For our final day in Prague, we spent 45 minutes on a train to Karlstejn Castke in the countryside. This castle was home to Charles the 4th, King of Bohemia and Emperor elect. He had 4 wives because they kept dying and he needed to have a wife to maintain his Kingly air, plus it didn’t hurt for him to marry the daughters of his enemies to ensure peace. He was also a sportsman, loving combat games like horse jousting, which caused him to become quite disfigured. He ended up with a hunched back, a smashed jaw, and a neck that tilted to the left. His 3rd wife was only 14 when she married him at 37 and his 4th, and final wife, was 17, while he was 47. I feel bad for the wives, but that was life in the olden days.
Apparently we got to Karlstejn town so early I had to beg a restaurant just opening for coffee. Not many tourist were there to hike up the windy road to the top and entrance of the Castle that early, so we got some nice photos of the town without people in them. We went on the history tour and learned that the Karlstejn included about 4 main buildings and was mainly built to protect the Czech jewels - a crowd and scepter with very large gemstones, including one that is said to have a piece of Jesus’ thorn of crowns inside. We got to see a replica of the jewels since the real ones are housed in Prague proper and very rarely on public display. Robby waited 6 hours to view them 20 years ago.
After the tour, we took the train back to Prague central, looked around the all shop-lined cobblestone alleyways, starred disappointedly at the clock tower under heavy construction, and ate caloric waffles with ice cream and vanilla sauce before going back to Pavel’s where Robby and him competed on who could make the best Smazak - chunks of thick cheese dipped in egg, rolled in breadcrumbs, and fried in oil. We ate it with mashed potatoes and prayed our hearts didn’t give out with all the heavenly gooeyness.
After dinner we had to say goodbye to the cute, but naughty wolf dogs, and then to Pavel and Jana for being amazing hosts. We had a great mini trip reconnecting with family and revisiting the main sites of Prague. Pavel drove us to the airport, where we boarded our 1.5 hour flight to Belgrade, Serbia. I had arranged a driver from our hostel to pick us up from the airport because the taxi’s with a flat rate only took you to the main square in Belgrade and since we arrived at 11:30pm, we did not want to figure out how to walk 1 km to our hostel.
Skadarlija Sunrise Hostel turned out to be located in the heart of the Skadarlija bohemian sector, on the main pedestrian walkway with the oldest restaurants and coffee houses surrounding it. At the hostel’s garden bar, we were invited to try a free shot of rakija (raa KEE ah) - the national drink of Serbia, a fruit brandy that tastes like minutely fruit flavored ethanol. Plum is the main flavor (very gross unless up want hair on your chest and have no tastebuds), but apricot turned out to be palatable. After visiting the castle, flying, and drinking highly alcoholic gasoline, we called it a night.
**************************************************************************************
I had organized an underground tunnels tour of the Petrovaradin Fortress in Novi Sad, a town said to be an hour and a half away by train from Belgrade. Unfortunately when we asked to get to the train station, which was suppose to be 1 mile away from our hostel, we were told it moved 10kms outside of town. Ugh, but they said the bus was better and left every 30 minutes, so the only issue we faced was trying to find the station. Serbia is a country where everything is written in Cyrillic, and sometimes Latin. The tourist map we had only told the streets names in their Latin form and the actual street signs were periodically posted on the sides of buildings in mostly Cyrillic. Needless-to-say, our 1 mile journey turned into 2 miles due to us going up and down the streets and playing numerous games of charades with the locals to figure out that the bus was up the hill from our hostel and then down the steep other side towards the water.
We bought our tickets 5 minutes before the bus left, which worked perfectly. Unluckily, the AC on the bus was broken, so it was about 85 degrees outside and a smelly, humid 95 inside. Everyone was dripping with sweat and we’d drunken the last of our water walking to the station, so we were parched by the time we exited the bus in Novi Sad. Our tour was at 1pm at the Fortress, but due to the traffic on the roadway, we arrived with 50 minutes to figure out where we were and how to get to the Fortress.
We asked a bunch of people which bus took us to the Fortress and on our 5th try of miming and fake sign language, we found that if we caught a bus two long blocks up from the bus station, it would go to the Fortress. In reality, it went by the fortress and we had to guess at which stop to get off at. Turns out we choose the back end of the surrounding fortress grounds and had to hiked 15 minutes up the hill to the museum where our tour started. Luckily, Serbians don’t really follow exact times and things don’t start on time, so us being 8 minutes late was no issue.
Along with several college students, we delved into the old military hallways under and along the fortress walls. 16km of tunnels throughout 4 levels were constructed in the 1700’s, but we only saw about 1 km. The Austrian army would employ people with super hearing to be an early warning system for enemies approaching. Soldiers used to train in the dark, walking the corridors and stairs blindly so they would have an advantage if their enemies ever snuck in. Lanterns were not allowed and people would typically train for 2 weeks at a time. Sounds super dreary, plus when you completed training you were given a shovel and told to muck out the stables.
There is also the reverse clock, a.k.a. The Drunken Clock, that sits at the edge of the Fortress grounds, over looking the Danbue River. It was given its nickname for 2 reasons: 1) In order for the local fisherman to see the time from far away, the minute hand was designed as the little hand and the hour hand was created as the larger hand. And 2) the clock runs via a temperature mechanism, so in the winter, the clock could be 40 minutes slow and in the summer, 40 minutes ahead. The locals said it was bad to plan your Dates by the clock.
Novi Sad has a cute little artist/historian area with pedestrian walkways, numerous cafes, and historical church’s and museums. We wandered around for a bit, but most things seemed to be closed, so we decided to walk back to the bus station, a mere 2 Kms, and pray our bus home had AC; luckily the gods heard us. We found a lovely coffee shop/bar for dinner, that served us a kilo (seriously, 1 kilo - like 15 pieces) of amazingly delicious chicken wings for about $6.80. We could not finish them. After that, it was bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment