Squirrels

If you visit Cesky Krumlov Castle grounds you might see this little fellow or some of his family. As you can see from photo he has the ear tufts of a red squirrel, which is what he is - a black mutant of the red squirrel (the American black squirrel is a mutant of the grey squirrel).

This one ran up a tree in the walk beside the castle gardens and chattered and clattered at me - very angry that I had disturbed his foraging in the flower beds. I first saw a Czech black squirrel (there are lots of them) in the park that covers the slopes of Petrin Hill in Prague. The black squirrels there were far more cautious than the Krumlov ones and certainly wouldn't have entered into the exchange this one did.

I have a soft spot for squirrels, even though the grey ones in England are little better than rats with tails. When I was a small child (under three) I lived in a flat in the mill house near to a large pond and we often had squirrels come to the bird-table in our garden. I can remember the thrill I felt when my mum pointed them out to me. There were no black squirrels, though, but there was something better than that - a white one, an albino squirrel. It was a beauty.

Then we moved to the local small town. I was very sorry to leave behind the squirrels and the swans that I fed every morning. My mother tried to console me. On my third birthday I was standing at the window of my new bedroom, when I saw them - three or four squirrels playing in the garden. I called for my mother, who told me that the squirrels had come to wish me happy birthday. I was delighted, although sad that the white squirrel hadn't come. The squirrels did not come again.

A Run-in with the Czech Police

A few days ago I got pulled over for speeding. I have no idea whether I was or not, I was in the middle of a stream of cars all going at the same speed and I was concentrating on what was happening around me. However of all those cars I was pulled over.

Having paid my 1000 crowns fixed fine, I waited in the car for a receipt with my sisters. We watched as the Police pulled over another car - again from the middle of a queue of vehicles. My sister, fresh from England, was puzzled - why that car and not the car in front which was presumably setting the speed and moreover had only one working headlamp, why had they pulled me over and not one of the others? I pointed out that both mine and the second car were nice expensive looking new cars, that 1000 crowns was a significant chunk out of many Czechs' monthly wage and so the Police appeared to be targeting drivers they thought would be able to pay the on-the-spot fine.

"That's not fair!" my sister said. "Oh, I don't know," I said. Cars on Czech roads, I explained, tended to divide into two types - newish ones owned by people who had flourished in the world of capitalism, and the old bangers owned by everyone else. These old cars have their bumpers held on with bits of wire, bonnets that are a different colour from the roof, windscreen wipers that fall off at the first sign of rain and, if you are unlucky to drive behind them, smoke-belching exhausts whenever they change gear. If the Czech police were to apply the law evenly, undoubtedly a large chunk of the population would be without transport and the economy would grind to a halt. My sister was unimpressed by this argument for social justice - "I still think it's unfair," she said.

More Czech flowers

Given the positive response to my last post, here are simply more photographs of lovely Czech flowers, which I have taken on my various walks over the last few weeks. The first (above) was found near the Schwarzenberg Canal in the Sumava mountains - it's an Alpine Snow bell.


And this one is another flower from the Nature Reserve - I am afraid I don't have the name, but it was to be found in the woodland areas


along with Solomon's seal.



The woods around Divci Kamen castle were carpeted by masses of stitchwort, much as the woods in England are carpeted by bluebells.


All along the road from our village to the station the ditches are full of the jewel-like flowers of the common comfrey. I have been known to allow an extra 10 minutes for the walk to the train, so that I can be distracted on my way there.

For more Czech flowers visit my August flowers post

May Flowers on Vysenske Kopce

I had been meaning to visit the Vysenske (Vyšenské) Kopce Nature Reserve, to be found just to the north of Cesky Krumlov below the Klet Mountain for several years. I had even bought a book about it in the Information Centre. But it wasn't until yesterday that I actually made it. And how I kicked myself about missing out on this lovely oasis for all those months.


I took the little train to Cesky Krumlov, then I walked up the road that leads to Vysny, and at the crossroads I followed the signs to the Headquarters of the Blansky Les Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, outside of which was a large board about the reserve and the signposted walk that takes you through it. The couple of hours that followed were ones of sheer delight. The sun shone, the views were fantastic and the may flowers were out in profusion.


The Nature Reserve encloses a number of very different habitats - conditioned partly by the fact that it sits on a change in the geology and so has plants suited to limestone, granite, and loam in a relatively small area. The walk takes you through all these areas and has information boards at key points to help you identify what you are seeing. For the wildflower lover, such as yours truly, there is even an area at the beginning with the flowers in a bed labelled to show you what to look for.


So what flowers did I find? Well too many to detail here - the anemone at the top of this post is rare in the Czech Republic and is not seen in the UK and yet in the reserve you can see crowds of them waving their white heads on tall stems in the grassland and at the wood's edge. The spring pea also is not to be found in England and has as you can see the most vibrant colours. There were bushes covered with blossom - bird cherry, wild privet, hawthorn and the wild berberis (shown above) - and which so hummed and vibrated with bees collecting nectar that they sounded like small electric substations. There was so much more to see and hear.

I shall return to Vysenske Kopce in the summer and blog again about the summer flowers. Suffice it to say that if you visit Cesky Krumlov, do make the trip here and enjoy this area's natural treasures as well as its historical ones.

For more Czech flowers in May visit my next post

And for August flowers

Sunset at Lake Lipno

This evening I dragged my sisters away from supper to chase the sunset at Lake Lipno. Lipno sunsets are one of my great pleasures in the Czech Republic – they are always in some way different but have yet to disappoint.

There are two spots where I watch the sunset and I took my sisters to enjoy the view from both. The first is near the ferry dock at Horni Plana, which is where this photo was taken. The second is from the headland near Cerna v Posumavi where you can view of the lake in both directions – there are information boards which tell you about the views.

The lake at first burned with the setting sun's rays, then turned a darker orange and red, then to steel and finally a deep slate grey. A silence fell on the water. The shadows lengthened and deepened until all became dark, the fishermen packed up their rods, and we returned to the car and went home. The light show was over.

Some Czech animals and a present.

The other evening my sisters and I were barbequing some sausages over an open fire in the warm May evening air, when we realised we were being scrutinised. From the dandelions in the orchard a small farm cat was watching us and the sausages. The little cat was a lovely combination of white, ginger and black with only its head to be seen above the leaves. My sister made the usual cat attraction noises but nothing happened. We therefore ignored it, and slowly it came nearer drawn by the smell. Eventually its confidence raised it was rubbing its head against the table legs and even tried to jump up on my lap. My Czech friend arrived and being a cat owner and lover was soon making a fuss of the little one, including feeding it some leftover sausage pieces, which were pounced on and devoured – better than the cat's usual fare to to be sure.

In the morning at breakfast we discovered there was a present lying for us on the patio – a slow worm neatly bitten in two. The orchard is full of wildlife, a reason for the presence of a hunting cat in the first place. The ground is pockmarked with the holes of voles and mice, and the grass is also the haunt of their hunters – cats, grass snakes and adders. The orchard backs on to farmland and a wooded hillside and as I have said in a previous post it is visited by deer, here to scrump the fruit. Another animal in these parts is the beech marten which I have yet to see alive – I have seen several as roadkill – and which I look forward to meeting, although I am told they are a menace as they will chew through cables. The slow worm is another hunter in the grass and hibernates in the wood piles and heaps of grass cuttings. But this one thanks to our furry friend will hunt no more.

Czech Folk Dance

The sisters and I decided to go to Ceske Budejovice yesterday. The main purpose of the visit was to look for presents for my nieces, brother-in-law and parents, and as I have said in a previous post I prefer Ceske Budejovice for shopping to its more touristy neighbour Cesky Krumlov. Another purpose was to share with my sisters some of the architectural discoveries I have made in Budejovice. This is a town that bears exploration, it can offer everything from medieval to art deco and nearly everything in between - more perhaps of that in another blog.


Towards the end of our visit I took my guests to the Church of the Sacrifice of Our Lady. Outside on the square all was activity - market stalls were being erected, people scurried around with boxes of craft goods for sale. In front of the church a large stage was in the process of rising, whilst in front of it men were setting up trestle tables and benches. Interested to see what was going on, we sat down at a table of the pizzeria on the Square and watched, whilst very slowly eating our lunch and drinking several drinks. After a short while the square started to fill with children dressed in traditional dress, doting mothers taking snapshots and dance teachers also in costume. It was becoming apparent that we had stumbled into a folk dance festival.


More and more dancers arrived. Some were adult teams, and as would be the case with any British morris side they set about buying beers from the Budwar tent. There were men in black, with black boots and ornately worked leather belts and older women in their thick gathered skirts. Musicians arrived with a range of traditional instruments, some beautifully carved. Eventually after much faffing around with the sound system and the children becoming bored and disappearing off, the dance teachers gathered their teams and processed in to the square. A master of ceremonies announced the first troupe from his clipboard - a group of small children sidled on to the stage - and the festival began in earnest.

I was interested to see the different dance forms - most of which seemed pretty tame to me after my interest in the pagan roots of English morris (for more on this do visit the Independent's excellent article on the subject ) But equally this was not the rather embarrassing folkdance that I learnt at school - the guy with the Mohican haircut showed no self consciousness - there was a degree of national pride in it. There seemed to be several influences at play in the dance and music. One I assumed to be a more lyrical Czech one, and another more in the German Austrian oompah style, (it even had calf slapping.) But then what was this? Here was something I recognised - a hobby horse was working its way through the crowds. This was part of the English tradition or is it that Celtic tradition that both the Czechs and Brits lay claim to?

We spent most of the afternoon watching the dance and browsing the craft stalls for unusual presents. We seemed to be the only foreigners there - this festival was for the locals and not sited where tourists would find it. The benches were full of beer-drinking Czechs clapping enthusiastically, children ran around in the sunshine and proud grandparents beamed.