LitskiLite: Homecoming - Summer Trip To Czechia, Part 2: Krkonoše

Špindlerův Mlýn, close to the source of the River Labe (Elbe)

It was 10.45 on Sunday 2 August. The taxis came to pick us up at exactly the time I’d requested to take us to the airport. We weren’t flying anywhere, but we had rented cars from a cheap hire firm located at one of the last peripheral outposts at Václav Havel Airport. The two drivers loaded everything up and we set off. The driver in my car was a personable chap with a perfect taxi driver’s manner: asking lots of questions about us, commenting on my Czech, discussing the music scene in the country, which he picked up was one of my favourite subjects. He earned his tip.

When we arrived at the building where all the car hire cartels are located, we took our things and I sat the others down while I went to queue. There were about twelve people in front, so I was destined to be there for the long haul. Arriving at the front, I was faced with a stern-looking man who had probably never been fooled by anything in his life. He went through the procedure as if he had done it many, many times before, and told me if I upgraded to another level of insurance he would give me a larger car. I acquiesced, although this being Prague, I was expecting a nag instead of a mule.

In the end, it was a Škoda Karoq, which filled me with the most abominable dread – the daunting kind of horror I would usually reserve for having to traverse a rope bridge over a canyon backwards at night during a mosquito plague. There is something about Volkswagen interior technology that doesn’t agree with me: it is so labyrinthine and cumbersome, so riddled with meaningless menus and stupefying symbols that people like me can’t decipher, that I would prefer to have a bath in an inflatable paddling pool with live toasters balancing on the rim.

We loaded up and sat in our seats. I switched the engine on and tried to move the car. It refused, like all cars from the Volkswagen Group do to me. I had to play a game of “guess what feature you need to select to move me” with the bloody thing. I got it on the fortieth attempt and we set off through the wide car park towards the exit, with the usual alarmist bleeps telling me there might be a parked car with its bumper sticking out over the line somewhere on this stretch of indoor asphalt.

I put on some music to drown out the risk-averse software’s lamentations, which only made it worse as each time the software found something to moan about, it cut off the music. I stopped the vehicle somewhere about a kilometre from our starting point and looked for the solution. In the end, I managed to convince it to give me the benefit of the doubt, but it insisted on silencing the music when I reversed or there were some overgrown bushes that might lightly brush up against the sides as I negotiated the routes.

Our ~~Volkswagen~~ Škoda Karoq, parked in Liberec city centre

Eventually, I made my way onto the eastbound motorway and took a good look at the same route we took with the taxis back to Prague and out the other side, northwards towards the Krkonoše, North Bohemia’s picturesque mountains straddling the border with Poland. I had done my research of the area and we had enough to fill up the almost two weeks I planned to stay there. By the final day of the holiday, I was convinced we would not have gone to half of the places I spotted, but we would have visited a dozen more that I hadn’t.

On the way we had plenty of time to kill, so I took us all to a spot I had visited with some friends about twelve years earlier. The Prachovské Skály are some of the most breathtaking geological structures in Europe. Formed out of sandstone, these rock formations rise spectacularly out of the hillsides and provide walkers with a number of routes varying in difficulty. There is something for everybody: routes with steep paths and steps, and routes for pushing babies in prams. We took the medium-difficulty route to start with, which brought us out onto a fenced observation point with some incredible views over the surroundings.

Dainoris was in his element – he loves such adventures where he can climb rocks, trees, mounds or steps. Milda follows Dainoris around and humours him a little too much, but she kind of knows her limits when it comes to adventurous walking trips. Livia, on the other hand, is completely averse to any form of exercise, and walking up and down slopes, steps, hills and even gentle inclines results in a direct confrontation with us for having led her there. So this particular walk brought her out in protests that would have ruined a day for anyone else. But we’re kind of used to it, so we humoured her and helped her round the course. It was too beautiful to forgo it.

We spent far too long there, and by the time we got back to our car, the sun was heading for the horizon at an alarming pace. I hoped to get to our accommodation while it was still light, although it was an hour’s drive from our position. We arrived with about half an hour of light left, hungry and exhausted. I had called ahead to tell the owner of our house that we would be delayed, but he didn’t mind. He showed us round the place, we unpacked the car, and without a second thought, headed off in search of food.

Our holiday home in Desná

It was after eight in the evening on a Sunday, and many places have already stopped serving food then, but after the fourth phone call to a place, the Hotel Adria in Kořenov, they said they’d hold the kitchen open for us. It was only five minutes up the road so we crammed into our car, which was still in a state of existential anxiety after a drive up some hairpin bends – it has a front grill that looks permanently terrified, so that fits.

I have been telling the children that Czech food is happy food, and the message has got through very well indeed. Dainoris and Livia are big fans of the typical Czech dish of fried breaded cheese, as am I, and Milda has a penchant for dumplings and a decent sauce. I have devoured everything put in front of me, and I have enjoyed rekindling my taste buds after a year eating a lot of the same carrousel of dishes I can make with the limited resources we still have.

Happy food: goulash and dumplings

The next day, Monday 3 August was a blazingly hot day, and Bonny Bee had a lot of translations to fulfil, so I took the children to Harrachov, the nearest ski resort to us further up the mountains close to the Polish border. There are places to swim everywhere and the one in Harrachov had quite a rough bottom, and wasn’t easy to get into, but the children had a ton of fun with their water shooters and the mini pedalos provided there. Later on, I picked their mother up and we returned to Harrachov to eat at a place called Slunce (The Sun). I had a humongous lump of steak followed by a rather decadent blueberry dumpling so big, I reckon the chef had to apply to the council for planning permission to make it.

A delicious, half-eaten fruit dumpling

On Tuesday 4 August, the temperature was in the low thirties, so we decided to find another place to swim, and the tree-lined dammed reservoir at Jablonec and Nisou was a sweet spot. The shaded grassy verges kept Bonny Bee cool whilst we went down to the sandy shore and into the refreshing water. Instantly, Dainoris and Milda found some children to play with – a couple of children with a Czech mother and a British father.

The reservoir at Jablonec Nad Nisou

But Wednesday 5 August was a most important day: that evening we were going to celebrate my birthday at the concert of my favourite band that happened to be playing in a beautiful natural amphitheatre in a village an hour away from us called Křížany. We arrived an hour early and found one of the closest car parking spaces, which was an entirely new experience for me – there had to be a catch…

The venue opened at that time and had provided food and drink in the form of a very long bar and a barbecue with klobása sausages, but unfortunately had not provided a card reader, and I only had 300 crowns (a little more than ten euro) in cash. I asked one of the organisers at the exit where the nearest cash machine was, and was crestfallen to learn it was a six-kilometre drive away. This was the catch, and it came pretty fast.

However…

She called the organiser and told him the situation. This hero beckoned me over to him and once I explained my predicament, pointed me to one of the main coordinators, a young lady called Barbora, who gave me 1200 crowns for a digital deposit. I was thrilled.

Dainoris next to some old rocker

The band soon came out to play – I would have probably missed the beginning and had to park in a place a lot further away, so I felt like Karma was giving me a night off from its usual unremitting and pitiless acts of cruelty. I bought a lot of sausages for us and we went to sit on one of the many benches lined up in semi-circular form around the podium. The children know their music well as I play it regularly in the car, so they were particularly impressed to see and hear them singing live, and even sang along to some of their lyrics, which actually impressed me.

Earlier on in the day, we had visited Liberec Zoo, the oldest one in the country, and in places it definitely showed. Some of the buildings were in essence very evocative of the beginning of the 20th century, and had been designed to demonstrate the fin-de-siècle idea of the people’s palace so evident in places like railway stations or grand hotels and cafés. This one had obviously been gutted by the post-war regime but had since been modernised on a modest budget.

It is quite well designed for humans to observe the animals, but many of the enclosures are pitifully small for such majestic creatures as eagles, zebras and gazelles.

Saying that, I didn’t once meet a member of the zoo’s staff who was over 25 years old, and most seemed to be teenage volunteers or work experience students. One of the more bizarre interactions occurred between me and one of the young “staff”, when she showed the children the horn of a gazelle and said it belonged to a buffalo. If this wasn’t already pretty surreal, she then pointed to a gazelle behind me, insisting it was a buffalo. The thing was no bigger than an adult deer – I even showed her the Google Lens result that concluded it was a gazelle but she was fiercely adamant it was a buffalo to the extent she tried to change the subject. What do I know? I’m just a paying customer…

So Dainoris, again, was in his element – he takes the initiative in most things, although sometimes I think it’s because he knows his sisters are slow in the uptake.

On Thursday 6 August, my birthday, I wanted to take us over the border to Poland. Szklarska Poręba is the closest main town and tourist destination, just fifteen minutes from Harrachov. Expecting something similar to the Czech side, we were flabbergasted to find the place was teeming with people. It resembled a music festival venue but with better toilets. There was no place to park in several of the central car parks, but fortunately enough, about a hundred metres from one of the places we had planned to visit, there were no lines on the ground so I abandoned the car on the side next to the exit and paid through the app.

In Szklarska Poręba, there is a children’s adventure park with several treetop walks of varying difficulties, and we had found a space next to it – most parents would sell their grandmother’s porcelain for such a space and we had found it out of sheer luck. We firstly went to eat at a restaurant with typical dishes of the region, and we started with the usual pierogi as appetisers. Then we moved on to some incredible meats in creamy sauces with pickled beetroot salads and potatoes that melted in the mouth. Milda had a dark-red tongue and insisted on having her photo taken for it.

We headed to the adventure park, which had been highly anticipated, especially for the toboggan run from far up that swooped down and did a loop over the road below. I was damned if I was going to get on that thing. Or at least I had hoped to avoid it at all costs. However, children below 9 years of age had to be accompanied by an adult. If I refused to go with them, there would be a terrible price to pay, and if I did it, I would have to go down with each sibling individually, risking voiding my bowels each time.

After a brief but huge hissy fit by myself, I acquiesced and sat in the toboggan with Milda first. After we got hooked onto a pulley lift to the top, I of course became acutely aware of every single potential obstruction, hazard and death trap on the course we were passing as we slowly rose up the vertiginous slope. As I peered over the side onto those racing inexorably to the bottom, I noticed that the rails were very narrow and leant quite far to one side on curves. There were straight sections that carried excited passengers down long stretches before curling up into new diabolical twists and bends.

At that moment, I remembered the old cartoons of Tom and Jerry when the latter was about to be eaten, launched, dropped or crushed. He would make such a swallowing sound as he gulped and at that moment, just before we reached the summit, that was me.

As I was released from the pulley, I tested the brakes and the accelerator. The brakes caused us to abruptly stop, so that wasn’t going to help when we got to curves, and the open-handed accelerator was saying, “well mate, this isn’t going to make this any nicer.” As we passed the point of no return, Milda emitted a squeal of excitement and I emitted a spoonful of urine. We hurtled down the top part like Emerson Fittipaldi on a hospital dash. Milda was laughing like she was being tickled by a dozen fingers; I on the other hand, was saving my anxiety for the loop over the road, which in the same way we get speeding fines through the post, would surely come no matter how much we desired or wished it to happen.

Then it happened. The ground disappeared and all I could see was the roofs and streets below in what seemed like an hour-long flight over the town but was probably a matter of a few seconds. We cruised into the holding section at the bottom of the course and I sat there for a couple of seconds whispering “never again”. Then Dainoris came over beaming with excitement. Oh boy, round two for me. The second time was a little better, and I managed to cope with the speed, although I still couldn’t cope with the loop over the road and said some very unsavoury things, much to the amusement of everyone below.

Still, happy birthday to me, eh?

We then witnessed a massive deluge of rain, the only one on our trip, which caused the street to turn into a stream. It was quite impressive but also scary, because it highlights the vulnerability of the area to the weather, which will only get more extreme, despite the number of idiots claiming we’re just experiencing a peak in the earth’s temperature cycle.

The path to Curia Vítkov

Friday 7 August would turn out to be one of those cathartic, purifying and life-affirming days that we have needed for as long as I can remember. I love days when I don’t have to plan anything. I often find they turn out, on average, to serve up more satisfaction than days when we have an itinerary.

The area around Chrastava, a peaceful town of around 6000 inhabitants, contains some peculiarities worth exploring. I drove us an hour or so to the border area around the three-land corner close to Zittau (D) and Bogatynia (PL), where there is a fascinating history project being developed on the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere called Curia Vítkov. The volunteers running this project have built some medieval houses, granaries, and a wooden palace surrounded by gated ramparts and pastoral land as they try to accurately recreate the types of buildings of the period 850 years ago. With such a location, I was able to show Dainoris what the models at Prague Castle represented in reality. He took everything in and I could tell he was able to relate to it all, which was a most satisfying experience. Milda and Livia were interested in the crafts and skills they used to have, such as weaving and stonemasonry.

Curia Vítkov

The man who was there that day had a busy job before but had some burnout issues and wanted a quieter life. The entire team is made up of archaeologists and historians who organise guided school visits with explanations and practical demonstrations of early medieval life. They also host private grill parties and even dance events.

He also gave us the marvellous idea of going to eat at a nearby hotel-restaurant on a farm, called Farma Vysoká. The drive was a little over ten minutes and was well worth it. They have a wellness centre, spa, horses for riding and for show jumping, a feast hall for weddings, a beautiful terrace, garden with children’s playground and views of the mountains, not forgetting a terrific restaurant menu.

Farma Vysoká

Císařský trhanec

The waiting service, like a lot of places in Czechia, was efficient but lacking in warmth. However, as the time wore on, he became quite friendly, and when we actually returned a week later, he was like an uncle. The food was, dare I say it, sublime. I will write a full piece about Czech gastronomy another time, but this was a particular pinnacle worth mentioning here. There are very few restaurants I go to where after a week I still remember what I ate, so this is a pretty big deal.

After a spectacular tomahawk steak on a bed of creamy new potatoes, onions and bacon, I went in for the star of the show, the Císařský trhanec, which is Czech for Kaiserschmarrn, the rich Austrian dessert of thick, ripped up pancake, tossed in powdered sugar and served with jam and in this case a good swirl of cream.

The story of its creation has Eton mess and tarte tatin vibes, and transported me back to my childhood when I was in the Austrian Alps, where the ski instructors came round the room with a huge tray of it on the last night, offering us the chance to pick a piece. As I amusingly sat in about five different places getting as much of it as I could, it also became one of those places where I never forgot what I ate. As I savoured every mouthful of the trhanec, I offered a salute to my distant past.

After this, we took a half-hour drive to Ještěd Golf Course, where there is a children’s forest containing some activities hidden in the trees, including some high swings, a little hut to play in, and amusingly a concrete giant’s head which talks if you walk on it. The sunlight was golden, piercing the trees and casting long shadows on the meadows beyond. Wandering down to the golf course itself, we decided to have a game on their Adventure Golf, a mini golf course on astroturf set between some landscaped rocks and plants.

The talking concrete head at Ještěd Golf Course

We bought the golf balls at the desk, rented the putters, and Milda, Dainoris, Bonny Bee and I went to play. Livia chose to go sit in the children’s playroom where there was a host of toys and figurines to amuse oneself with. To begin with, Milda and Dainoris were quite awkward with their putters, playing between their legs like croquet rather than side-to-side, but as the game wore on Dainoris grasped the idea. Despite this, Milda remained the comedy player, hitting everything everywhere, so at the halfway ninth hole she decided to go and play with Livia.

This was the day we needed. Along with the concert two days earlier, these activities we all did as a family helped us notice things about each other we had not seen before, and find a new way to interact with each other. Dainoris has most definitely matured, enjoying responsibilities and learning how to take charge of tasks and duties. He relishes his role as my wingman, and I plan to build on that. Milda is turning into an erudite and sophisticated talker and she picks up on things with impressive speed. She has shown interest in learning other languages. Livia is still Livia, but her ability to express herself is getting bigger, and she has a sometimes on-point sense of humour.

As the sun set over this idyllic corner of the country, we sat on the terrace of the clubhouse bar and had some evening food and drink while the satisfaction of a perfect day engulfed us, sending us home to sleep.

Saturday 8 August was the exact opposite of the previous few days. Irritable, erratic and suffering from the hangover of an unimprovable day, we drove to Karpacz, a Polish tourist resort a little further away from Szklarska Poręba. Arriving there, you instantly see the difference to the Czech side of the mountains. Karpacz was full. The overflow car parks were heaving, the streets were full of that type of holy cow tourist you usually find in semi-pedestrian zones in cities like Prague and Valencia, but here, they were treating every road like their own living rooms.

The regret etched across our faces, I drove quite far into this town to find a parking space. It’s a linear town, so from one end to the other was a good 5 or 6 kilometres. The centre itself was also problematic – currently being renovated and pedestrianised, the central reservation was off-limits and sealed off by barriers and machinery. I could see the potential of the town, but the state that it was in didn’t bode well for a day when we were already feeling quite tetchy.

I found a parking space in a fairly central location, run by a local hustler, like a lot of the car parks in Polish tourist resorts. We took an angry walk into the construction site that is the town centre and looked for a place to eat. I was furiously trying to find somewhere on my maps while everyone else was listing their grievances: thirsty, bored, tired, not wanting to walk anywhere, the litany of lacking and lethargy lingered long.

I eventually found a place to eat – a decent terrace up some steps at the back of a large inn. We had an angry lunch and went for a walk. The day was sluggish and disjointed, and frayed nerves were on display. Livia had one of her meltdowns and had to be dragged out of the restaurant, and the other two argued with each other. We went for a walk along the main road, trying to recapture our mood. Bonny Bee even started saying she thought the holiday had gone on too long. I was hoping this was a phase, because I’m not spending even less time per year in my happy space.

We found a shaded playground and a chance to calm down. Livia was not enjoying the crowds and was going bananas. I said we should go back to the car and head to Harrachov to get some peace. As we were crossing the road, I heard some music and someone talking quite animatedly on a microphone. Then I noticed the canvas tents and the interactive fountains. At first, Bonny Bee didn’t get my plan, but I said we should take a look.

The interactive fountain in Karpacz

And I'm glad we did, because it was a craft fair. There were stalls selling local honey and fruit jams, as well as wooden cutting boards and hanging features for gardens and home ceilings. But what was the most interesting was the interactive fountain. I told Bonny Bee to let Livia play with it, and it worked – she became more manageable. All three enjoyed it as well as a terific make-it-yourself section. You could, for free, make a crown of flowers, thread some yarn through wooden circles, or make your own jewellery. All three went for the latter, and started threading beads to make bracelets. It changed the complexion of the day completely. The acrid air between us cleared, and the day became that bit more palatable.

Karpacz Craft Fair

Up the hill there is a wooden Norwegian church that had been dismantled piece by piece and moved there. The Wang church was rebuilt on the top of a hill at the upper end of Karpacz. It was quite far out of town and when we got near it, the place was just too full of those holy cows to get anywhere, so we drew a line under that day and drove back to Czechia, stopping at Harrachov for a bite to eat.

Bílý Most (The White Bridge) at Špindlerův Mlýn

Villa Hubertus

On Monday 10 August, after a day at the Jablonec reservoir once more, we decided to take a trip to one of the most popular mountain resorts, Špindlerův Mlýn. Known for being the first settlement on the River Labe (Elbe), its pretty tree-lined riverside park with restaurants and interactive parks acts as a sort of midwife and herald to what this mighty river will become further downstream as it passes Magdeburg, Dresden and Hamburg.

Less than 10 kilometres from Karpacz as the crow flies, the contrast could not have been greater. Parking in a choice of spaces in the centre, we got out of the car and took a wander across one of the bridges, stopping for photos and to peruse my app for places to visit. We found a splendid little restaurant called Villa Hubertus with a terrace overlooking the river and a menu with the prerequisite happy food on it.

With homemade raspberry lemonade on tap, a plate of boar goulash and bread dumplings for me and fried pork in creamy mushroom sauce with potato dumplings for Bonny Bee, we considered the food some of the best we had had on our holiday so far.

Upstream about a kilometre was an adventure park which seemed to satisfy the children’s requests to try out some more daring activities. Walking up the idyllic riverside park evoked memories of the path beside the Saar back in Germany. All the residue of the stresses from the past three years had now firmly perished. Through the trees we heard the sound of action music and as we made it closer, we saw some activities that made Bonny Bee and me recoil in dread.

One of them was a dizzying trapeze-style swing that was hoisted up with one or two occupants on it sixteen metres into the air and released to move back and forth high above the ground. So it came as a surprise, no – a flabbergasting smack on the chops – when both Dainoris and Milda chose enthusiastically to go on it. Getting kitted up for this, they remained bullish but calm. When their turn quickly came around, there were some last adjustments to their hats and they were attached to the swing to be winched to the top of the apparatus ready for release.

As Dainoris and Milda were being pulled up, I asked the organiser to let me know a second before release so I could make a slow-motion video. At her signal I pressed the red button and got footage of their flight. Others who had done this had all let out either a squeal of glee or a scream of fright as they plummeted towards the ground and upwards to the other end of the arc, but not a peep emanated from the pair of them. I wondered if it was pure terror or just the act of taking it all in. After release, they were exhilarated, thrilled, electrified, raving about their experience, which made me so pleased for them, as I would never do such a thing!

There was also a bungee trampoline and all three of them tried that out. Near the end of our visit, Dainoris wanted to try the climbing wall too. While the girls were bungeeing next to him, he sat with his mother for a good half hour while some Kardashian types used up their multiple goes. I was sad for him, sitting there bored and waiting while everyone else was enjoying things. In Ireland, the organiser would probably tell the group to wait a few minutes while Dainoris had his turn, but initiative wasn’t something these people seemed to know how to take.

Afterwards, we walked back through the park by the river. Dainoris and Milda dangled their feet in the Labe and Livia threw some stones in. We just leant on the rail above and took in the outstanding scenery. Once again, like the golf course, we had found a place of contentment in Špindlerův Mlýn. I was sure we’d be back one day, maybe in winter.

EXTRA PHOTOS:

Prachovské Skály, a real highlight