To the castle! Slavonice, Day #2
Landštejn Castle near Slavonice
Saturday, 6. April 2019-- (excerpts from my journal The Euro Traveller, vol. 2)
So here we are on Day #2. I think the consensus is we'll stay till Monday because the trip here (and back) was so long. Sitting at breakfast, I feel like drawing something, but I realize I'm pushing myself. I'm not as visual as I am language-oriented. Writing is far more natural, so I think I'll stick to that for now.
We chowed down on breakfast, which was wonderful, at the inn's restaurant. I had two freshly-baked croissants, still hot so the butter melted and ran everywhere, a fruit salad, and the most divine coffee I've tasted in ages. Our waitress said it's Manaresi. The plan of the day is to hike to Landštejn Castle. We left the inn about 10-ish in the morning, and under damp skies, started the hike on the red trail. It should be about 13 kilometers This took us past the Proteženy fish pond and past numerous pre-World War II bunkers built of thick concrete. Razor barbed wire and steel "criss-cross" barriers remain here, or rather, were put here more recently, to commemorate the historical border between Nazi Germany and Czechoslovakia, circa 1938.
The Czechoslovak border with Germany as it was during Hitler's time
Eventually, the nice, easy trail through the woods came to an area called Pfaffenschlag. How's that for a name? This was, at one time during the Middle Ages, a settlement. Supposedly there are ruins of said settlement, but we didn't find anything other than more old concrete bunkers. Finally, the trail came out of the woods unto an open meadow, and this brought us down to the town of Staré Mesto pod Landštejnem (Old Town Beneath Landštejn). But Zuza spotted a Jewish cemetery ahead, so we skipped the notion of setting foot in a pub and went straight for the cemetery. Zuza found the oldest tombstone, dated 1610. We paused for our "sandwiches" of mortadella and rolls, bought at the Co-op last night. Zuza said the place had a "magical" atmosphere about it.
We left the cemetery and walked through town where we picked up the red trail again as it left town. This was the final stretch, the last 3 kilometers or so of the hike. Here, we had open countryside, however, we were greeted by the foul odor of manure in the air. It didn't help the wind was blowing it right in our faces. I was glad when we got back into the woods again, leaving "Hovnovice" (Shitville) behind.
As is often the case when we hike, Zuza likes to point out the different kinds of plants and flowers. She majored in biology and knows a lot about them. She often asks me the English names for the various species we come across, but I really don 't know the names half the time. I guess I'm not a biologist.
When at last we came to a small clearing, we were just below the castle. The castle itself is mostly in ruins--Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance styles combined. Zuza recalled the time she came here, years earlier, with her son and a small group of families and they camped here. We walked up, bought tickets, and went inside for the self-guided tour.
Inside the ruins of Landštejn Castle
We bungled down to an old manor house pub, just outside the castle entrance. There, we treated ourselves to semi-dark beers and I had some odd-tasting "meat" soup. The beer was far tastier, even if we hadn't hiked 13 kilometers. It got a bit chilly, despite the sun coming out, so we had to bundle up. We determined that hiking back was not an option at this late stage of the day, so the only other option was to call a taxi from Dačice, interrupt the drive while he was working in his garden, and have him come to the castle and take up back to Slavonice. The trip cost 450 kčs, so around 12-13 euro, but it was worth it.