THROUGH THE HABSBURG EMPIRE Cycle tour Prague-Vienna-Prague 2002 Part 1   Terje Melheim       Planning the tour. 2001 I made a cycle tour with Turid from  Berlin and southwards. We cycled through a little edge of the Czech Republic. In 2002 we wanted to see more of Bohemia, Moravia and the Czech Republic from behind the cycle bars. The tour actually started by planning it. I checked out the information about the Czech Republic on the sites of Trento Bike Pages, where I found some very interesting pages about Prague-Vienna-Greenway .  There is an uninterrupted marked cycle way from Prague and all the way to Vienna. We decided upon this route. The way back to Prague we would take along the famous cycle way along the river Danube, and from Linz on the Danube we would be heading northwards towards Prague again, with stops at famous sites like Český Krumlov (Cesky Krumlov) and Česke Budějuvice (Ceske Budejuvice). That would be our itinerary. In order to avoid all complications connected to ordering the maps in advance, we would spend some days in Prague first where we could buy maps. On Trento Bike Pages a Czech cyclist Filip Kadlec offers advice to foreign cyclists who are going to visit the Czech Republic. I contacted him and I was told that the best way of getting through the city of Prague would be by going by metro. Outside the rush hours bikes are allowed on the trains. He also informed me about a very useful map of Prague on the internet, http://mapy.atlas.cz/   On that map I could plan in detail the way we were going from the airport and to the guesthouse where we were going to stay for our sojourn in Prague.  Another problem arises when I am going to write a report on a cycle tour in a Slavonic country. The Chech alphabet contains more sounds than in the Western European languages. The additional sounds are recognized by diacritical signs. The letters with additional diacritic marks are different in the Western European ASCII-code and the Eastern European one. It can be that geographical names that I have made so much effort to write correctly  with additional signs, are not recognized by the server, and thus the names are rendered with quite different signs or even different basic letters, and so they are impossible to read. Therefore I have written each name twice, once in the correct Chech manner and one (in parenthesis) with traditional Latin letters without diacritic signs.   The black line on the map shows our cycle tour.   With all this planning in advance everything should be fine in Prague. We arrived at Prague airport at 21.15 hours, and I got a hell of a job to put our two bicycles together. Before we left home, we had packed them in two boxes. When we got outside the terminal building, it was already dark and it was raining. It did not put us in a good mood. I placed the two big boxes one in the other and had them strapped around my neck and shoulders. I just managed to cycle with the boxes hanging down beside my bike. From  http://mapy.atlas.cz/ we knew exactly where to go. At one point however I got very confused because a new motor way had been built and the layout of the roads we were to follow had been changed. We were happy to arrive at our guest house at 22.30 hours, 5 km from the airport. We were going to spend two days in Prague, and on those two days we could buy maps and get all kind of information on our cycle route. What I had not foreseen, is that the two days were the 5th and the 6th of July, which are public holidays in the Czech Republic. No reason for getting upset, we found book stores which were open on those days. There is a publisher who makes a series of good cycle maps in the Czech Republic. The series bear the name Shocart. I found a booklet  containing maps and a short description of sites along the route all the way to Vienna. This route is called Greenway Prague-Vienna, but the  Greenway starts outside Prague, in the village Újezd (Ujezd). The two big cycle boxes we left at our guest house. We would collect them before going to the airport on our return journey.      Our cycle tour started just outside Prague. On Sunday the 7th of July we started our cycle tour from the guest house by cycling eastwards to the metro station Holešovice (Holesovice). If we took the metro from that station we did not have to change the metro in the city and we would avoid the long escalators. At Haje, the terminus of the metro in the south east of the town, it was not too easy to find our way to Újezd, because we branched off on to roads with little traffic as soon as we could.  Such roads are hardly shown on maps. We ended up on a track through a forest, and we had no idea where we were. We saw quite many other cyclists doing excursions in the rural area near the town, and I had to ask one for the road to Újezd (Ujezd). I was quite relieved when I managed to explain my problem in Czech language by using simple words and I was able to understand the instructions which I received in Czech from the friendly cyclist. Then, in Újezd (Ujezd) we saw the first sign on our way towards Vienna, 425 km. Throughout the Czech Republic minor roads, which are good to cycle on and which lead to interesting sites,  have been designated as cycle routes and small, yellow signs have been put up, so if your map is not good enough, you will always be on the right way by following the signs. Various local cycle routes have been combined to form the Prague-Vienna Greenway.        The guide book for the Prague-Vienna Greenway. Outside Prague we encountered the first sign of the Prague-Vienna Greenway.   After one day of cycling and a beautiful dinner at an elegant restaurant in a château at Struhařov (Struharov), we decided to camp at a camping place at Týnec (Tynec) on the river Sázava (Sazava). That was our first experience with Czech camping places, and we were disappointed. Toilets and showers are rather primitive and worst of all; there is very much noise in the night from the other campers. We soon found out that guest houses are a much better alternative, and the prices are very moderate compared to prices we are used to. It was rather irritating that we had to transport tent and sleeping bags, which made the loads on our bikes heavier. On the other hand, we could use our camping equipment in Austria where the standard of the camping places are very good and the nights are quiet. Bohemia is not directly flat. There are elevations with forested ranges which have to be crossed. In the hot weather we had quite a job ascending the hills. During such labour we were very happy if there were trees along the road so that we could have some shadow. When we were about to cross the great European divide which separates the rivers flowing to the north and the North Sea from those flowing to the south and the Black Sea, we were overtaken by two young Czech lads who were also cycling to Vienna. They spoke German very well, and I was much astonished about their ability. They told me that they had learnt the language at school. I must admit that their knowledge of German language is much higher than what Norwegian pupils at the same age have, and that in spite of the close linguistic relationship between German and the Scandinavian languages. Czech pupils have to work much harder in order to learn the language and still they can reach better results. The motivation among them is probably much higher.  In the Bohemian landscape you will find plenty of churches and chapels. They are all built in the baroque style. If you look more closely at the churches, they will reveal a basic form in romanesque or gothic. Some might say that churches in baroque style look more impressive with all the ornaments and swinging towers. The baroque transformation of the Bohemian churches was part of the propaganda from the Habsburg emperors of Vienna. It was important to turn all inhabitants of the Habsburg empire into good catholics, so that the power of the emperor could be strengthened. Bohemian independence was closely related to the Husitian reform movement, and the catholic counterreformation was important for the catholic emperor in Vienna.    Through Bohemia. Turid at the beginning of the hill which marks the  European fluvial divide. Typical baroque church in Bohemia. A closer look at the walls reveals the original gothic style.     Bohemian villages When Turid an I are cycling along, I am always at the head, Turid comes 50-100 metres behind. As I am stronger, it is inevitable that I am ahead of her when we are going uphill, but also when we are going downhill I am far ahead of her, because she uses her brakes so aptly. It may happen that we lose each other, and such an event is more severe in the Czech Republic than in a familiar country simply because Turid is not reading any map, she is just following me, and in an area with so many unfamiliar names, she will have no idea where she is and she will have no idea of the name of the town we are heading for. This phenomenon, that the slavonic names of the villages in Bohemia cause much confusion because they are difficult to remember, has found its way into German language. The expression "Bohemian villages" means confusion. The expression goes back to the Thirty years war, when the soldiers of Wallenstein had difficulties with the orientation in Bohemia because of the unfamiliar names of the villages.  During our cycle tour through Bohemia we did lose each other once. At a location where the Greenway took us through a forest, I realized Turid was far behind. I stopped and waited for her, but she did not turn up. I went back to the last place where we had spoken to each other for the last time. But she was not there either. She had probably gone to the woods and I had not seen her or her bicycle when I was cycling back, and she was now probably ahead of me. So I cycled on until I met some road workers. They had seen no "žena (zena) na kole" (a woman on a bike). Because I had the map and because of the effect of the "Bohemian villages" the situation was worse for Turid, for she had no idea where she was. I went back once more, and then she came cycling towards me. I was relieved and happy and so was she. I had been so far ahead of her that she didn't see me any more. She thought she might have picked the wrong road, so she went back to control the Greenway signs, but she went farther back than I did, and that was the reason why we didn't see each other. When she cycled along for the second time, she was accurate about following the signs for the Greenway, and so we had our rendezvous somewhere on the Greenway Prague-Vienna. If it had not been for the Greenway, following one line, we would have had an impossible job to retrace each other.  As a matter of fact, the signs for the Greenway Prague-Vienna made it fairly easy to find our way. Later when we were on our way back to Prague, and we made up our route ourselves, we had some difficulties, again owing to the "Bohemian villages". In the Czech Republic road crossings are marked with signs ahead of the intersections. In the intersection itself there are no signs. Sometimes I was not able to remember the names of the villages the various roads led to, and in order to be sure we took the right way, I had to cycle back to where the signs stood and carefully compare the signs and the map.  We were approaching the town of Tábor (Tabor). On entering the town we cycled to the camping place, which turned out to be very good, and we could sleep undisturbed all night, but before we did so we had a look at the town centre. The town has a beautiful naměstý (namesty) (square) with baroque buildings surrounding it. On the next day the cycle route led us to the château at Červená Lhota (Cervena Lhota). Červená means red, and it was no surprise that the charming château was of red colour. The château is located in a lake, which is surrounded by a park. In the shadow from the trees in the park we enjoyed a meal which we prepared ourselves, as we were overlooking this aquatic château.      The red château at Červená Lhota (Cervena Lhota).       Jindřichův Hradec (Jindrichuv Hradec). In the evening we arrived in the town with the difficult name Jindřichův (Jindrichuv) Hradec. The name means Henry's Castle. It was rather complicated to find the camping place, and a man we asked for the way, took his bicycle and cycled ahead of  us to guide us to the camping. Unfortunately the camping place was not for tents, and the friendly man on his bicycle helped us to find a guest house where we could stay. We spent the whole next day in this town.  First there is the castle, beautiful as all castles are in this part of Europe. We enjoyed looking at it, as the baroque elements did not dominate it, it had more of renaissance style. The guided tour of the castle was a disappointment because the guiding was in the Czech language only. Foreign visitors could have some sheets of written information in English or German about what there was to be seen  in the various rooms. This method is rational, but it is not so nice. We like to be explained things directly.  The town Jindřichův (Jindrichuv) Hradec looks very nice with old houses around an open naměstý (square). The streets leading to this naměstý (namesty) are for pedestrians only. Near the centre of the town the streets were full of people walking around, and we were pushing our bicycles. In the pedestrian streets further away from the centre there were far less people walking, and Turid and I cycled along, but a police man had spotted us, he stopped us and fined us for violating the pedestrian area. Could be he particularly liked to fine foreigners, for he realized at once we were foreign tourists, and he immediately spoke to us in German. Unfortunately he did not know so much German that we could argue with him, for I would have said it makes more sense to cycle in this less frequented pedestrian street than cycling in other streets with much motor traffic. He demanded 100 kcs from each of us. That is not so much money, but principally I disliked the situation very much. In other Czech towns we visited on our tour, cycling in pedestrian areas was treated much more liberally.  At a railway crossing in Jindřichův Hradec (Jindrichuv Hradec) I discovered something very interesting. The rail track had three rails. The track had been adopted both for normal gauge trains and narrow gauge trains. From the railway station at Jindřichův Hradec (Jindrichuv Hradec)  two narrow gauge railway lines start, one to the south and one to the north. At the end of the 19th century narrow gauge lines were built in economically weaker parts of the Habsburg empire. The Austrian narrow gauge was standardized on 760 mm, also called Balkan gauge. The narrow gauge lines at Jindřichův Hradec (Jindrichuv Hradec) also have 760 mm. These narrow gauge railways operate partly as ordinary railway lines for the local population and partly as tourist lines. There were quite many tourists who wanted to travel by the trains, and particularly the train which was steam operated was very popular. The first time I read about this railway was in an East German railway magazine in the 1980s. In this article the most interesting point about those railways, was that here could East Germans, well locked up behind the iron curtain, see railway stations in Austrian style.      Jindřichův Hradec (Jindrichuv Hradec). The castle Steam operated trains on the narrow gauge. You can read more about this railway on  http://www.jhmd.cz/   We were fined for  cycling in a street which was supposed to be for pedestrians only.       When we left Jindřichův Hradec (Jindrichuv Hradec) on the next morning we did not find the signs of the cycle route out of town, instead we ended up on a main road with much traffic, but things went all right: From the guide book we knew that further on we could branch off and get on to the cycle way. The way went on a narrow asphalt road through the forest. I can imagine it was a former patrol road along the border to Austria, and this road took us to a point only 10 metres from the northernmost point of Austria. The cycle route from here on followed the Austrian-Czech border towards the east.      Some linguistic explanations and some history. The country we were cycling in is called Czech Republic (Česká Republika). It is not correct to call it just Czechia because the republic consists of the provinces: Czechia, Morovia and some small parts of Silesia. Czechia is in most countries called Bohemia, which is widely used. The Czechs call this province Čechy (Cechy). In most languages the capital of the Czech Republic is called Prague, with a clear g-sound. In the Czech language there has been a shift of the consonant g into  h, and the capital is called Praha in the native language. The word for castle or town is grad or gorod in other slavonic languages. In Czech it is hradec, the initial g has been replaced by an h. Therefore the word for mountain is hora and not gora, as in Polish or Russian. Through Prague flows the river Vltava. English speaking people are probably more familiar with the German name Moldau. The neighbouring country to the south of the Czech Republic is Austria. This name is probably constructed from German Österreich. Austria is associated with Latin, and it can more easily be pronounced in different languages. Behind Österreich and Austria there are Slavonic roots. Slavonic ostrik means peak, and the name Austria refers originally to a hill or a mountain.  The Czech language has got a very special name for Austria, namely Rakousko. The name has probably been adopted from the castle Ratgoz near Raabs on the Austrian side of the border.  The cycle route goes parallel to the Austrian border, fortunately it led us a bit further away from the border, so that we could visit an interesting medieval castle called Landštein (Landstein). We decided to stay in the town of Slavonice for the the night, just 2 km from the Austrian border. We figured out it would not be difficult to find people speaking German. However people were hardly speaking any German at all, so we had to manage with basic words in Czech. Even more surprising it was to find biblical drawings with German text on the walls of that town. We were at a sad and complicated point in the history of the Czech Republic. Before World War II quite a large proportion of the population of the Czechoslovakian Republic were Germans who had lived in Bohemia and Moravia for centuries. During the time that led up to WW II they were very eager to invite Hitler in. At the convention in Munich in 1938 even France and Britain accepted that Germany took over parts of Czechoslovakia, and shortly afterwards Hitler took the whole country. After the war the German population was sent out of the country in a rather humiliating way, they had to leave all their belongings behind. They were deported in the same manner as the Germans had deported the Jewish population, with the difference that the German population was not sent to any concentration camps, they could leave the trains in towns or villages in Germany or Austria where housing was available.  After the communist era the houses of Slavonice are being decorated as they used to be with much sgrafitti and texts in German. It brings back the history and gives the town more personality. Sgrafitti are drawings painted on the wall, everything can be painted, even decorative rectangles. Look at the pictures. Can you see the difference between the wall with plastic three-dimensional rectangles and the rectangles which have been painted on the flat wall?        Impressions from Slavonice with its sgrafitti decorations. You can read more about Slavonice on     http://www.slavonice-mesto.cz/   Along the Austrian border and into Austria. After Slavonice the Greenway went along the border to Austria. It was impossible to see the border in the terrain, but from the map I could tell which villages lay in Austria and which in the Czech Republic. Along the road there were old military bunker installations, probably dating back to the time before World War II. They were most likeley used during the cold war too. Suddenly we arrived at an immense and impressive castle high upon the edge overlooking a steep valley in which  the river Dyje runs. The castle is from medieval time, but it has been extended and has now a strong baroque appearance. Look at the picture of the castle as it is situated high upon the cliffs of the valley:      It had just been raining, and the moisture was about to evaporate, and that is what gives the picture such a spooky look. The place is called Vranov, and there we found the most beautiful camping place for the whole cycle tour. It was a little camping place with many cyclists, and all cars were kept well away from the tents. From the tent the view of the village Vranov and the castle was excellent as the camping was situated on a hill above the agglomeration.  After a good night's sleep in Vranov we followed the Greenway on an asphalt road through forests inside an area which had been declared a national park. We were cycling on a former patrol road for the soldiers who watched the border to Austria. At this section of the border the river Dyje defined the border. In Austria the river is called Thaya. In the steep landscape we could look down upon the river as it was flowing in a narrow valley deep below us between Moravia and Austria. Yes, we were not in Bohemia any more, we were in Moravia, which is a wine growing area in the Czech Republic. On our way down to the river we cycled (or walked) through a vineyard, where a young man was selling samples of wine. That was indeed nice, and as we were thirsty we had quite many samples. That was a nice feeling, and you can just imagine what it was like when we had to cross a narrow suspension bridge across the river. We had the feeling the bridge was swinging twice as much as it really was. We did not come to Austria on the other bank, for at this place both banks belong to The Czech Republic.  In this beautiful landscape we had the pleasure of seeing many other cyclists.  Throughout The Czech republic short excursions, and long distance cycling seem very popular. When we met other cyclists there was always a friendly greeting "Dobry den!" On our tour we even met two cyclists from Canada. They were following the Prague-Vienna Greenway too. They asked us with much jealousy in their voices if we were going to Austria and Vienna. They could not do so because Canadians need a visa to visit the Czech Republic and if they went to another country, they would not be allowed to return on the same visa, and they wanted to visit their relatives in the Czech Republic once more. I said as a joke: "Now you can see what it was like to be locked up behind the iron curtain." As a matter of fact it is not the same; in the Czech Republic of today you have no problems in obtaining food and it is easy enough to get accomodation. In the communist time that was extremely difficult or quite impossible. After the area of the national park and the vineyards we came to a flat, open agricultural area, and we finally crossed into Austria, where we arrived in the town Laa an der Thaya. At this location the river Thaya or Dyje had again become the border.      Turid with her bicycle among Moravian grapes.   Dear internet cyclists, this text has become so long, that it would probably be nice with a break, and because there are all these pictures it is advisable to speed up the downloading. I prefer to make two sections of  our cycle tour. If you click here, you will get to   Part 2        Homepage