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"Easter Holiday, Trip to Czech & Slovak Republic plus Budapest, 28. April - 13. May 2007" D Wednesday, 28 March 2007: Once the last preparations had been finished, we started at 14:00h direction of Bamberg. After a relaxed travel we arrive against 18:00h at my old schoolmate and friend Jost Lohmann. Because his wife was still at the work, Jost showed us their new house in Gunzendorf. When then Tanja arrived, we went together to a village near by and stayed at a unique brewery plus restaurant. Jost recommended for the next morning a visit in the Levi Strauss museum in Buttenheim, who lived here before his emigration to USA.
D Thursday, 29 March 2007: After a long sleep we had breakfast with pan-fried eggs (Tanja had given us a pack of eggs from their chicken living a very lucky live in their garden - better and more tastefully you cannot get them anywhere!). The visit in the Levi Strauss museum failed, because on Thursday they open from 14:00h. So we drove to Bamberg - with a short shopping stop - before we stopped at the special RV-parking place at the Heinrichsdamm. It is a great address: Parking EUR 1,- / day and bus shuttle directly into the city centre every 10 minutes for only another EUR 1,- / person. Just after we arrived at the "Kranen" Jost arrived as well and offered us exclusive city guidance through Bamberg - normally this is one of Josts jobs, which he offers by his company "Agil". Who would like to enjoy a little bit different city tour guide then normal – he is specialized on children and young people, medieval or in the baroque style - is here exactly at the correct address. The cathedral with the relic of emperor Heinrich and its wife and the Bamberger rider, the former Pfalz (castle)
and the office for yard, the old city hall between the two Regnitz arms were only some of the highlights of the tour – no wonder, because Bamberg is world cultural heritage.
With lots of information and great impressions we said good-bye in the late afternoon to Jost and Tanja. Our way passed by Marktredwitz to Arzberg, where we stayed overnight.
CZ Friday, 30 March 2007: Again we slept too long in the camper van but the distance to Eger/Cheb was very short. Eger located at a river with the same name has a very beautiful old market place. In one of the buildings Wallenstein was murdered, now the house accommodates an exhibition about him. Directly opposite are the so-called "Stoeckel" houses, very closely built together houses dating back into the 13th century.
The old Pfalz (kind of castle for the former kings who ruled their country by travelling for Pfalz to Pfalz) was unfortunately closed and therefore we could only have a look at it from the outside. Altogether they did a lot of renovation to push tourism and in addition the coming horticultural show probably causes a further push. From Eger we continued to go to Marienbad / Mariánské Lázné. For sure for many very worth seeing, but for us coming from a spa place it was not the highlight of the tour.
But of course we bought wafers, those ones from Carlsbad ones and the ones from “Marienbad”!
In the early evening we drove direction of Carlsbad, first the road #230, then further on the #20. We had just hit the last one when we saw a sign "max. 3.70 meters height" after 100 meter. Fantastic placement of the sign, e.g. a truck with trailer would have no other option as to reverse the full distance! Because Big Foot is just above 3.70 meters, I decided to continue. Anita moaned and complained all the time and watched out for turning possibilities. The road was really extremely nice, a river had cut a deep valley with beautiful sights –if not the "3.7 m" would continuously run around the head. Finally we reached the railway bridge and on the opposite track the clearance seemed to be a little bit bigger. So I switched on the signal lights, opened the roof hatch and Anita standing on the middle seat observed the remaining gap to the railway bridge. With minimum peed we passed it. Not too far behind this obstruction we stopped at a small parking area, still in the pictorial valley directly at the river and stayed overnight there.
CZ Saturday, 31 March 2007: The next morning we started from the parking bay we went to the pictorial city Elbogen / Loket, a medieval city on a steep hill, which is surrounded by three sides from the river Elbe. Beside the beautiful, old houses the castle on the top of the rock impressed most. In this very well preserved castle the later emperor Karl IV was kept imprisoned by his father from his third year onwards (strange educating methods at that time!).
For lunch we drove to Carlsbad / Karlovy Vary, where we walked from a parking lot next to the bus station through a shopping street - not without buying further mandatory wafers. We continued through the spa area with perfectly renovated buildings - a spa, which is worth seeing.
From here we drove to Prague / Praha, where we were invited by the family Hladky. A very nice evening and therefore a perfect completion of a day with many impressions.
CZ Sunday, 1 April 2007: We had stayed overnight in Big Foot on an unbuilt plot opposite the house of Hladky's and began the day with a rich breakfast with our friends.
Equipped with plentifully good hints we started to Prague.
The emphasis was this time the Jewish quarter, which we had not visited with our last trip to Prague in 1999/2000. Cemetery, synagogues and further buildings documented descriptive the Jewish culture and its fall in the 3. Reich.
After we had been shopping a little bit, we went back to our "parking place", where we filled and emptied the tanks of Big Foot. After we had coffee and cake together with Hladky’s we had to say good by although they offered great hospitality, hopefully it does not last too long till we see us again. We drove to Karlstein / Karlstejn, where we stayed overnight on a parking lot, from which we planned to go the next day with a shuttle service to the castle with the same name.
CZ Monday. 2. April 2007: Damn, lucky who can read: Monday seems to be - similar to the "hairdresser day" in Germany – the museums day. As a result the castle had closed. Therefore we left the beautiful parking lot without visiting the castle and bypassed Prague past to Kuttenberg / Kutná Hora, the centre of the silver production to in 17 century. Many old buildings still tell of the rich past. Nowadays the still give together with the very well reconstructed old part of town a very nice atmosphere. The huge church St. Barbara,
the "Welsch House" (formerly used to manufacture coins and as a kings residence, now adays the residence of the city mayor, here I sit in one of the rooms with the city keys),
the stone house (late-gothic house with museum), just to mention only some of the highlights. After we had spent nearly a half day here, we visited the “Gebeinhaus” / Charnel House in the church in the near by village Sedlec. In the vault they have built from bones of approx. 40,000 humans ornamentations, decorations and even chandeliers. Afterwards we left to Iglau / Jihlava, where we found a parking place for the visit the next day.
CZ Tuesday, 3 April 2007: Jihlava, place of birth of Gustav Mahler has a very beautiful historic town centre with an enormous market place, which is only disturbed violently by a huge store shopping-mal built in socialist times. The visit of the catacombs dating back to the former mining industry in this city (formerly rich silver deposits) was interesting. Afterwards it proved again that going shopping in Czech Republic is very attractive. From Jihlava we drove to Brünn / Brno, which does not look at all attractive when you reach the outskirts because of the ugly mass of huge mass of housing buildings. After we had found finally somewhat outside a parking lot - Brünn has 300,000 inhabitants! - and had gone with a bus to the main-station, we experienced and enjoyed it from its beautiful and busy side. The majority of the old part of town is in a top restored condition, with buildings from the gothic to the baroque. Especially the old city hall
with the surrounding buildings were highlights, and in addition the various places with lots of cafés and restaurants invite the people to staying.
After approx. 2 hours we had seen the highlights from of Brünn and started to Olomouc. However when we were on the motorway we saw signs with “Austerlitz”. So we left the road and headed to Slavkov u Brna, where we stayed overnight at the enormous palace.
CZ Wednesday, 4 April 2007: It became a culture program!! Palace visited even twice, once for the upper rooms and once for the cellar. The total visit last more than 2 hours.
We then still drove to the “peace hill” with the large statue, which reminds of the dead of the "three-emperor battle". Here we joined a half hour multi-media show about the order of events from the battle, which led to Napoleons' largest victory.
In the old university town Olmütz / Olomouc it was unfortunately as cold and windy as it was in Austerlitz. Because the old part of town is relatively large, the visit was quite unpleasant because of the weather, even though the place were very beautiful. Many buildings are perfectly renovated: In the mid of the market place is the old city hall with the large astronomical clock (the oldest besides the Prague one) surrounded by 3 fountains plus the enormous plague column.
As well the other places had were attractive, especially the small streets with the student taverns. Relatively late we drove direction of to the Walachian open-air museum in “Rosenau am Radegast” / Roznow pod. Because it was getting late and dark we stayed overnight in Hranice.
CZ - SK Thursday, 5.04.2007: Today we arrived at the Walachian open air museum, which was unfortunately only partial opened and therefore we could only see the "small wooden village". For sure worth seeing is as well the "mill valley" and "Walachian village", but not for us today. So we saw typical wooden houses, typical for this area., reconstructed or taken down on re-built here. In the cemetery of the church are not only old gravestones but also new graves of famous personalities, such as B. Zapotek, the Marathon race world champion of 1954.
In the "Hotel to the Vasek" we enjoyed local specialities such as cabbage soup, bratwurst and a kind of pork goulash with dumplings. Anita enjoyed the honey wine with a very delicious slivovitz. The very gentle servant rejected strictly any tip but asked us to pass by again. Because it is unlikely that this will unfortunately not happen too fast, I would like to make instead some advertisement here for the restaurant. From Rosenau we crossed through the partial snow-covered mountains of the Tatra into the Slovak Republic. We saw through pictorial valleys, mountains and rivers on our way to the castle in Oravský Podzámok. Because it was already too late, we drove to Podbiel, where similar buildings to the Walachian open-air museum stood directly at the road and were still inhabited in many villages. The old buildings are not only restored, but some were completely new built in the old style and therefore fitted perfectly into the old townscape. We appreciated very much that the tradition is still kept alive.
SK Friday, 6.04.2007: Even from the other side offers the castle was an impressive sight. On the parking area our happiness increases even more, because from here we were able to see even better, how huge and the impressive the castle is plus the good overview on the map. It showed that the castle has several graduated courtyards with gates - unfortunately there was also a note that the castle is completely closed in April because of renovation! Shi...
So again direction south and just behind Ruzomberok we entered the motorway direction east. In the North the high Tatra, with snow-covered peaks which raise more than 2.600 meters in the eastern part. South of us the mountains of the low Tatra, whose peaks go up to 2.000 meters.
With perfect sunshine we really enjoy the travel. In Poprad we turn to the north, in order to enjoy the road, which goes alongside the high Tatra in 1.000 meter (estimated) and therefore you can find here a lot skiing villages.
On our way we still saw the devastating effect of the storm „Quimburga“ at 19. November 2004: The high-altitude forests in the direct lee-side of the mountains were still OK. But immediately after the trees were exposed to the wind they were all broken and only the roots were now still there - a frightening sight.
In Levoca we stopped in order to visit the medieval city hidden behind the city wall. The church was opened but only for service. So unfortunately the remarkable altar with its 16 meters height was not accessible for us. The city was very calm – or lets say dead because of Good Friday! Everything except a museum with old books was closed As a result we managed to have a look at the most important objects of interest in one hour.
In Spisske Podhradie we wanted to finish the day with a visit to the 4 hectars large Zipser castle (ruin) / Spissky Hrad, which is very impressive and can be seen already from far away because of its size on a rock without trees and the bright colour. For other potential visitors we want to leave the following note: Visits only starting from May until September!
So the day was very economical for us, since we had to pay neither park fees nor entrance fees - although we would definitely preferred these expenses rather than to stand again in front of locked gates! Shi…!
SK - HU Saturday, 7.04.2007: The night we stayed on the visitor parking place directly below the Zipser castle.
From here we started early to Presov. Because a section of the new motorway is finished we reached the target quickly. Presov has a small historic town centre, which we had visited in approx. 45 minutes without any stress (!!!). Interesting details according to the travel guide, such as the enormous altar with 16 meters height remained unfortunately unseen for us because of the mass (Easter!).
Even the majority of the shops, restaurant etc. were "Zatrenveny" (= closed), an expression, which we know in the meantime in the Slovakian language because of frequent repetition far too well. OK, it is Easter, but of the third biggest city of Slovakia we had expected more “action”.
So we headed to Kosice, the second largest city of the Slovakia, only approx. 30 km south of Presov. As usual the city centre was forbidden for truck, and this already very far away from the interesting parts due to the travel guide. We still tried it at another road to get closer to the centre but again we "were locked out" still over 2 km by the real centre. So we changed our plans and decided instead of presumably standing in front of closed castles and (sorry) sleepy places to go for “slope” through Hungary. So we drove to Miskolc. This place of the size - in accordance to the roadmap – of Presov had definitely more action in the city centre than we had ever experienced so far in Slovakia. We went shopping and decided to change the journey to a trip to Budapest. Unfortunately we arrived in the darkness and had difficulties searching for the camping site: The one we found had closed and therefore we stayed on a parking lot next to the Hungaroring, neglecting the warnings (staying overnight in Hungary is forbidden, even on private area the owner has to register the guests at the police!)
HU (Easter-) Sunday, 8.04.2007: Everything went well, no guardians or police had annoyed us. Our first target was nevertheless a camping site, Zugligeti Niche camping. It is especially for campervans, located at the end of a bus route which is in approx.. 5 minutes at the Moskva Ter is, a very good starting point into the city centre. The Hungarian capital presented itself from its most beautiful side: Sunshine, relatively mild weather and not too much traffic (Easter!), unfortunately sometimes windy. We began our route with a bus tour of about 2 hours, so that we saw first the most important things. Altogether we spent here more than 11 hours.
HU - SK (Easter-) Monday, 9.04.2007: The camping site offers a free breakfast service, but we did not took advantage of it. We emptied our wastewater tanks and filled up the fresh water tanks and after some other cleaning actions we drove again to Slovakia to Piestany. Here we met our friend Milan and his family, with which we spent the rest of the day.
Milan showed us his place of residence. Piestany is a nice, clean health resort and so we spent here a beautiful day. The top of the cream was after a very good dinner a free-jazz jam-session in the Art Jazz Gallery.
SK - CZ Tuesday, 10.04.02007: Milan and his friend Miro had organized an exclusive guide for us for Bratislava! We had to leave Piestany early, to arrive with Miro in time at the arranged place in Bratislava. We parked Big Foot close to the company Elvia and said very gratefully good-bye to Milan for his extreme hospitality. Miro drove then with us into the city centre. Even for him as an inhabitant of Bratislava it was the first city tour.
We enjoyed the German-language guidance of Jozef Marek and also Miro listened to the remarks of his former schoolmate.
Whatever question we asked Jozef - he knew the answer. Miro made in the meantime in beautiful sunshine photos, which became for sure better than Anita's and mine. Most of Bratislava’s centre is perfectly renovated, beautiful sights can be explored and funny sculptures are a little bit hidden and make you smile when you recognize them.
Who is interested in a professional guide for Bratislava can be confident to have a good one if he contacts Jozef:: marekjoz (at) seznam.cz (please amend email, I would like to prevent that our nice guide is spammed) and / or Tel. under +421 for SK, then (0)2 for Bratislava and finally 64775710 or mobile (0)903/55 10 85. After the lunch Miro offered himself to taxi us to a shopping mal, because Anita wanted to buy leather jacket – what she did. After the shopping tour Miro picked us up back to the camper van. Here again thanked him for all the support and the extreme hospitality plus our regards to Milan and his wife. We left Bratislava just before the rush-hour going back to Czech Republic, where we wanted to visit the palace Lednice in the village with the same name. We left the motorway just before the border (we refused to invest for approx. 6 km motorway into a new tollway permit sticker), but due to an accident we got stuck. I tried to shorten the delay by another route which finally proved to be approx.. 15 km detour. However, when we were again in Kuty (the place, where the accident had taken place at another street) a tow-away truck approached us with the wrecked car! So in addition to the detour we had even lost some minutes! At the border the customs officer warned us of reduced passage height in Breclav, and therefore we had to drive again a detour!. Because of the two detours the palace visit was no longer possible and I am nearly confident that a permit for the motorway for one day would have been less expensive then all the diesel etc.!
CZ Wednesday, 11.04.2007: The palace was very beautifully from the outside, inside however closed - again!
Only the palm garden was accessible and the huge park.
Nevertheless the perfect maintained garden arrangements did not put Anita into a too good mood because she thought about the state in which our garden would be now and all the work waiting for her! The next target was Vranov nad Dyji (Frain an der Thaya), where we wanted to visit another palace, located very beautiful on a rock. On the parking place we already saw the notice that it is opened only starting from May.
So we continued to drive directly to Telc (Teltsch). This place is as many other places in Czech Republic in the list of the world cultural heritage of the Unesco. Because of the previous targets we arrived at 15:30h at the castle and therefore too late for the last guidance (April 15:00h, May to 16:00h!). The place is very picturesque located between two ponds
and small rivers and the houses around the market place look as if they were built for a theatre performance - simply perfect. The next place, Jindruchuv Hradec (Neuhaus) was due to the guidance book worth seeing because of its castle, which for sure had already closed at our arrival at 18:00h. Because the centre was not accessible at all with Big Foot and we were not able to have a look in advance (if the sight would have been inviting we would have gone for sure for a walk though the centre), we drove to Ceske Budejovice (Budweis). Here we went for a short shopping tour before we went to bed.
CZ - D Thursday. 12.04.2007: From Budweis we drove approx. 10 km to the palace Hluboká nad Vitavou (Frauenberg). This palace is compared with Neuschwanstein and is built in Tudor stile. The tour of approx. one hour was very interesting and showed some the very beautiful rooms. The palace was an eye catcher as well from the outside.
After that we drove to Boehmisch Krumau / Ceský Krumlov. What to say? Unique? Fantastic? The Moldau has here several sharp turns and on two of the rocks is a castle and the two parts are connected with a bridge, onto which they had built houses.
Because also other parts of the city are on rocks, there are even more bridges, which cross the canyons – plus of course those, which cross the Moldau.
The castle is as well worth a visit. Because they close in April already early, we could join only one of the guided tours, duration approx.. 1 hour and very worth joining. After the tour we watched the bears in the bear ditch and sauntered afterwards through the beautiful city. Always new, marvellous sights wherever we went. So we spend here the time till 19.00h and didn’t regret a minute.
This time we were happy to have been here so early in the year because the amount of other tourists was already quite big and in the high season the mass of visitors must be a nightmare! Now our vacation really came to the end and we still drove till 21:30h, before we headed on the A3 for a truck stop for the night.
D Friday, 13.04.2007: After a breakfast in the truck stop restaurant we started for the last 450 km and arrived approx. 6 hours later without problems in Bad Kreuznach.
Summary: A beautiful vacation, even if many places of interest had still closed. Notice: April and / or earlier can be a bad timing for Czech Republic and even more for the Slovakia! Furthermore you should consider that the sights of interest are normally closed on Mondays. The further you go to the east, the less the countries are prepared for tourism, and Slovakia is even still more behind. Nevertheless: Who wants to see everything, would require months! The countryside is very beautifully up to fascinating and for camper vans no problem, since staying overnight is permitted (even if in our Slovakian guidebook they wrote exactly the opposite, but of that book we were really disappointed anyway!). You may be surprised in the beginning to see quite a lot of SUV's cars, but as soon as you have had contact with older versions of so-called "roads" you will know, why they appreciate here the longer pitch spring! We had seen only one real sports car and wonder for how long he still has had his front-spoiler, before it was torn off from one of the extremely deep wheel ruts and / or holes - it will most likely have been hours, rather than days. Even our comfortable air-suspensioned seats had often hit hard at the end-stop. And if you get by accident out of the enormous wheel ruts you start praying that no truck arrives from the front while you are tail wagging! Nevertheless, whenever one of our ways pasts through or by Czech Republic and / or Slovakia a stop or a further excursion is always worth doing.
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