Jindrichuv Hradec

One of the highlights of the tour of historic South Bohemia that I am organising for this June will undoubtedly a visit to Jindrichuv Hradec. The town is east of Ceske Budejovice on an important ancient trade route. As a result of the wealth that came from the trade it has a splendid castle and a fascinating old town full of important churches and other buildings.

The castle has both gothic and renaissance buildings. We will be taking the Gothic tour. The tour climaxes (for me anyway) in the St George room. On its four walls in nearly fifty individual scenes the story of St George is told in some of the finest Gothic wallpainting you will see anywhere in Europe. Unlike many wallpaintings one sees in churches the series is complete and at eye level. You can get right up as close as the medieval artist did. The painting was painted in 1338 for the Oldrich III of Hradec and has a cartoon-like quality.

And as if that was not enough the tour ends with a visit to a complete black kitchen from circa 1500.

Farming and the landscape

Our Czech home is an old farmhouse in a hamlet near Horice Na Sumave in South Bohemia. The village is made up of a number of similar farmhouses and a number of newer houses and cottages. The traditional layout of a village in South Bohemia is of gated courtyard farms fronting on to a green on which there is often a pond and a chapel. Ours is slightly different as it is spread out around a valley.

Each farm was allotted several small parcels or strips of land spread around the village on which the farmer would grow crops or graze animals. I understand that these land parcels were rotated between the farmers. But nevertheless farmers would often end up with small patches of land several miles apart. The land was and is rich, as can be seen by the substantial nature of the farmbuildings.

When the Communists came the land was collectivised and in many villages large ugly concrete collective farm buildings were built. By the end of communism many of the old farm buildings had fallen into such disrepair that they were torn down, converted to another use or left to rot. The restoration of the farmland to private ownership has seen the growth of the commercial, EU-subsidised farms.

Our local farmer has bought in to the new brave new world wholesale, he has filled the fields around the village with cows. Gone is the mixed-use farmland. Gone too are the wildflower-filled haymeadows, the orchards stand unharvested. The old paths are blocked with electric fences. Czech farmers have recently seen the a large drop in milk and grain prices, so great (25%) that they claim they are unable to break even. I wonder whether he now regrets his choice.

Elsewhere in the area there are some welcome developments in farming practice. The number of organic farms is growing, although still quite low, in the Sumava there are now 95 such farms an increase of 12 in 2009 alone.

Birdwatching

One of the advantages of the snow and the Czech winter is that you can actually see all those small birds you could only hear during the other seasons. Flocks of birds swoop into the bushes outside our house where they chatter and fight. The need to feed on whatever berries and seeds remain overrides any fear they have of humans. Instead of flying off as I draw near they ignore me. The other day I opened the bedroom window to watch as two blue tits raided the eaves for insects. They were so close I could have reached out and touched them.

The bare trees and hedges reveal their secrets such as this nest. Nests are so well hidden in the summer that you can pass within a few feet and not see them. But now the little hat of snow highlight their existence, so much so that it is now one of my pastimes on the train journey to Cesky Krumlov to count bird nests in the trees that line the track.

Cafe Alpenrose

My husband and I had been walking around Vyssi Brod and needed a coffee. We walked past the many Vietnamese shops on the town square with their usual assortment of cheap goods and their owners calling to us in German to walk in. And then we came across the Cafe Alpenrose (Alpska Ruze).

We wandered in and were immediately struck by the weird 'bohemian' decoration and architecture. It felt like one of those arty hippish cafes of my 1970s youth. Much of the furniture was homemade, with bits of old furniture combining with mdf, and was individualistic (to say the least). As well as excellent coffees and cakes, the shop sold wicker baskets, wild honey, koh-i-noor art products, Czech porcelain and crystal. They also had some booklets for sale on places to visit. They were quite frankly cheap to look at but dear to buy. However the booklet suited my research needs so I bought it. "You want this!" said the owner, chuckling as I handed over the money.

I went back the other day and took this photo for the blog. I was on my own and sat and watched the punters. "Gruss Gott," said a painfully thin Austrian lady as she came in.

"Gruss Gott!" came the reply. Her small son and husband followed. The little boy was into everything in the cafe, asking his frazzled mother to buy first a book, then a rubber, then a pack of pencils. As more punters walked in it became clear that this was very much a German or Austrian haunt, not a word of Czech to be heard. But then I suppose Vyssi Brod historically has always been a German-speaking town.

At the end of my visit I wandered into the toilets: wonderful. They looked like they were built into a thick stone wall or a cliff wall. I left the cafe, as I had on my previous visit, with a smile on my face.

In Praise of Skipoles

All this talk about the wonder and beauty of snow is all very well (see my previous post) but there are downsides.

The first of these is the peril of snow turning to ice. As regular readers of this blog will know, I live in a small village near the top of a hill and I usually use public transport, which means a thirty minute walk downhill. However in this weather the walk can take at least fifteen minutes more. The reason for this is the local council sends a snowplough up the road to clear the snow - great if you have a car, not so good if you are on shanks's pony. The snow is piled up on the roadsides, too deep to walk on and disguising the ditch! So you end up walking on a road where the snow has been compacted by passing cars and turned to ice. The council is probably right, no one in their right mind walks along that road in the snow, just that mad Brit. I have noticed that sometimes only my footprints can be seen in the snow for days. Gone are the days when I would have found sliding on ice fun, so my thanks to fellow blogger Salamander for lending me her skipoles and making my journey to and from the house feasible and safe. They have transformed my experience and increased my confidence tremendously.

The second peril is when the snow begins to thaw. You will notice Czechs looking up as they walk along the street and then walking in the centre of the road. After a while you will see why, as blocks of compacted snow and even blocks of ice fall from roofs. At times it can be quite funny, but it can have very serious consequences - this year a baby was seriously injured by ice falling on its pram in Prague.

More on Snow & Frost

Czech winter means snow and frost. And one of the most wonderful of its shows is when a freezing fog settles on our little valley and turns everything white. And so it has this week. The water droplets freeze on everything even cobwebs in the woodshed. Then if you are lucky there are few more nights of fog and slowly the ice grows. The trees on our walk to Horice Na Sumave stand like white ghosts in the fog, covered with long needles of white - now an inch long. Crystals get crystals on them. The seedheads of Autumn flower again, but this time with intricate petals of frozen water.

Then a miracle can happen. The sun comes out and suddenly all those ice crystals start to sparkle. In the low shafts of winter sunlight, the water vapour turns to tiny silver specks, dancing in mid-air like the spirits of winter. At such a time and in such a place it is hard not to believe in magic.

New Year's Resolution

On the basis that a resolution shared is one more likely to be kept, I am hereby declaring my resolution for the year 2010. That is that when I am in England I will spend 30 minutes a day learning Czech.

I have come to the conclusion that hard slog and systematic work is the only way to come anywhere learning this infernal language. So 30 minutes a day it is.

I know that certain Czech friends will read this (you know who are!) and so I will feel obliged to keep this particular resolution, unlike all those others that fail even before January is out.

I hope I don't live to regret this!