Český Krumlov

architecturally speaking // june 13, 2019

day sixteen

We’ve hit a halfway point in the trip, and we hit it as we found ourselves in the middle of a fairy tale. Český Krumlov, which means a Czech town on a river bend, is something out of a movie. The town is cradled in two or three bends of the Vltava river. We’ve walked probably every street several times in the 27 hours we’ve been here. Settlements have existed in the area since the stone ages, but the town has been around since the eleventh century. It survived both world wars with no damage, and most everything in the tiny beautiful town has architecture that existed similarly in its antiquity. The town is surrounded by massive castle, just smaller than Prague castle, that wraps around one side of the river, overlooking the majority of the little town.

We’re staying in a hotel, Marybeth and I are several floors up, and heat rises. The people on this continent have been building castles for hundreds of years but still haven’t figured out air conditioning. We’re living a constant battle between opening the windows for cool air and closing them to keep bugs out. That’s why I connected with this woman as she opened her window to get some fresh air as we were strolling through town today. When I zoom in I can see her looking at me, smirking, as if to say, “I don’t care about you and your camera, I’m hot as hell in this sauna.”

Today I hiked up to the monastery, had a nice lunch on the river, took an old photo, played in a dark room with negatives and ate some good pizza. We have a plan tomorrow to go water rafting, but we couldn’t help ourselves and took a quick dip in the Vltava tonight. This town is completely overrun by tourists, including ourselves, but it’s a little wonderland. I love it. My only hope is that Czech’s can one day afford to take control back of the city and be able to afford to live there.