Prague to Litomerice

To enjoy today you needed to have someone else's mountain bike and be pissed - neither applied to me. The gang in this beer garden were well into it when I arrived for a coke, and money is no object at $A1.10 for a large mug of beer.

Having looked at the maps, noted where the path was and entered a few waypoints into the GPS, and observed that many of the cruisey type tour operators run cycle tours between Berlin and Prague, and for context the Elbe (in Germany) is one of the world's best rated cycle paths, Comments included that this path was generally good with sections of gravel, and well signposted. I pedaled out of Prague looking forward to a big day on the bike drifting along these rivers and taking in the grandeur. Balls to all of that idea.

After the usual crappy bits of getting out of cities like Prague, wearing sneakers rather than the usual cleated shoes to allow for the unexpected bits of treacherous surface and traffic, I was soon on a great bit of high speed smooth path and after perhaps 5 kms it all went pear shaped big time. Note, this is the major route to the Elbe, Dresden and beyond, not some minor track in remote Africa..

I rock-hopped, juddered over stones, walked over tree routes, squeezed along overgrown narrow uneven tracks, walked precariously along the track right on the edge of precipitous 4m high unstable wall on the edge of the river, several times, pushed the bike up a steep slippery slope, and on it went till the beer garden. Then it got better, and bad again, and good, and bad.

And then on an OK road a route indicator giving a choice of left to the ferry, that was not there, or straight ahead. So after a few kms of the straight ahead option I reached the canal with this bridge (photo) with recently painted yellow stairs, painted after the ferry sank. This was the main route No 2 to Germany - up the stairs with bike and stuff, and down the same on the other side. To a great new path, for a while, then to mush again. This was the pattern of the whole day.

After passing Melinka, where the sign man missed the usual critical ones, I eventually found the path which was fantastic so I wound it up a bit 28 to 30 kph for a while, then "where did that go". Right to the end at Litomerice the track was goodish and bad. For the last 5 kms I braved the busy road that was right next to the goat track. On the early 2 days in Czechia, I was able to often avoid the bad track and use great quiet roads but up here I could not find any, just too busy and unfriendly, and I kept getting baited by the good bits, thinking we are getting close to Germany and the Czechs started building the path from the border as well as the good near Prague. The maps in my GPS incomplete and too sparse in this eastern world.

Distance 108 kms
Time. 6hrs 30 mins moving, 1hr stopped
Food en-route. All pretty miserable
Reflection A shit of a day & first ever day of touring with no cleated riding shoes

So to Litomerice, at the Hotel Roosevelt, delightful receptionist as we are in the countryside now. This town apparently is a popular tourist town (perhaps with well-off Czechs by the sounds I heard) because it is one of the oldest towns in Czechia with history going back to the year 1,000. These claims are sort of useful, identify the age of a building or 2, they bring in the crowds who pay more for beer than the guys earlier in the day in the beer garden, but this world has been inhabited from near the dawn of human migration, and more recently the Romans when they arrived established larger towns on pre-existing settlements all over this continent. That is another 1,000 yrs back. All a bit of a mystery to me. There is oldness everywhere and archeological remains are endemic in this ground.

Back to Litomerice. When I rode into town at 16:30 it had this sense of old elegance, but long since faded, washed out, with attempts at a new paint job. No German vibrancy in the colour scheme here. The central large square with the compulsory cafes around it, at one of which I had dinner (a turkey steak and a pear strudel), is just a run-down parking lot. A ring road made of cobblestones that generate a terrible noise with all the cars circulating and the local hoons roaring along occasionally to impress someone not here so as to continually destroy any sense of ambiance whilst having a beer or glass of wine. I wonder what this square looked like in its glory days 500 years ago? Perhaps a great garden in the middle, a market, quieter horses and carts, and a lot of life.

The locals having a cheap pizza in a quiet garden cafe down the alley nearby, away from the square. I was too tired to explore much tonight.

Prague - Jara Cimrman

Well, as I strolled across the river and climbed up the hill to Petrin Tower, the highest vantage point over the city, the thought was there would be no post after one day in Prague. But after the usual photos from the top of the tower (actually half way up is better as it is nearly as high and you are not jostling for position with the crowd) I ventured into the basement and wandered around the exhibition there. The images tell the story.

with a close up of the drive train

a tricycle for professional photographers

and there are more but you might have seen enough.

You see, one reason I travel (although not very well) is to find out something about the people, and today I learnt something about the Czech mind - it was a good day

Prague Museum - Karlin

The district of Karlin in Prague, just east of the tourist centre, has an interesting history, and for me its is where the Museum of Prague is located. Tourists are rare here, the area run-down, so I had the freedom to explore it at my leisure.

The sign said no photos, but we all understand the drill here.

Amongst its notable achievements it is where the foundations of German and Czech primary and secondary schooling were started. The museum is undergoing external renovations, there are more friendly staff than tourists, and I commend it to you - the story follows.

Prague - day 1: The Castle

Prague Castle is the dominant attraction. Nothing else comes close. Now I don't do crowds well which is why I travel after the peak season and ride my bike. But Prague is one of those cities I felt I needed to see what all the fuss is about knowing it is always crowded here except when the snow is too deep.

Armed with my Prague Card entitling me (be careful and be warned) to lots of free access for the price of 980 crowns for 3 days, I ventured over the Charles II Bridge up to the Castle.

For those not familiar - this is not a single impressive building - it is a large collection of buildings as a self contained fortified town of its own spanning the top of the hill. Mostly walking around the site is free, with the Prague Card entitling you to free access to some of the buildings. Of course people everywhere.

One of the not free buildings is the Lobkowiz Palace. Nearly empty of people and containing many treasures that tell the story of this most central and powerful of dynasties of Prague for about 4 centuries. The family lost everything during WW2 and escaped to the USA. After the war they got it all back only to lose it again in 1948, and then to get most back after 1989. The audio guide superb. The rare manuscripts are just a draw card for some - the collection and the story it tells is vastly more.

Later to the Prague Museum (separate post - not in the Castle) but on the way I thought I would have some Old Prague Ham that is sold at many of the street stalls. I know it is a bit pricey but I am a bit partial to baked ham. I will say more of this in the comment section.

Reaching Prague

The ride to Prague was relaxed, plenty of time and uneventful being a gentle 60 kms either flat-ish or down. I followed R3 most of the way on good roads and paths, although the final bit being the A1 variant into the city centre one of those common events of seeing the daggy bits of great cities first.

So a bit of a status update after day 17 of the intended 84:

• no Egyptian fenugreek in the salads so still healthy
• the niggling left knee damaged in training not quite right, except on the bike when it is near flawless
• the new tubus lowrider front pannier racks, found at the 8th bike shop in Nurnberg, are great as they are, and will be greater if I could have half and hour in someone's fully equipped shed. With a few kg moved to the front, against the advice of John Kennedy, the resonant frequency of the bike has increased, the centre of gravity moved further forward so the front tyre does a bit of work, and overall handling much improved
• got back in the rythym of using the Garmin GPS 60CSx in conjunction with maps, and looking. The technique in these eastern block countries where the map data is a bit light on requires some change. Noticeably, the auto routing function occasionally mimics the notable story of the BMW owner who was so pleased with the new toy he followed his GPS advice blindly over a cliff.
• all the other bits ok but 1 or 2 might be sacrificed on the theory of no free rides on this trip
• a reader has asked for some clarification on the ABC. They are in fact a sub-group of GORM which is not anarchic, but a fully authoritarian and highly structured group, with the ABC comprising more than half of GORM membership. If this is not clear, some explanation: initially you might have thought that "half" was a precise term, and "more than" a vague indicative expression. However as you will now know quite the reverse applies. As we are clearly only talking about all real numbers in the range 0 to 1, and from a previous post "half" includes all numbers between 0 and 1, then simply "more than" can only be equal to 1 or "all of" and is thus a precise term.

Now there is Prague to see next - the city of endless beauty and endless repetitive fast food stalls all only selling about 4 different foods, and the youth on endless pub crawls where beauty is not a criterion.

Here for 3 days and 4 nights, then north to Dresden, Berlin, then west all the way to Aachen, then a re-assessment of the weather.

For the ABC, and Dobrý den Czechs

The day began with a visit after breakfast to the Rathaus in Eslarn and I obtained good maps. The walk to the Rathaus was past an active indoor cattle barn common in Europe to winter the cattle and keep fresh dairy supplies all year - this barn was in the middle of town with no external grazing land nearby. It had cattle indoors today and the season is far from cold so perhaps they have a permanent life indoors?

I suspect of more interest is their fire brigade.

The original idea of going 107 or 97 or some other no of kms to Plzen was adjusted to a shorter ride to Stribro. This choice in part because of the great photos in the guide book that had the maps, and partly Plzen was estimated to be a stretch too far if I was too keep stopping and taking photos. (I am working on a new idea about sharing some more of them).

By the Pan Europa R37 path Stribro would have been perhaps about 80 km but I will never know nor anyone else. The Pan Europa (I was not going to go on about this again but I am today) in the Czech Republic is Route 37 till Plzen, with so far comprehensive signs. However from just after entering this country R37 was another goat track for a while so for the most part I was not on R37 but on rural roads. Quiet, near deserted, perfect pavement condition and clean, 4 to 6 metres wide and much more direct than R37. The last section to Stribro was a classic - 12 kms of rough track with bone jarring surface occasionally for what I saw of the first few hundred metres (and I do not have a mountain bike) averaging perhaps 10 kms/hr and seeing the occasional wild deer or lost cow, or, 6 kms in under 20 minutes at 20 km/hr ++ on perfect pavement with hardly a car to see. For christ's sake!

For the GORM-ABC (Grumpy Old Railway Men's - Anarchic Bicycle Collective) the Czech Republic should fit well after the warm up to Bendigo. More active railway lines here than the Victorian Government Railway in its heyday. A wonderful day's ride, easy pedalling except the quite occasional short steep bits, scenic and lots of places to stop on the way. Great quiet bicycle paths (including their great rural roads without cars if I navigate) and about the most atheist nation in Europe. And apparently big on chimney climbing. For this most picturesque of countries with the remnants of near total christianity everwhere like the rest of Europe, at some stage they too like GORM-ABC embraced anarchy and let their Emperors of old know that their christianity has no clothes - they saw the light and decided for themselves that christianity was a charade. This place might grow on me, but it is only 1 day so far.

For the other reader who might be curious, the ABC has a small number of members - one who is selective on the use of his money and still owns a perfectly functional low-cost car slightly more recent than the FJ Holden and borrows his son's bike, another asked my advice on buying a bike and ingnored it, and another who possibly accepted my advice but has not bought a bike. Another member in training curious about how a request for advice fits in with anarchy. Each day new adventures if they can at least purport to agree on a ride and complete it before they disagree.

The destination for the day had been changed to Stribro and I stuck to that choice. I am riding alone remember. So about 14:30 I arrived there after perhaps one of my slowest days rides, occasionally stopping to update my route, but for the most part just pootling along and sucking it all in. Lunch in a cafe in probably a former monastry now being spruced up as a hoped-for tourist attraction. I was the only eater except for friends of the waitress and a workman.

On arrival at Stribro it appeared that in the guide book I had been following the remnants of the Late Moravian Empire's Cultural Preservation and Promotion Unit had photoshoped a few of the images from their archive. The place looked tired and I seemed the only tourist in town. (see next post on breakfast). But I have a photo - the dates in the second enlarge - about 1111 to 1427.

For those that were not paying attention during their middle ages classics classes: The Czech region was inhabited by the Celtic tribe Boii for the first 4 centuries of the first millennium. The Celts gave way to post-Roman Germanic tribes. Later, Slavs arrived and, in the 9th century they founded the Great Moravian Empire, stretching from Germany to the Ukraine. After the fall of Great Moravia the Bohemian Kingdom was formed, creating a territorial unit almost identical to the modern Czechia. The rise of the Habsburgs led to Czechia becoming a part of the Austrian Empire, and later Austro-Hungarian Empire, and a massive influx of German immigrants. It too has the remnants of good technology but the mass eviction of Germans after WW2 didn't help.

Note: The 40 Germanic nations did not get together to form anything till 1871 when the German Empire was formed after a lot of war.

For the most part my sources might be a bit dodgy, so readers should make their own enquiries - comments welcome if someone is a bit niggled about something.

The day's odd spot: At the border are the decaying remains of the former 2 border controls (a German and a Czech !) about 100 metres apart and for the last few decades completely free unmonitored border crossing. In between is a near new large tax free shop and some older small tax free souvenir places. What gives? But then the scenery unfolded.