Heading home, Slavonice, Day #4
Slavonice
Monday, 8. April 2019--
(excerpts from my journal The Euro
Traveller, vol. 2 and a travel notebook)
The party’s over. It’s
time to go back to reality in Bratislava. At least we don’t have to leave at
the crack of dawn, so we were able to sleep in a bit. We paid the hotel bill
after dinner last night to ensure the kind, blonde waitress who had been so
helpful got the generous tip she deserved because she informed us she wouldn’t
be here today.
It was a very lazy
morning. We sort of slathered like butter over hot toast down to the restaurant
for breakfast. Indeed, our blonde waitress was not here, and I was glad we paid
last night. After our leisurely breakfast, we went back upstairs to pack, then
we dragged ourselves outside for a last walk around the Old Town center. I
found a bookshop selling guidebooks to Slavonice. At last, an hour before
leaving, we’d found a guidebook! It was in Czech, but it was still a guidebook,
and it had some good maps.
A shop window in Slavonice
Houses in Slavonice
Being in a rush is the
pits, but having time to kill can be a bore. And even after taking quite a
lengthy walk around town, we still had an hour to kill, murder, execute…
whatever, until our bus to Dačice. I realized shouldn’t have drunk the glass of
sparkling water with breakfast with a six-hour bus trip ahead of us. I used the
toilet as many times as I could—to be safe. Finally, at 13:05 (1:05 pm), we
boarded the local bus to Dačice, driven by a thin, balding fellow who reminded
me of the Slovak actor Csongor Kassai.
It’s always hard to go
back to reality after a nice, relaxing weekend. It’s even harder when you have
to endure a six-hour bus ride, which required three different buses. Arguably
the most beautiful part of the trip was the ride from Slavonice. The bus took
some very pretty, rather narrow back roads through picturesque village that
time and the rest of the Czech Republic had forgotten.
In Dačice, we got out
and had almost an hour to kill at the newly-renovated bus station before
catching the “long distance” bus to Brno. Here we watched families and their
kids playing and stuffing their faces with whatever snacks they had scrounged
up at the shops in the bus station. Finally, we were back on board the bus for
the long leg of the trip. The route took us through the center of town where we
saw a sculpture of, you guessed it, a giant sugar cube! And why is that?
Because apparently the sugar cube was invented in Dačice, or at least the
inventor came from here. I wasn’t able to get any good pictures of it from the
bus, but if you Google “origin of the sugar cube”, trust me, you’ll find
something about the Moravian fellow named Jakub Kryštof
Rad, who began sugar cube production after he was granted a five-year
patent in 1843 for his sugar cube making process.
I was glad I hadn’t finished my pizza from the night before last because I had two leftover pieces with me in my backpack, and these served as lunch, in between handfuls of peanuts, until we could get sustenance someplace else. The bus took us more or less along the route as we’d come on Friday, through every little village and cabbage patch with names ending in –ice. You do pass through some nifty little towns, most of them didn't seem to have names. Well, of course they have names, but I just couldn't see them from the bus.
Just a town somewhere in Morava, Czech Republic
We made a pit stop at one point, and I was sure to take advantage of that. I was able to find a public toilet so I didn't have to run behind a shed and zip my shirt into my fly. But the public toilet looked as though it hadn't been cleaned since the Soviet-lead Warsaw Pact nation invasion of 1968.
A nasty public restroom along the way
We rolled
along endless country roads until, at last, we came into the urban jungle of
Brno. I was actually quite bored during the trip as I find it hard to sleep or
read on such journeys.
We waited in Brno quite awhile for
our bus back to Bratislava. The driver was late because he and a buddy ran into
the bus station to grab a bite to eat. But once we were on the bus and pulling
out of the city, this was the smoothest, easiest part of the trip because the
bus was one of those huge coaches, and it was motorway (freeway) all the way.
By 7:30 pm we were back in Bratislava.