Hiking Czech Republic Again

If in a fit of youthful enthusiasm you decide to backpack for three days straight, have a spa town at the end of the trail. This wasn’t quite how it worked out for us in the Czech Republic last summer, but we managed to find Marianske Lazne in West Bohemia eventually. When we awoke that morning in that small town on the Vltata River (where the last blog paused), we were southeast of Prague by about forty or fifty miles, having taken a train to Revnice and then hiked the day. Over beers the previous night (not those bunch of beers, another bunch of beers earlier in the evening) we’d spread our Czech map on the table and sort of traced a route. Oh how romance and idealism takes over when you’re gazing comfortably at a map. A finger glides easily upon the glossy surface: “Okay, we can hike down to here, cut over that range [!?] then head down to there for the first night…” “Yes, and from there we can just kind of swing east over to here [!!??] and stay the night near that river…” You would think we were generals sending our forces across Afghanistan for a spring offensive. A finger swoop across the map covered eight to ten inches. What were we thinking? But for three days we hefted our backpacks and made the journey as far as we could. As mentioned before, the trails spanned the country; some were hiking trails that turned into fire roads that poured into paved streets that dwindled into meadow paths. At the end of each day our feet really hurt, and progressively so such that after the third day we knew we didn’t have it in us to—oh, I don’t know—hike across the entire damn country! But flashing in memory are snapshots: a wheat field billowing lightly as the late afternoon sun fans the shadows, a small village tucked into a distant mountain; peering down from a cliff onto another village set against a forest; narrow country roads through apple and pear orchards; undulating hills across the landscape wherever we traveled; stopping along a fire road to pick plump blackberries; and the deep, profound delight taken at the sweaty finish on a patio at a beer garden, the crisp Czech pilsners like frosty nectar. Man, we worked for those beers. But it felt good knowing we could carry what we needed on our backs and hike a long sometimes burning hot day. Flowers danced in grasses all along the way. But it was at Novy Knin that we realized the end: through forest, meadow, crossing streams, orchards, villages, roads, trails, that our feet needed a long rest. But we realized from this small village there were no direct or even indirect trains to our destination. Eyes lowered in shame, we took a bus back to Prague to catch a train to the spa town of Marianske Lazne. This beautiful town is set in the Slavkov Forest in a protected region, and runs a long valley between mountains. Architecture boasts neoclassical and Art Nouveau and the buildings form an elegant horseshoe with lush parkland in its heart. There are thirty-nine springs, and you can shove your Nalgene in a fountain and fill up. We spent three days recovering, lounging, feasting, and we may have sipped more beer. The highlight was a two to three hour visit to a grand hotel spa. We paid fifteen dollars for hours of sauna, mineral spring floating in a beautifully blue tiled pool, clear cold mineral water waterfall splashes, warm mineral foot baths, around and around again. Love the body, and it will return your love. … We stayed the nights at a lovely hotel with views of rooftops of the town. Before we leave West Bohemia, a diversion: come with me for breakfast that first morning in Marianske Lazne. The hotel breakfast experience. That hesitant, slightly uncomfortably self-conscious way we shuffle into breakfasts at hotels or, God help us all, B&Bs. We drift into the banquet-square rooms like the infirm or mildly retarded. It’s not our kitchen. We don’t know where anything is. We are blindly fumbling for the handholds of their routine, the ones who run the establishment. And the infernal deliberations forced upon you before coffee: do I make eye contact with other fellow travelers? Do we nod at each other acknowledging our shared fate? “So, you slept here too?” I actually enjoy the B&B experience, as I fancy I’m indulging in the illusion of free breakfasts, and the food is usually plentiful and good. You’re not sentenced to the evil “Continental Breakfasts” of cellophane cardboard pastry and watery coffee. Regardless, the hotel breakfast is a dance you’re expected to know but you’ve forgotten the music. You try your best to move naturally, gracefully, conscious that the guy behind you wants to dig into the vat of scrambled eggs and you’re standing in front of it transfixed because you can’t choose between the little sausages and the undercooked bacon in the vats to your right. Everyone at a hotel breakfast eyes everyone else suspiciously. We all transgress on everyone else’s private morning routine (I mean, come on, think how you act around your spouse, and it’s just you two; the hotel breakfast experience is thirty people crammed into tables in your dining room). When you finally get your plate piled high with food, curtains close around you, and you’re blessedly alone. But getting there is slightly nerve-wracking. At any eatery, it’s best to waltz in with friends or loved ones simply mired in scintillating conversation, the kind where the person following the hostess to the table is throwing her lively and pointed remarks over her shoulder. The vibe you and your friends emit is one brimming with life; you are deigning to divert the stream of your erudite and witty moving salon into this chosen eatery, so, waiter, make it snappy, make it good. Of course, you are ever gracious with the wait staff, for you and company are neither above nor beneath them. But when the sultry university student pirouettes at your table with pen at the ready, nightly specials bubbling from her lips, you are not sitting there with your backs against the chairs looking wide-eyed at your place settings with blank smile awaiting the restaurant’s blessedness to wash over you. No. Each of you is leaning chest into the table nearly all talking at once, your conversation so germane to whatever cultural beast is currently spreading its wings downtown that week. This is, yes, next to impossible to achieve at a hotel breakfast. But if the hotel knows its game, it will provide your table with a thermos or silver carafe full of hot coffee. No dull-faced staff is going to want to return to your table seventeen times to refill your stumpy white coffee mug: just set the whole pot down, sweetie. I know people who despise the B&B experience: too much intimacy in too small a space with strange people too early in the morning. But I’ve elicited wondrous tips and travel insights from folks munching at adjoining tables. B&B patrons do seem a cut above the rest. They’re not weird. After a few hot slugs of coffee, spirit brightening, you might find yourself turning to the young couple at the next table and singing “So, where’re you folks from?”
From spa town Marianske Lazne we headed south to the Sumava Forest for a backpacking experience. It wasn’t really to be. As mentioned, I don’t think Czechs backpack as much as drive to a spot, set up camp, and start drinking. Furthermore, there really is no wilderness per se in the the border with Germany, and during the Communist era was off-limits; you could and people did get shot trying to flee across borders. So much of this corner is relatively untouched. Long inclines through dark and sunlight dappled woods, across grasses to come upon sloping countryside sprinkled with wildflowers—look in the distance and see thick forests running up hills. The most beautiful trails were trod were grassy ones: natural, gentle, animal and human feet seemed to tread with care. At the end of the day we always found ourselves searching for that auto-camp on the map; it always seemed right outside of town—and it was, by car. But after a day of hiking three kilometers is a brutal push. “Have we gone three kilometers? We must have by now.” “This sucks. Do you realize we’re the only backpackers?” “Where the hell is it?” “Let’s just go back to town and get a beer.” “I want to put this crap down first, I’m tired.” “Is this even the right road?” “Where’s the map?” “I just gave it to you!” “Don’t yell! I was just—“ “I WASN’T YELLING.” “Does that truck see us?” “Wait, what’s that sign say?” “I need a beer.” “It doesn’t say that—ooh, look at that flower.” “No, I’M saying that…” and so on. After a night at the camp outside of a nameless little village, we hiked the asphalt road out to a bus stop, sat at an outside table for lunch, had the waitress take a photo of sweaty us lifting frosty mugs of pilsner with forest and mountains in the background. Next stop, the city of Brno.