Teplice? What's Teplice? My Czech hometown, that's what. I lived in the Czech Republic for one year while teaching English and Teplice is where I lived.
It's a small city near the border with Germany, in mountains, and about 2 hours out from Prague, in the northwest corner of the country. It's a spa town, known for it's healing waters. Legend is the town was founded when a farmer's pig fell into some water and died because of the heat. The rumor is that the water is slightly radioactive, and that gives it its healing attributes. It's said that Beethoven visited the spas here.
It's an off-the-beaten path place to go, but it's home, of a sort, to me. I lived in an old family hous
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It's a small city near the border with Germany, in mountains, and about 2 hours out from Prague, in the northwest corner of the country. It's a spa town, known for it's healing waters. Legend is the town was founded when a farmer's pig fell into some water and died because of the heat. The rumor is that the water is slightly radioactive, and that gives it its healing attributes. It's said that Beethoven visited the spas here.
It's an off-the-beaten path place to go, but it's home, of a sort, to me. I lived in an old family house converted into two flats. My roommate, Marenka knows half the country (or at least it seems like it). She got me into concerts and operas for free with those contacts and she was a great friend, too.
I could see a castle on a hill (Dobrovka) from my flat window and I was five minutes walk through a garden (Zamecka Zahrada) to another (Teplice castle) which is now a museum. The most striking part of the museum is the Blue Room, where everything is porcelain or made to look like it: the door, the floor, the chairs, the table, the chandelier, etc.
There's a festival on May 1st where a king is elected (kind of a farcical contest and a lot of fun) and a festival when the spa season opens. There's shopping off Benesak (Benesovo Namesti), concerts and movies in the Kulturny Dum, operas in the theaters, chamber ensembles in the park, ice cream at Pinocio's and Sunday lunch at Septim.
It's just 30 minutes to Dresden, an hour to Terezin, and two hours to Prague. The mountains aren't the highest, but with all the walking (up and downhill), I stayed in great shape without even trying.
The pace of life is so different from here in the U.S. I could swear the Czechs get more hours in the day. There was time to work, read, write, listen to the BBC World Service, take in a movie, and chat all night in a pub with friends. It's a beautiful city, and I still remembered my way home from the train station after 9 years away.
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