and booming and wreaking havoc. Back then, a man could play just about anywhere on the street. Street music was a thing of celebration and experimentation. When I came back a year ago, I found that the scene of freedom and chaos had died down about. Everything was becoming more and more organized and sullen, a real slap in the face from my three-year life in Tbilisi, Georgia. But perhaps a little quieter is what I need these days – 

But back then was about freedom and chaos. And with an accordion, you’d be surprised about how much easier couchsurfing is. When you’re just a bloke, couchsurfing can be terribly hard. Most women prefer women guests because couchsurfing men are usually on it for sexsurfing, whereas most men just wanted women, because – bet you can’t complete that sentence. But when you’re not a normal bloke, but you’re a bloke with an accordion, things change entirely. Suddenly a new world opens up to you. Both men and women become intrigued, they thing, “Who the hell is this American traveling around with an accordion?! I swear, the CIA or the FSB or whatever spy agency would do a lot of good by investing in some accordions. They can get you anywhere and keep you going for however long. Especially in those days.

It started with couchsurfing. My first request was the golden request. There was Jitka, a student at Charles University, shortish with glasses. Real sweet and living in a flat with six other girls and a guy who slept in the kitchen. An accordion could do worse. Though it meant I ended up sleeping on a small mattress on the floor of one of their rooms, where two of the girls were living. Then once the kitchen man went away for the weekend, I took his spot. The group were environmentalists, vegans, and bicyclists and they complained about all facets of Czech life. There are no vegan restaurants! No bicycle lanes! No nothing. But since I’ve been back, they seem to have been hard at work. There are now lots of vegan restaurants – Plevel and Loving Hut to name a few. As for bicycle lanes – Prague remains to be a not so bicycle friendly town. There are one or two lanes, but the real problem is that the city is so hilly and that the roads are narrow enough as they are and there tend to be a million tourists on any given road. Anyway, trams are cheap, so what’s the point of bicycle? 

A view of Vysehrad, Prague's real castle

While I was staying with the girls, they had a party on the theme of making cities more progressive and we watched a video on the public transit success of Bogota with lots of interviews with the then mayor. After the video, I took my accordion and we went for a midnight jaunt down the main street, Legerova, and across Nuselsky Most (Nusle Bridge) to Vysehrad. What’s weird is that I haven’t been back to Vysrehrad since – not for the entire year and a half that I’ve been living here. The place was beautiful and pristine on that cold, December night. Lamps were lit all up and down the walkways on the ramparts. You see, Vysehrad long ago was the first castle of Prague – according to locals, not according to history – built sometime before the 900s and where the first ideas of building “The Castle” were hashed out. Though the real thing is, is that Prague Castle – “the Castle” – hardly even looks like a castle. Vysehrad, for all you castle mongers out there, looks like a real castle. It’s got all the steep rock walls, the ramparts, ruins, and old stuff. The oldest building in all of Prague is in Vysehrad, the 11th century Rotunda of St. Martin. Someone took off their rucksack and handed out the beers and I started cranking up the squeeze box, singing my small collection of tunes that I knew back then. Let’s leave that to say that walking back was a lot more difficult than walking there.

The mirror maze on Petrin

I was convinced now to see a castle. The Castle. If Vysehrad was that awesome, then the Castle must really be something, especially with how Jitka and the other Czech girls were going on about it. So the next day I set off on my own, finding my way to a bridge and looking out. They had pointed in this direction, hadn’t they? Where was it! I saw a big Gothic church on the hill, lots of spires, lines of beautiful buildings. But no castle! But maybe up on that huge hill, with the wall going down it, maybe there was a castle there? So I walked up the hill, Petrin Hill, and found myself in a weird grove with a very unique, three spired Orthodox Church – the Carpathian Ruthenian Church of Saint Michael the Archangel. The small wooden church was completely out of place to Prague, and historically, it is. It was originally located in Carpathian Ruthenia, in today’s Ukraine, and was brought over in 1929 to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Czechoslovak annexation of that territory. Also on the top of the hill is a weird mirror maze – which isn’t so much a mirror maze, but a mirror tunnel with a painting and cannon in it.

Oh! That castle!

From there, I found an amazing overlook over the city – you could see the entire expanse of the old town, from the Castle to Charles Bridge, to Our Lady on the Tyn. Wait. Rewind. Castle? On the hill I asked someone where the Castle was and they pointed to the hilltop with the giant church. “That’s the Castle?” Being an American, and having lived in Georgia – the country not the state – for such a long time, I was used to big stone fortress structures, this was more of a sprawling palatial complex. To be fair, there are parts of it that look more like the traditional castle, especially the side closest to the river and facing the Belvedere Garden. But when walking through it, the place is just so massive that it doesn’t really feel like a castle so much. Originally, it was the stereotypical fortress style, a bit over 200 years ago, except Marie Teresa had decided to redesign the place in the high Baroque style, and ever since then, the castle has never been the same.

9 Things Only Tourists Do in Prague

There’s no doubt that Prague has one of the most beautiful old towns in Europe and perhaps the world. It’s easy to get lost in the winding alleys and narrow cobblestone streets of the City of a Hundred Spires. It’s also easy to forget that there’s a lot more to experience beyondStaroměstská and Malá Strana, including some of the city’s best restaurants and museums. Though Czechs are extraordinarily proud of their historical monuments, most locals have a hard time finding any decent restaurants and cafés in the Old Town, since all the proprietors know that all the tourists will stay within its boundaries and can be ripped off by excruciating degrees. In fact, unless a local works there, they tend to avoid the Old Town like it’s quarantined. There can be good deals for business lunches in the Old Town though, so you’ll occasionally see locals dining there.

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escape to country castles

Orlik Castle

There's not much room for comfort these days in Prague. Every spare inch of shade is taken by someone in yearning for a cooler place. The bars and restaurants are sweltering, unless you find some multinational corporation like Costa or Starbucks that took the expense to put in some air conditioning. All the old white trash "herna" bars that were always stocked with air coolers were shut down in a popularly suspected anti-money laundering action and nobody's house has anything remotely resembling a reasonable air conditioning system. This wouldn't be a problem in normal years, but this past week - as the BBC reported - was the hottest week in Prague's history. Ever.

Having spent many summers visiting family in Louisiana, I hate to complain about a bit of heat. In Louisiana, it's paired with unbreathable humidity, the kind where you step out of the car and fall back because the moisture just whacked you in the chest like a vengeful mafioso and now you have to adapt to breathing in water. Nothing compares to Louisiana heat, except maybe Florida heat I suspect, but I've never been there. I'm in Prague now anyway and it's pretty damned hot here.

There are few things to do to escape the absurdity of the temperature. One can hit a movie, since they're almost always climatized. One can go to one of the few public swimming pools in town, like Podoli, but we tend to avoid those knowing how ridiculously over-crowded they ought to be with such a climatological extreme. The last option is to just get out of town. Around Prague, there are many lakes, creeks and rivers where people have adapted into beachfronts and places for pleasure-boating. I've yet to find a boat rental place outside of Prague though - you can rent boats on the Vltava on the embankment in the city - but they must exist.

For our outing, we decided to go to two beautiful Disneyesque castles we had scene last winter - Orlik and Zvikov. Both of the castles sit on the Vltava River, connected by about an hour long boat ride. We noticed the boat availability when we were there in November, but they only operate from June to August, so we decided to take advantage of the weekend and check it out. Orlik is only about an hour and a half drive, so going on the spur of the moment wasn't a problem for us. When we got to Orlik, we found the castle gates open this time, but instead of going in, we circled around and followed the coast a little back where the docks were. There was a small beergarden on the bank with an excellent view of the river. The Vltava had been dammed a bit further up making it almost like a really long lake with steep cliffs on every side.

We didn't take the tour at Orlik, but for someone who hasn't seen many castles it's probably worth it. It's 120 czk for Czech commentary and 200 for foreign commentary. Outside of the tour, there's a small nature trail skirting the river and the beergarden, there's not much to do.

Orlik in Czech means "small eagle" or "baby eagle", and before the dam, it would have been high up on a rocky promontory overlooking the then much smaller river. Now it sits almost on the river, but still amazingly scenic, as more water never seems to take away from a sight. It was originally built as a royal property in the 15th century and like most major castles in Bohemia, passed hands to the Eggenbergs and then to the Schwarzenbergs. For a time it was the main residence of the Schwarzenberg family, and the most famous resident was Karl Phillipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg, who led the victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig.

We waited at the beergarden for about an hour for the boat. In such a heat, we didn't really have energy to do much else, but sit and drink and dodge the swarm of bees that took up residence there. Since we had arrived only in time for the last boat, it meant that we would only spend 15 minutes at Zvikov, which was fine since we had seen it before. However, Zvikov would have been a much better place to wait around, as there's a lot more shade as well as beach where one could relax and swim. Not so much was possible at Orlik. The boat though was a nice ride and had a bar serving up sort of cold refreshments. The ride was 240 czk round trip, which seemed to be pretty reasonable for such a beautiful and hassle free ride. Tickets are purchased first come first serve on the boat. There was also a boat that went to the damn and one that simply circumnavigated the immediate area too. All of them can be found here (unfortunately only in Czech, but there are no reservations anyway, so just come as you are).

Zvikov Castle

Zvikov Castle is more of the traditional castle ruins that one might envision the Fellowship of the Ring coming upon while running from the Nazgul. Like Orlik, it also used to be high up on the rocks, but with the water rising up, now sits on a narrow peninsula formed by the convergence of the Vltava River and Oltava River. In a fashion, it's one of the oldest castles in the Czech Republic and much of Europe, in that there has been a fort there in one form or another since the Celts fortified the place in the 1st century AD. The current construction dates back to the 13th century, built under the orders of King Otakar I. It was under royal possession until the 1400s when it was sold to the Rozmberks, who sided with the Protestants during the 30 Years War and suffered a major siege there before capitulating. The Habsburgs proceeded to loot it and destroy it and it sat as a ruin for a few hundred years. The lands eventually passed, as all Czech lands eventually pass, to the Schwarzenberg family, who restored the castle.

Zvikov from the entry

Being in the middle of a major empire is really the worst place for a military fortification, and as the Schwarzenbergs were using Orlik as their primary residence, they let Zvikov slip away into memory. It was used for storing grain for awhile, until it was finally taken by the Communists and turned into a museum in 1948. Wandering the outside of Zvikov is amazing as it is, as there are few chances to freely walk around semi-preserved ruins. For the buildings that are left - which do have some interesting murals remaining - a small fee of 70 czk gets you in and wandering on your own.

If we had to do it again, we would have gotten an earlier boat from Orlik or would have driven and started in Zvikov. It's certainly best on this trip to spend more time at Zvikov.