When I find myself in a new town for the first time, it isn't just the visual I'm looking for. I want to feel the "time". Every place moves through the universe in its own time. Sometimes it is fast and modern, sometimes slow and traditional, or with an ora of the Middle Ages.
Orlicke Hory (Eagle Mountains) takes me back a hundred years or
so. The houses are wooden, with low steep roofs for the heavy winters. The town squares have families walking slowly with ice cream greeting one another. I feel my heart beat slow and I breath deeply as this old time washes over me.
Our weekend getaway: The perfect 3 day escape from city life
Friday we drove off to find Rychnov nad Kneznou (www.rychnov-city.cz), a little town that sits in Orlicke Hory, not far from the Polish boarder. One of our main objectives for this trip was to go back in time (it's a theme!) and find the bunkers that run along the border. These bunkers were built in the 1930s as the first line of defense. But more about bunkers later...
On the way we took a slight detour to lunch in Podebrady. We'd been to this town before and knew finding a good inexpensive meal wouldn't be difficult. We parked and were seated for lunch in less than five minutes. With full tummies we continued our journey.
Rychnov proved to be a sweet little town with a square, chateau and church. Also, it was the birthplace of author Karel Poláček (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_Poláček). We arrived in the late afternoon so we checked into Pension v Chaloupce (www.penzionvchaloupce.cz). The owner is a cheerful woman who was more than accommodating. She thought of everything. Breakfast isn't included in the price but is well worth the 80,-kc extra, as we discovered in the morning. We felt at home instantly.
Dinner was on the main square at the town's finest hotel, Havel Hotel. They served a delicious local unfiltered beer called Kastan. We liked it so much we had two, and we never have two. My schnitzel dinner was also very good: hot, fresh and tender.
In the cool of the evening we walked through the center and found that the city has placed 12 signs throughout the city marking important sections of Karel Poláček's book, Bylo nas pet (There were Five of Us) which is a memoir of his childhood. We decided we'd have to find all the points before leaving. But for us, the day was at an end. We needed to hit the sack in order to be up early in search of bunkers and World War 2 history....
(Find more photos at: www.flickr.com/photos/honza-tasci)
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