A Walk in the Woods

My faithful travel buddy C. and I hit the road for a day trip this weekend. The original plan was to take the train to Beroun, walk to a village called Koněprusy where we'd have lunch and then continue on to Srbsko for a drink and catch the train back to Prague.

Well, after an hour or so of wondering around the village of Jarov, the surrounding forest and rock quarry with no success of finding the trail markers we figured out that there was in fact no trail. It had probably been destroyed by the quarry and we were making ourselves crazy.

So, we went back to Beroun and had lunch and took a look at the map. We discovered there was another trail quite near going from Beroun to Srbsko on the other side of the hill, going through the villages of Tetín and Koda.

What a pleasant journey! Tetín is a lovely village. It has a small square with a pond and a museum. The brightly painted church stands off to the side with its steeple stretching into the heavens.

From Tetín we headed up a hill, through the trees and found tiny Koda. Another 3k walk and we were in Srbsko sitting at a great restaurant cooling off with the Czech national drink Pilsner...

Jenštejn

For my 16th birthday I asked for a current world atlas. This sentence may be the best way to sum up my love of maps. Every border, river and small circle indicating a city that could be explored fills me with a feeling something like wonder and delight. And many a map has introduced me to some little wonderful bit of the world I'd never have found on my own.

And that is how we came to Jenštejn. After visiting the Prague Aviation Museum, which is a much visited and much loved favorite of ours, we had some time to kill. Out came the trusty old road map of the Czech Republic with its well marked "points of interest". The map told us that not far from the museum there was a small village called Jenštejn that had some ruins of a castle.

My experience with villages that are suppose to have ruins is that it involves a long walk through tall grass until you find a few old stones. That's it. But Jenštejn proved to be different. As we drove into the village the tower of the ruined castle stood in the center. We parked and walked towards the tower. A tiny street led us in a circle around the castle tower. A century or two ago the villages decided to build their little village houses around the base of the tower. Intriguing!


www.jenstejn.com/index.php?nid=6150&lid=CZ&oid=996475

(More of my photos at www.flickr.com/honza-tasci)

A weekend away..

Basel, SWITZERLAND

As I wandered through the winding lanes of Basel, I found a city that encapsulates everything I love about living in Europe in one little nutshell of a town.

A group of elderly men walked leisurely down the street and discussed the European central bank system in Italian. (Those semesters of Italian classes are still paying off...) Children ran home from school, making plans in French. The shop keepers greeted me in German. In this small town language, nationality and roots mix and blend and run into a beautiful tapestry. That is what I love about Europe.







Les Vosges Mountains, FRANCE

Drive out of Basel and the calm pastoral countryside of France welcomes you with peace and quiet. The mountains roll and meander, hiding deep blue lakes and snow covered peaks. We laid on the soft grasses and breathed deep the cool air.





Colmar, FRANCE

Charming. I don't think I ever really knew the full meaning of the word charming until I walked the streets of Colmar. Every step, every new street, every small canal made me catch my breath. It is enough to know that such beauty exists and that we humans had a hand in creating it. Charming.