My Travel Adventures

I hate driving. I hate driving a lot. I especially hate driving large cars down narrow provincial roads. Now obviously, since I have lived to tell the tale, the story of how my sister and I got to Průhonice by evading the D5 highway on a Monday morning is not one with very high stakes, nor is it much of a tale anyhow. Suffice it to say, there were about three moments when I thought we were going to die: First, when a bus unexpectedly lurched towards us from behind the bend on a narrow village road; second, when I was trying to evade a car by veering so far to the right that our right-hand wheels ended up in a ditch; and third, when I steered us back onto the road from said ditch and almost ended up colliding with a car coming from the opposite direction.

One of the more bizarre sights in our neighbourhood is a “pseudo-menhir” that was erected near the village Mořinka on the 31 st of December 1999. Likely due to the momentousness of the date (I believe I previously shared my thoughts about nitpickers who make a big deal over the correct demarcation of decades/centuries/millennia, and I simply do not care), the authors allegedly used the occasion to hide messages for future generations under the rock. A few years later, the menhir was joined by a concrete armchair.

A frequent topic of many conversations this year is just how cold the weather has been. Even the trees seem to be growing leaves much later than they usually do. It has also been quite rainy, so despite the improving public health situation, we have not made too many trips. I have been expending most of my photographic energy in the garden.

For reasons unknown to me, my dad decided to buy bumblebees. Even more incomprehensibly, he decided to buy them in Brno, a city two hundred kilometres away. While I have yet come to comprehend why exactly we need Moravian bumblebees, this strange purchase did have one upside – we got to make a trip to the second largest city in the Czech Republic, a city I had never visited before.

The weather was beautiful this weekend, so my sister and I, as well as a billion other tourists, made an excursion to Tet ín. Tetín is primarily known for its association with the mythical figure Teta, as well as Saint Ludmila and the chronicler V áclav Hájek z Libočan. We did not visit any of the historical sites in Tet ín besides the ruins of an ancient castle (the main churches are, at any rate, under reconstruction right now), and continued down a tortuous forest path towards the Tetín waterfall. The waterfall turned out to be more of a trickle, but that did not make the climb any less formidable. I clambered down the rock while holding my dog in one hand and holding onto a chain with the other, occasionally putting the dog down and descending a few paces before picking her up again. We walked as far as Srbsko, where we crossed the bridge and returned home.  

At my sister’s request (one could also call it incessant badgering), we made a short impromptu trip to the castle Krakovec in Rakovník District. The castle is more of a ruin and is not remarkable for much besides starring in a couple of films and being one of the last places where Jan Hus preached before his fateful departure for Konstanz.