Overnight trip to Northern Bohemia

On Wednesday I received an email informing me that since not enough people had signed up to go on an over night trip to Northern Bohemia, I would be able to go because I had signed up for the wait list. When I went and talked to the person organizing the trip, she said that there were five spaces available. Because of this, my friends Justine and Kelly were able to come on it with me.

We had to meet at the Namesti Miru at 8:30 on Saturday, but on that didn’t mean I was completely ready to give up a Friday night in Prague. September in Prague is Burcuk, or young wine, season. I’m not sure exactly how it’s made, apparently its not fermented, tastes great, and is highly alcoholic. So obviously the boys in our apartment wanted to throw a burck party for everyone. They went to the wine story around the corner and came back with 16 two leader plastic bottles filled with an opaque, yellow, pulpy liquid. After I finished packing I went upstairs to the boys apartment to find the majority of them had, for some reason, all decided to dress up like pirates. Their costumes were complete with eyeliner mustaches, head wraps, and lots of pirate grunts. When the burck was opened it didn’t smell too good (faintly like rotten eggs) and tasted like a strong carbonated fruit juice. The amusing part came after we had all suffered through a couple of cups and for some reason didn’t feel remotely buzzed. We all were wondering how this stuff worked. Then are RAs came in and tasted, and as we waited for their approval they both made faces and quickly told us we had not tried burck, but poorly made hard cider. Ultimate failure.

Justine, Kelly, and I all made it to the meeting spot next morning and then it was off in a big red bus to Northern Bohemia. I slept the first part but when I was awake I realized that we were driving through small towns, lots of quaint farms; reminding me a lot of the area surrounding Kenyon. The next part of our drive was a climb through the mountains. Finally around lunch time we arrived at the Harrachov Glass factory and brewery that has been producing glass and crystal there from the 18th century. Though I have seen my brother blow glass before, this was on a much different scale. Their glass studio is in a large warehouse and there are two elevated platforms that have all of the furnaces. About 20 glass blowers stand around each one all wearing blue t-shirts, shorts, Birkenstocks or barefoot, and drinking beer out of the wine glass right next to their station. None of them wore protective glasses or seemed to possess any concern that their work might be dangerous.

While we were there they were making crystal wine glasses. It was interesting to see how they created a glassblowing assembly line to produce these. From Tim I’ve learned that when blowing glass you have to rely heavily on an assistant, but it didn’t occur to me that you could turn this art form into such a commercial assembly line. They also had a cutting room where they showed us how the cut crystal was made. About four men sit in a large room at a wheel of spinning rock of different sizes, depending on what size cut they want to do. It seems like very tedious and precise work, because in one 8 hour shift they normally only get through 7 pieces.

After the tour we had lunch in the brewery and had a chance to walk though their glass museum (which also randomly housed the Northern Bohemia ski museum) and check out their glass store. I was surprised at how inexpensive everything there was. From what I’ve heard bohemian crystal is highly regarded, but everything there was well within my price range. Even though I thought some of the things they were selling were very nice, I opted not to get anything because I have no desire to try and bring a lot of delicate glass home on an airplane.

After most people were shopped out we hopped back on the bus and drove up to the based of the Jested tower. I guess I hadn’t read the trip description closely enough, but I had pictured a medieval look out tour in the woods. I was very wrong. The Jested tour is actually a space age pointed looking building/hotel/restaurant that sits on the top of one of the highest mountains in the Czech republic, which still is not that high. We took a funicular up to the top and had amazing views of the surrounding valleys from all angles. After walking around for a while, taking pictures and getting a much needed coffee we headed down the funicular once again and headed to the town of Liberec where we would be spending the night.

Liberec is one of the largest towns in Northern Bohemia and has around 90,000 residents. Ages ago it used to be a big textile center and there are still reminants of those factories. We arrived at the Hotel Praha which was a large art nuevo type hotel that looks out onto their square. The town center reminded me of a more peaceful Old Town Square without any tourists….imagine that. We rode the most amazing elevator (it was one of those cage like ones that you have to open two sets of doors yourself) up to our room, which was on the corner and looked out on a fabulous view. Oddly though when you looked into the square there were around 10 tanks. My first thought was that we had been invaded again!! I quickly realized they would not have brought a rock climbing wall and balloons, and it must have just been a recruiting thing.

We explored around the city a little before dinner and found a really overtly communist wall decoration. Then NYU paid for one of the best dinners I have had while I’ve been here. The woman leading the trip told us that the restaurant was a chain and that there were a couple of them in Prague, but everything was 100 kc more there. Before leaving the city I hadn’t realized how much more expensive it is there. In Prague for a cup of coffee I normally pay between 65 or 85 kc, but there you couldn’t find coffee above 50 kc.

NYU provided us with some ideas for places to go that night, but for some reason or another nothing really seemed to work out and we found ourselves just wandering the city looking for anything that would entertain us. I randomly came across what looked like a bar and had sheet music for wallpaper and thought we should check it out. To get to the bar you had to go down an unstable spiral staircase which opened up to a big lounge with couches, tables, and a juke box playing old American music. We were excited because it seemed to be filled with people our age just kind of hanging out and enjoying themselves. Almost as soon as we sat down a group of guys who we had seen while walking around stumbled down the stairs. They soon switched from just listing to the jukebox to singing loud Czech karaoke and doing a dance that everyone the bar seemed to know. I’m confident they were also trying to impress us because every now and then they would walk by or table, grab my hand and begin to use it as a microphone. This was all good for a while. They were so rowdy that we were curious how old they were, and when Justine tired to ask them they pulled up 16 fingers. After that we didn’t stick around much longer.

After breakfast the next day we had more free time to explore the city. Our goal was the botanical gardens (there wasn’t much actually going in Liberec), but we never actually got there. Some how we stumbled up on the Northern Bohemia Museum and decided this was as good as any a site to visit. Like most things in Liberec, the museum and all the people that worked there were all Czech, and spoke no English. That of course didn’t stop docent from trying to show and explain to us photos of the 1968 invasion after the Prague Spring. I’m not sure if she kept going because we were nodding at her and she thought we understood, or just liked us but she kept speaking to us in Czech for 20 minutes. The photo exhibit was really interesting, but I think what I actually liked the most were the displays containing keys and locks from the 17th century. I’ve never been overly enthusiastic about that sort of thing, but these were remarkable. The part of the key that unlocks it didn’t look like anything i had ever seen, some of them were in spirals and the handle of the keys were normally as big as your fist and intricately carved. We headed back after that and took a more residential route. I enjoyed just seeing the houses which were all much bigger that what I’ve seen in Prague and had huge lawns with fresh laundry hanging.

After a quick coffee we got back on the bus and headed through the countryside to Kost Castle. It was built in a very strategic location on a tall rock formation and it almost seems to rise out of the forest. I was surprised when we got there because all of a sudden this castle just appeared in front of us. Also, before our tour of the castle we had some time to kill so we went into the museum of fairytale creatures. It was like going to a zoo filled with old scary looking Harry Potter characters, but still super funny. I’m still not entirely sure of the history of the castle, but it was built for aristocratic family and has both gothic and baroque architecture in it. The insides which are very nicely decorated and they had a room filled with armor and weapons. We had to wear slippers that they provided over our shoes so that we didn’t damage the original floors.

After touring the castle we climbed back into the bus and drove back into Prague. Even though it was a short excursion we still were exhausted by the time we got back.

Also, on Sunday we went to the Prague Zoo which is actually rated the 7th best in the world, even over the one San Diego. One of the more “Czech” things about the zoo was right after you paid for your ticket there was a beer stand giving away free beer, but you had to pay for a map. People in Europe must have a different philosophy towards their pets because you see dogs EVERYWHERE. You see them in restaurants, on the tram, in grocery stores, and even in the zoo. Aside from the dogs seeing the animals was also fun. By far my favorites were the giraffes, but I also kind of felt bad for them because none of the animals had enough space.