Southern Bohemia

20-21 Sept 1991

We are on an overnight trip to Southern Bohemia. This morning we went to a town (Kutna Hora) where we walked through some underground tunnels and saw a church and had lunch. Then we drove to the grave of Edvard Benes, second president of Czechoslovakia. Our tour guide talked for a while about the war and this president and another teacher talked about his own experience in the war, how he wanted to fight for Czechoslovakia against Hitler, but he left when the communists took over. Then they talked about how a lot of the changes that are happening now are things that Benes was trying to do, things with bringing East & West Europe into some form cooperation and that sort of thing. Sometimes it is so Bizarre to be in this place and it seems so calm, but to have a sense of its history makes it seem so different, all this experience is bubbling under the surface of everything.

Later we also saw several churches and castles. It’s funny, it’s making me realize why there’s so much trouble with post-modernism and all the accompanying confusion. Every beautiful and/or historic thing that has been preserved was designed to celebrate either God or King.

We stayed over night in Ceske Budejovice, the town where the original Budweiser was made. Of course we all had some and it was much better than the American version.

Here are some more pictures I took in Southern Bohemia. Click on the small image to see the full-sized picture.

Some gorgeous wallpainting, I think this was a town square.	More wallpainting.
This is a castle we went to. I don't remember, it was the Rosenbergs or Shwartzbergs or something. I think it was an Austrian royal family. The door knob was this monstrous sculpture of a raven piercing the head of a Turk with it's beak.This was the family legacy, I guess.	A front view of the same castle.
A rose garden at that same castle.	This adorable kocka (pronounced "coach-ka," it's a cat) was sitting in the garden by a well.
They also had these birds, an owl and a hawk, tied to posts outside the castle.	At one castle we someone riding this crazy flying machine. It was like a bicycle with wings.
This used to be a War Memorial, but at a certain point it was officially changed to a Peace Memorial.	The gate to the Jan Hus House. I don't know if it was the original gate or not. This was at the house of Jan Hus, one of the original religious reformers, and it had been turned into a museum.
Here's Isabelle and Indridi, two friends of mine in my program, at the Jan Hus house.