Safe Return Doubtful

I was based for two days and nights at the hikers’ car park in Dolní Světlá. On Tuesday I ate at the restaurant I had been at for a beer the previous evening. Goulash and potato croquettes with a couple of beers for just over ten euros. Earlier in the day I had walked across the German border to Waltersdorf, and the National Park on the German side, which is called the Bohemian Swiss National Park. In Czech it is České Švýcarsko National Park. This region, just east of the river Elbe, in the sandstone mountains, is called Bohemian Switzerland, or Czech Switzerland. It has a large number of castles built around the 12th century to guard trade routes, most of which are now in ruins. It has attracted tourists since the 19th century.

It has been a National Park, on both sides of the border, since 2000, but was significantly reduced in size after a huge manmade forest fire in 2022. The rainstorms from last month have closed many roads and trails, though most roads have reopened, the trails have not yet been cleared of fallen trees. 

Just within the Park from the German town of Waltersdorf there was a pension, with a restaurant that looked very much like the one I ate at later back in Czech, and the price for something similar would have been twenty five euros. It’s remarkable that business offering very similar produce, that are very close to each other, can fairly compete. Czech was particularly known for its cheap beer in the 1990s. There had been the Velvet Revolution in 1989, and the split from Slovakia in 1992. After that came the influx of tourists, and not so long after the sports tours and stag and hen weekends, all after the cheap beer. I first visited in 1992, to Plzeň and Prague a stop-off on our road trip to Minsk and St Petersburg. We didn’t look hard or for long, but we were paying less than 20p for a beer. 

By the time I was next there, working in Prague as a teacher for a year, 2005-6, the prices went higher, but my tastes had matured also. That year I had 17 different sets of visitors for weekends, so became an expert on short food and drink tours of the city. It was possible to get a beer for less than a pound once away from the main squares, but you could get really good beer, micro breweries, and excellent food, from around the world, at a price half of that in the UK once you knew where to go. Prague is the best city I’ve lived in for food and drink. A local told me that they could wander into the city on a Saturday and Sunday morning and find a different little cafe in a different square to sit and take a coffee for all of their life. 

On Wednesday I moved about a half hour drive to the east to the town of Růžová where there is good walking. Yesterday there was rain for much of the day, and not any warmer than 12C, and today, a showery drizzle mixed with a mist so as it’s difficult to tell which. 

Conditions are fine to be out walking though there wasn’t much view, until just before dark this evening when it cleared for a sunset. Roja and I were out for most of the morning, more than three hours, during which we hiked up the mountain Růžovský vrch, and took on a circuit around the local countryside.