Bohemian Rhapsody

Snuggled amongst the hills and woods of south Bohemia sits the town of Cesky Krumlov. UNESCO have decreed that this town is a world heritage site. In fact it speaks to you on a basic level as the most perfect fairytale setting you will ever see. It is set around and above a horseshoe bend of the Vltava. The island in the middle is a steep mound where the past two centuries seem to never have happened. Huddled together are a collection of 17th-18th century houses and inns, rising up to the tall narrow church of St Vit, its spire dominating the town. Despite its historic architecture however, this is the 'New Town'. To the north is the original settlement of Latran, crowned by one of the most peculiar castles you will ever see. The walls, courtyards, and even the rocket-shaped tower are all stencilled and painted with pastel murals. Take the most extreme of the sgraffito decorations you've seen in Prague, and then imagine an entire castle daubed in them. Even with the castle closed for winter you can stroll through the courtyards and over a colonnaded bridge to the formal gardens and revolving theatre. Just keep an eye peeled for castle security - real live bears!

The castle is clearly the highlight of any trip to Cesky Krumlov. There are other attractions for tourists - a decent regional museum which tries to contextualise the town's growth (though not its fade into irrelevancy), a rather ghastly looking wax museum, and even an exhibition dedicated to the artist Egon Schiele. However, the joy lies in taking your time to stroll and absorb the town (which is why I would not recommend taking one of the day trips you see advertised in Prague - how manic must they be?). There are some pretty decent restaurants, though I found it harder to find a cafe for afternoon cake. It is well on the international backpackers circuit, as evidenced by the number of hostels right in the heart of the New Town, English bookstores, antique shops, and even a launderette.

Quick Tips:

As I say, the castle is a great free attraction even when 'closed'. I would have loved to have seen the interior (and seen whether it was quite as bizarrely decorated as the exterior), and climbed the tower, but that wasn't an option in March.

Be careful where you eat - I walked out of one restaurant (Parkan) after 15 minutes when the owner had still not acknowledged my gaze. However I can definitely recommend the flame grilled fish at Na Panske. This is a restaurant I would gladly have returned to if I'd had longer in town.

There is also a pretty good store called Botanicus, tricked out like an old apothecary, where the herbal scents of natural locally made soaps and bath stuffs entice you to enter. They sell very nicely presented gift sets (one of which I bought for my mother). However, if you are backpacking be aware that they are part of a chain, so if you are flying out from Prague it might be an idea to put off your purchase until then. Another retail outlet to recommend is the bookshop 'Shakespeare'. If you find yourself running low on reading matter this place has one heck of a selection - rivalling most English county village bookstores for my money!

Best Way To Get Around:

I travelled to Cesky Krumlov from my base in Ceske Budejowice. Both buses and trains run semi-regularly (about once ever two hours). The bus station is to the east out of the New Town, while the train station is set up in the north. It was here that I arrived.

After chugging through tangled woodland the train lets passengers off at a siding. There did not seem to be much in the way of directions to get to the town, so once you make your way through the station buildings turn right. You will reach a t-junction. The right fork leads back across the railway line - do not take this. Instead turn left and follow the road downhill (you will see a store to your right marked 'Colonial'). After about 5 minutes the road sweeps away to the right. You will find a band-stand affair here, which allows you your first view down over the historic core of the town. Stairs here allow pedestrians to descend. Continue through the car park of the 'Cino' and you will easily spot the bridge into Latran. From here it is really hard to lose your way - the main road leads down past the castle to the Lazebnicky bridge over the Vltava, and from there to Namesti Svornosti, the main square. The largest street from there leads up past the church of St Vit and the museum to the bridge back into the suburbs. Turn left along Objizdkova to find the bus station.

It was only once I arrived here that I discovered that trains also run direct to Prague (and also, I think, Brno). The tourist office in the main square has all current bus and train timetables mounted on the walls. They also speak English in case you want to make absolutely sure that the times are correct.

Other than the walk to the two stations the town is relatively compact, and can really only be explored by foot. Don't be afraid to duck down back streets to find new vistas. Even the walk back uphill to the train station only took me fifteen minutes - half the time I had allotted for it!

On a side-street just off the main square in Cesky Krumlov's Renaissance 'New Town' you might expect Restaurace Na Panske to be expensive. It wasn't. You might think service would be haphazard. It wasn't (I had my order taken within two minutes of sitting down). You might think the food would be second rate. It certainly wasn't...

The inside of the restaurant is done up in bright spring colours, with wildflowers on the walls. However the establishment was dominated by a massive brick range on which a fire blazed merrily. This was clearly the restaurant's pride and joy. In addition to the main menu (helpfully in English) there was a secondary menu - a wooden board on which they advertised their flame-grilled specials. Acting on the assumption that anything from here would be something they would take extra care over I plumped for a portion of pike-perch.

I made the right choice. The fish came as a sizable fillet (no messing about with bones) on a wooden chopping block garnished with salad. It was in... well, not so much a batter as a glaze. I'm guessing its ingredients included egg, flour, lemon juice, and black pepper. It did just enough to bring out the natural taste of the fish, and adding a zingy aftertaste. I aim to experiment in my own kitchen now! As a side I had ordered potato croquettes, and they came as fluffy round balls. To be honest, they may well have been shop-bought, but I didn't care. To drink I had a half-litre bottle of Krusovice Cerny, a dark beer that tasted like a cross between lager and Guinness. Being not a natural lager drinker, I found its taste much more to my palate than the usual golden brews, and led to me searching for it wherever I could find it from there on. Mind you, it was more expensive than other beers - nearer 75p for half a litre than 50p!

Considering that I only ended up in this restaurant after I got so exasperated with the service at my first choice (Restaurace Parkan q.v.) I feel quite blessed that I found Na Panske. The food was eminently reasonable in price and was delicious - indeed, I think that strip of fish was the tastiest meal I had on my trip. If I had been staying in Cesky Krumlov any longer I would have had no hesitation returning to this restaurant again. And gradually working my way through all of their flame-grilled specialities...

I'm afraid I can't tell you much about the food at Restaurace Parkan. I got so fed up at the appalling service that I left! I had been sat there for 15 minutes and the man had still not come over to me (or really even acknowledged my presence). There were only two other tables of diners and it was a small room, so he was having to do quite impressive ocular gymnastics to avoid meeting my gaze - going to the loo, chatting to people at another table, retreating behind the bar and concentrating intently while he wrote something down - he could have been filling in a crossword for all I knew. Just after I entered a couple of young Koreans came in. The man was quick enough to prevent them sitting at the only remaining free table, so I suggested they share my table. Maybe that was my mistake. At any rate, they got fed up and left before me. It was only once my growling stomach got too insistent that I walked out - still without having my order taken!

For the record, the restaurant is located in a very convenient position, just across the Lazebnicky Bridge from the castle, and on the main street heading towards the town square. They advertise a three course menu (garlic soup, entrée, and apple strudel) for a very reasonable price. However, I cannot tell you whether such a meal is value for money or not for obvious reasons!

I have seen a few painted castles in my time. Dublin castle is coated with bright primary hues. The castle in Riga is a cheerful canary yellow. But Cesky Krumlov has the only "illustrated" castle I've ever seen.

What do I mean by "illustrated"? Well, it looks like a set designer has been let loose with a box of stencils and children's pastel crayons. The outer walls and inner courtyards are painted with a sunny yellow hatching, designed to give the impression of three-dimensional brickwork. False 'apses' and 'alcoves' hold 'statues' and 'urns' - all painted directly onto the walls. All the surfaces are similarly muralled. And the castle's crowning feature, the tall round tower with its balconies is picked out in pretty pastel pink, with a graceful copper-green cupola. It looks like nothing more than a fairground helter-skelter.

The castle is open from April until October - though as with most state attractions in the Czech Republic it is closed on Mondays. Visiting in March, this meant that I found it 'closed'. What this meant in practice was that there were no guided tours around the interior of the castle which was a shame. However, I note from the town's website (www.ckrumlov.cz/uk/zamek) that foreigners are charged more than Czech nationals, a habit that always slightly annoys me - the two tours would be 100 and 80 CK respectively for Czechs and 160/140 for foreign tourists. Likewise it was disappointing that I could not climb the tower (35CK). However, as the highlight of what is already a stunning town there is still plenty to see, even in the off-season.

Entering the castle you pass over a moat. Sitting atop a crag, filling the moat with water would obviously have been a logistical nightmare. So instead, from the 16th-century onwards, the Medvedi Prikop has been guarded by bears. (I'm not entirely sure what I feel about this - the sole inhabitant ambled about with sad eyes ignoring the visitors above.)

Inside you can progress through the frescoed courtyards, and across a colonnaded passageway with great views over the town past its saintly statues (it is only from the town below that you can appreciate the stacked tiers of arches that support this pathway). Across here there are the formal gardens and fountains. And at the back one very curious feature - a tall skeletal rack of theatre seating facing a pastel pink summerhouse composed of levels of curving staircases, balconies, grottoes, and French windows. However I gather that this outdoor theatre has one further surprise - it revolves! The seating swivels around to face a meadow, allowing a change in scenery. Personally I think it is a disgrace that the British Council haven't put on a summer production of 'Much Ado About Nothing' here yet!

With its ornate decorations and ursine guardian the castle is like something out of a fairy-tale. It has to be seen to be believed. Even 'closed' it is one of the greatest sights in Bohemia!

The former seminary of the Jesuit order is a large boxy building set on the narrow neck of land linking the Vltava-surrounded New Town to the open land to the east. The butterscotch Baroque seminary has now been refurbished as the Regional Museum of Cesky Krumlov, and for 50CK it is a decent way to spend half an hour.

The history of the era spreads from the paleolithic era through Celtic and Roman interest, and exhibits from these periods are displayed, though the museum does not really get into its stride, in my opinion, until we hit the medieval period and the first stage of Cesky Krumlov's rise under the powerful Vitkovi and then Rozmberk families, an independent power base rivalling that of the Czech royal family for some six centuries. The coats of arms of the powerful families and towns are displayed.

The narrative continues through the arrival of the Jesuits (with a pretty good reconstruction of their pharmacy, with a waffle iron for making communion wafers) up to the nineteenth century, with examples of folk dress, and - interesting for someone who had taken the train from Linz to Ceske Budejowice the previous day - a model of the original horse-drawn railway that linked the two towns. There was also a scale model of Cesky Krumlov with interactive buttons that narrates the history of the town. Sadly however someone appeared to have stolen the castle!

One further intriguing section detailed the initiative to restore old lay crosses and shrines in the Sumava area that had lain abandoned following the displacement of communities in the 1930s and '40s. Interestingly it referred to the expulsion of Germans following the second world war as a tragedy comparable to the Nazi occupation. Germans had always made up a sizable proportion of the urban population here - in 1918 Germans outnumbered Czechs in Cesky Krumlov by 3:1. However, representatives of Christian groups from both communities acknowledge that if any section of the populace suffered the most, it was clearly the Jewish community. However, these statements were just made in passing. I personally would have liked to see more modern history - the history of the referenced Jewish population, the polarisation of the interwar period, the effects of the German occupation during the war, and how the hand of Moscow lay on the town afterwards. Strolling the romantic streets of Cesky Krumlov and visiting the tangled woods, forested hills and lush meadows of the region I could not help but wonder what impact the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century could have had on a landscape that appeared timeless.

At best, the museum was sporadically interesting, rather than a must-see. However for a 25p entrance fee there are a heck of a lot of worse ways to pass half an hour.

It was the aromas that drew me in. Down Kajovska from the wax museum stood a storefront. From the high doorway came the smells of soaps and herbs. Entering, the shop was dim and cluttered, lined with tall compartmentalised racks, each holding some goody or other - a vial of scent, herbal soap, oils for the kitchen, bath-bombs. A leaflet welcomed me to the 'hortus botanicus and apothicus' - house of the botanist and apothecary. Indeed, it looked like a more earthy alternative to the reconstructed Jesuit pharmacy on show in the regional museum. To be frank, it looked like a set from Harry Potter's Diagon Alley. I half expected Dumbledore to potter around a corner at any second.

Reading the leaflet further it announced that all the wares on sale were produced from locally, organically grown products at their farm in Bohemia. When I saw that they had gift sets of bath stuffs I immediately thought that this would be perfect for my mother's upcoming birthday. At £20 for a gift set it was a comparable price to what I would pay for a set back in Britain at Lush or the Body Shop, but just looked little bit different, packed into a crate-like box with straw. A fitting gift from a little store completely in fitting with the ambience of pretty little Cesky Krumlov.

It was only once I had left the store that I read the back of the leaflet. Rather than just being an individual concern, Botanicus actually had a chain of high-end stores across the Czech Republic. They had seven stores in Prague alone. One in Tescos. One at the airport. So maybe if I had known that I would have bought a bit later into my trip, saving me having to lug it in my backpack the breadth of the country.

However, it says something that I believed that this was a genuine one-off, and thinking that, even though I was paying prices comparable to home, the goods were too good to pass up. My mother was certainly thrilled.

They have a very interesting website at www.botanicus.cz, which is translated into English. It lists their stores, details their products, and advertises their gardens and 'historic centre' east of Prague, which are open to the public.