Joining us in this adventure: Franz, our friend. Unlike a lot of people who on short notice would never manage to show up the next morning, Franz not only agreed last night to join us but also rode his bicycle across town so we wouldn't have to meet him at the subway station.
We took off about 9 AM and headed first through some beautiful countryside to the town of Raabs an der Thaya, a small town of about 3000 people on the Thaya River.
Driving into town we saw some manniquens placed here and there.
ABOVE: This fine young Aryan specimen is annoyed that I caught him trying to cop a feel.
While B amused herself at an exhibition detailing the many problems between the Czechs and Austrians in this border region, Franz and I strolled around, more concerned with seeing the sights than experiencing a rehash of geopolitics and tribalism.
ABOVE: The castle, the oldest part of which dates from the 11th Century. Did we go inside? Nope. It was closed, naturally.
From there we drove into the Czech Republic. The Moravian countryside was unbelievably bucolic. It reminded me somewhat of the wine growing region of northern California, without the grapevines. Gently rolling hills, mostly farmland, tractors in the fields plowing or mowing hay. Sometimes you'd come across a car parked beneath a tree, the people happily sitting there having a picnic. The skies were blue and cloudless and the temps were in the low to mid 80s, so there wasn't anything not to like.
I was sitting in the back seat so I couldn't really get any good pics of this as we drove from village to village on our way to Telc, our next stop. It was so beautiful, this countryside, that I tried to find pictures on Flickr to share with you but decided to hell with it. Check it out for yourself if you want.
But I did get a lot of pics of Telc, including the famous town square, below.
ABOVE: The view of the town square from our restaurant table.
There was another exhibit B wanted to see, maybe, so she went there while Franz and I wandered around. Twenty years ago, according to B, the towns in the former East Bloc countries were badly in need of renovation and upgrades. There's been a lot of progress and the place is really coming along, though Franz and I did see some crumbling buildings and a lot of others that weren't crumbling but which were really in need of a coat of paint.
I'm used to hearing German but not Czech, and it's strange wandering around listening to people talk and not understanding a single word they say---not even "no" or "yes." I've mentioned before that written Czech looks like a bowl of alphabet soup, minus most of the vowels, that somebody threw up against a wall. Whatever combination of letters appeared, that's Czech.
ABOVE: The Armageddon Restaurant. Hope you enjoy your meal.
Turns out B didn't want to see the exhibit after all, so she called us and we met back at the town square, Franz and I having enjoyed watching the Czech people go about their daily business.
B wanted to show us what she'd discovered, namely this:
ABOVE: The big-ass castle of Telc
For more pics of the place (which really was quite beautiful) try this link to a virtual tour.
Oh----without going into a lot of detail, lunch was delicious and very reasonably priced, given the exchange rate of about 25 Czech crowns to the Euro. A good bowl of soup was about $1.40, for instance. Later in our trip we sat down at a place for drinks----I had a small beer, B had a mineral water, and Franz had a coffee. Total was about $3.
Final stop on the tour: Znojmo. (And zno, I don't know how the fuck you'd begin to pronounce it.)
ABOVE: Here's a beautiful church. Note the little chapel on the right. If you walk all the way over there and then point your camera more or less back to this vantage point, you see the pics below:
BELOW: I would be the coolest dude in all of Oklahoma if my house looked like the top of this tower.
BELOW: The town square in the unpronounceable city of Znojmo, Czech Republic. We sat down for drinks there and spent about $3 for all three of us----thank you, advantageous exchange rate!
From Znojmo, it's about an hour's drive back to Vienna if you don't get stuck behind slow moving trucks or tractors.
All in all, a beautiful day with my Girlfriend Unit and Franz, and I thank her for setting it up.
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