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Eastern Europe

August 2023
A 22-day adventure by West Family Travels Read more
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  • TravelerEastern Europe
    Day 2

    Amsterdam

    August 6, 2023 in the Netherlands ⋅ 🌧 16 °C

    We have just boarded our KLM flight at Edmonton airport. The West family is finally making a return trip to Europe after a three year hiatus. We were supposed to make this trip in 2020 but we all know what happened with that. I do have a little sadness as we won't have the boys to travel with. They are all grown up now. Chris is working as a lifeguard this summer and Andrew is working as a guide at Camp Thunderbird on Vancouver Island. We still have our delightful daughter Madeline and we have brought her charming friend Jada Lemieux. Our plan is a week in Prague, 5 days in BRNO and one week in Vienna where we will collect another sophisticated friend of Madeline's Alice Keeble. Bon Voyage.Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe
    Day 2

    Prague

    August 6, 2023 in the Netherlands ⋅ 🌧 16 °C

    We have made it to Prague.That shouldn't come as a surprise seeing that was was our final destination. We all fell asleep on the Amsterdam to Prague flight. The main excitement was losing Jada after promising her mother that I wouldn't within literally seconds of landing in Czech. Jada was at the front of the plane and disembarked to a gate while we disembarked from the back of the plane onto a bus. We just assumed everyone was on the bus so it was quite unnerving when we got off the bus and there was no Jada. Our phones initially weren't working due to no Sim cards so we had to get onto the wifi to contact her. She had sensibly just waited at the gate. Our driver a 30 year old woman met and after a long walk/run to her car we experienced some of the most aggressive driving we have ever experienced. She was definitely a frustrated formula one driver. She dropped us off at our Air BnB in a building named Hotel Chill. Talk about an unrest cure. I entered the access code to the electronic box and it opened box 6 with no keys rather than box 5 with our keys. As we still didn't have a SIM card this was going to turn into a hassle as my contact with the owner was through the Air BnB app so I was going to have to wander around and find some free Wifi. Fortunately some other guests came into the building and I told them our story and they had the owners phone number. After a quick call all was sorted out. Off to buy Sim cards tomorrow. We then did what I call the zombie walk. We tried to stay up as long as possible. We got some groceries ate supper and went for a little walk before collapsing with exhaustion. My initial impression of Prague is a major party town. Every small grocery store is a liquor store in disguise. My other observation is that I love art Nouveau architecture. Edmonton should bring in an art Nouveau bylaw.Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe
    Day 3

    Everything Alphonso Mucha

    August 7, 2023 in Czech Republic

    Our first day in Prague was an Alphonso Mucha day. Alphonso Mucha was a Czech artist who initially gained fame for his Art Nouveau prints but branched out into design and jewellery. His productive time was between 1900 and 1931. He was also a Czech nationalist and he branched out into nationalistic paintings after Czech gained its independence from Austria in 1918. We started at the Mucha museum. It was a little on the small side for the price but had his major prints and a good movie about his life. We then went and took a tour of the municipal building which despite the name was a concert hall done in the Art Nouveau style. They had commissioned Mucha to paint some of the rooms After the municipal building we were all tired out so we chilled at our apartment. After supper Cheryl and I went and found one of the hanging men statues. Cheryl and I had a good night's sleep. The girls not so well and it had nothing to do with the 5 pm coffee we warned them against.Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe
    Day 4

    Prague Castle Tour

    August 8, 2023 in Czech Republic ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C

    We took the team up to the Prague Castle. Within the Prague castle they have built the large gothic St. Vitus Cathedral. It was very spectacular. St. Vitus was an Italian martyred in AD 303 who had nothing to do with Czech or Prague until the good King Wenceslas of the Christmas Carol fame bought a bone from his arm and brought it to Prague as a holy relic in 925. Of course all holy relics require churches to be housed. The present Cathedral was started in 1300 but took 600 years to build. That would make the Transmountain pipeline appear to be on time. Anyhow St. Vitus is the patron saint of dance so on his saint day people dance. I had heard of St. Vitus as some children after rheumatic fever develop a neurological movement disorder called St. Vitus dance named after the crazy dancing people do on his saint day. I had never known this association. The church was pretty good what with the huge Nave, a Mucha stain class window, St Vitus tomb and Good King Wenceslas tomb.

    The excitement had only just begun though as we still had the Royal Palace. Madeline told us that they had leaned about the Palace in grade 11 AP history as that was the site of the defenestration of Prague which had set off the 30 year war. In 1618 angry Czech Protestant nobleman had thrown the two Austrian Hapsburgs governors out of the window. She was very thrilled to see the window and send back photos to their history teacher Mr. Robinson. Vladislav hall was very impressive. It was so large that they could have jousting tournaments. We started to flag after that and quickly toured the Basilica of St. George and the mediaeval quarter which was so swarmed with people it felt claustrophobic. We walked back towards the river taking in the Lesser town, Wallenstein garden, the courtyard of the Franz Kafka museum, the Shakespeare book shop, and the Charles bridge which was incredibly busy with tourists. The courtyard of the Kafka museum is noted for the two men urinating statue. We were quite tired so took a team back up the hill to our apartment.    Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe
    Day 5

    Jewish Quarter and Anton Dvorak

    August 9, 2023 in Czech Republic ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    We were really flagging this morning after the long day at the castle. We decided that we would let the girls sleep in and that we would go to the Anton Dvorak museum which was located only 5 minutes from our apartment. I noticed it on Google maps but it seemed pretty low on the tourist radar as it wasn't in Rick Steves book and it certainly didn't hit any of the top things to do in Prague on trip advisor. The museum had opened in 1932 about 30 years after Dvorak's death. The house itself had nothing to do with Dvorak although he at one point had lived in the area. Dvorak was obviously a Czech composer known for capturing many of the Czech folk songs and for some of his symphonies specifically For a New World which is one of my favorites. The museum was small and possessed some of his worldly possessions including his viola, piano eyeglasses and various awards he had won. No manuscripts. They had a very nice video on his life that we watched.

     We walked back to our apartment and collected the girls before heading off to a cafeteria just off of Wenseleus square. The cafeteria was in the basement of a building and it was something out of the Soviet era. Large portions of meat and potato meals on plastic trays. My son Chris had recommended it. Of course there were no chicken meals for Madeline and Jada only picked at her meal.We had to go to McDonald's afterwards for Madeline.

    By then it was about 1 pm and we had to start our tour of the Jewish quarter. Prague had a large Jewish population of maybe 100000 before WW2 and of course we all know what happened with the holocaust. Only 10000 survived. Prague's Jewish quarter dates back to 1000 AD and despite various setbacks ie Pogroms over the years the community had prospered and in 1876 they were granted full rights as citizens. The tour consisted of three synagogues, one mortuary and a Jewish cemetary. The synagogue was interesting because I had never been in one. The second was interesting as the synagogue was no longer being used and they had inscribed all the names of Czech citizens who had died in the holocaust on the walls according to towns and family names. There were 155000 names. It was rather sobering. The Jewish cemetery was very neat. Lots of gravestones all highly pigglty The mortuary and third synagogue we were getting bored. We stopped for iced coffees before hitting the last synagogue known as the Spanish synagogue which was the most beautiful. We were exhausted after an afternoon of Judaism.    Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe
    Day 6

    This pils for you

    August 10, 2023 in Czech Republic ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    I have always wanted to do a brewery tour. Perhaps it was the influence of growing up in London Ontario birth place of Labatt's brewery that led me to have this desire. Of course Labatt's brewery had a nice brewery tour but despite having lived in London Ontario for 32 years, I never did the tour. So of course when I heard that there were brewery tours in Pilsen, a small city just outside of Prague, I bought us tour tickets. Madeline and Jada didn't want anything to do with the tour so they stayed in Prague and walked around in their brand new Doc Martin's they had bought the day before leaving for the trip got blisters and were happy.

    We took the train to Pilsen from Prague. It was good practice for our trip in three days to Brno. The train station was packed with people. It took us a little while to figure out which platform to wait on but it all worked out .

    The name of the brewery was Pilsener Urquell, Czech's oldest brewery founded in 1842 and known for its Pilsner beer for which it is named. Pilsner is a lager, cold bottom fermented, cold stored, made from soft water and made from a triple superheated wart. 9/10 of the beer brewed in the world is Pilsner so they obviously got something right. The tour was very good and the two hours whisked by very quickly. I think I enjoyed watching the bottles going through the assembly line the most. We were taken through all of the brewing stages both in the old and new buildings. Of course we all got a drink at the end of the tour. We were fortunate that we were able to get onto the 3 pm train to Prague rather than the later train we had booked. We were happily reunited with the girls who were nursing their blisters after a full day of shopping.    Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe
    Day 7

    We survived Terezin

    August 11, 2023 in Czech Republic ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    I had my reservations yesterday when the girls demanded to go to Terezin home of the infamous Terezin ghetto during WW2. Terezin is located an hour north of Prague. It would require a metro trip, a bus ride and a walk. Of course I only had a vague idea of when the bus would leave. It was going to be a hot day. I always get a little depressed going to concentration camps. Who doesn't. Despite my reservations I rose to the challenge.

    We got going early with a 7:30 wake up which is our earliest wake. We made it to the correct bus stop at the correct time. After the bus driver had fought back the masses we were allowed on the very hot bus. Maybe he was trying to warn us not to go but we don't understand Czech.We were the only tourists on the bus. I think he must have been related to the airport driver in Prague but he was driving a bus. I wasn't too bus sick when we arrived.

    The story of Terezin is almost unbelievable. Terezin was a walled fortress city before WW2. The Germans kicked out all of the 2000 inhabitants and used the city as a ghetto for thousands of Jewish people awaiting deportation to the death camps. Despite not being a death camp 33000 people died in Terezin from malnutrition and poor treatment. 155500 people passed through the ghetto, the majority of whom died before the end of the war. 15000 children. We visited the 2 museums in town, the colabarium, the crematorium. We couldn't find the hidden synagogue. It kept getting hotter as the day went on. Cheryl and I broke out our umbrellas for the sun. What I realized was odd about the town was that other than the 2 museum's the rest of the town was fully inhabited. People were living in buildings that had imprisoned Jewish people 75 years ago where many of them had died. If there are ghosts or spirits anywhere they must be in Terezin.

    Not to be outdone by Terezin the town, there was a small fort outside of Terezin where the SS had imprisoned and executed Czech political and resistance prisoners during the war. We walked out in the heat for more death and misery. After a tour of the execution grounds we all had had enough so we caught an even hotter bus back to Prague having survived our one day tour of a concentration camp. Today was definitely not a Disney tour day.    Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe
    Day 8

    A day at the pool

    August 12, 2023 in Czech Republic ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    Cheryl and I needed to have an easier day today after all of the excitement. We went for a leisurely walk in the morning to a coffee shop in a nearby part of Prague away from the busy downtown tourist area. We met up after lunch with the girls who had gone shopping without their Doc Martin's. It had become much warmer in Prague today so we all decided it would be fun to go to an outdoor pool. There was quite a large outdoor pool with a stadium not too far from our apartment so we headed off for a blissful afternoon with the Czechs.Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe
    Day 9

    Goodbye Prague Hello Brno

    August 13, 2023 in Czech Republic ⋅ ☁️ 22 °C

    Today was our last day at the Chill apartments in Brno. We had a very busy week but felt like we could have done and seen more sites here in Prague. We caught the train to Brno after a short 10 minute walk with our luggage to the train station. It really helped navigating the train station having taken the train to Pilsen earlier in the week. We had a little problem figuring out which car we were on but asked the conductor and he got us shorted out. It was a new modern train but I didn't think it was going very quickly until I noticed that the speed of the train was being displayed intermittently on a monitor which had been displaying the next station. We were flying along at 160 kph. Very impressive. We arrived in Brno at 1 and walked another ten minutes to our Air BNB. I had intended on taking things easy after we arrived but realized that two of the big attractions would be closed on Monday when I thought we could do them.

    Gregor Mendel of Mendelian genetics fame lived and performed his studies at an Augustine monastery in Brno. He was a monk and went on to become the abbot of the monastery. For someone who had failed his education degree, he was a pretty heavy He published his sentinel paper describing inherited genotypes and phenotypes in 1865 but it was largely ignored. There is a small Mendel museum at the abbey with a collection of some of his research notes and books. Mendel also did metrology research and study other sciences. There was his microscope and telescope and various metrology equipment. There was also a pretty good display explaining the concepts of genetics. One could also wander around in the small courtyard of the building where he had grown his pea plants he was studying. It was all quite unique. The girls enjoyed seeing the site and the museum.

    The other site that I wanted to visit was a cold war bunker called Bunker Z. It had been built under the Brno castle in WW2 and expanded during the cold war. The bunker was a little run down and junky. It didn't look like they had put much effort into it for a number of years. A lot of the material hadn't been translated into English. As my son Chris would have said, it was mid despite a hefty admission fee.    Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe
    Day 10

    A day in Brno

    August 14, 2023 in Czech Republic ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C

    We spent the day in Brno. Brno isn't really known as being a tourist destination site. In fact Rick Steves doesn't even mention it in his book. That said, Brno appears to be a very clean, safe and prosperous city. I find that Czechs don't smile a lot but everyone looks fairly content and healthy. I think when I initially planned this trip in 2019 it was because we could rent a car in Brno but not in the neighbouring city Oleomuc.

    Other than the Mendel museum and Bunker Z, the main 2 tourist attractions were St Peter's and St Paul's Cathedral and the Spilbeck castle in the centre of town. We walked up to the castle through a park with very moderately steep paths. The girls complained about the steepness but we had to remind them that they were mountain women from Alberta. The castle at the top was quite pretty and we walked around the embattlements at the top. The views of surrounding Brno were quite impressive. Madeline and Jada weren't terribly impressed by the Castle having only experienced Scottish castles. They thought it was rather a wimpy castle despite the fact that in 1685, it had withstood a 122 day siege by a Swedish army of 30000 people. That is correct, I said Swedish. After the castle we walked over to the cathedral which had some pretty impressive stain glass windows and a bell tower with a very narrow viewing platform at the top. We also heard the bell tower ring it's bell 12 times a 11 pm. This is a tradition going back to 1685 when the Brnites learned that the Swedes would call off their siege at noon on the 122 day, they rang their cathedral bells one hour earlier to trick the Swedes into ending the siege.

    There is a heat wave in Czech right now with daily temps of 31 degrees. Fortunately it has been cooling off at night. We decided the best place to hang out was the pool so we took a trolley to a public outdoor pool on a hill outside of town at almost the same height as the castle. The view looking over at the castle was also spectacular. Unlike the pool in Prague, it didn't charge per hour so we chilled out for about 3 hours. There was a nice breeze and after a dip in the pool it was very pleasant sitting on a chair in the shade on the grass. Interestingly 97 percent of the Czechs preferred lying around the pool in the sun. Jada and Madeline lay on the grass by the pool despite our warning them about the hazards of too much sun. After about 2 hours they came and complained that they were getting heat stroke and wanted to go. We told them to sit with us in the shade and bought them some waffles and they seemed much happier.

    We left the pool around 4 pm and after having a little break at the apartment headed off to the airport to get our rental car. I had booked it way in advance and at 90 Euro for 3 days thought it would be fun to visit 2 of the UNESCO heritage sites in the countryside around Brno. Google maps has been a great game changer for foreign travel. It tells one with very good consistency how to travel around using public transit. We entered into the phone that we wanted to go to the airport and it directed us to the bus stop at the correct time for the half hour trip. Our hearts sank a little at the airport when we arrived as many of the car rentals were closed as it was now Sunday at 6. Budget was open and the attendant was patiencely waiting for our arrival. We were his last pickup of the day. We picked up the car and everything went seemlessly. Google maps on our phone then helped us navigate back to accommodation. The most difficult part of the journey was finding the correct parking garage. There were 3 and we went to the wrong 2 first before finding the correct parking lot that would accept the QR code from the Air BnB. There was a lot of backing up but both Cheryl and I kept our cool.    Read more

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