The Romantic Road and the first few days in the Czech Republic.

Written 10th June 2012.

I am sitting in a cafe in a town in the Czeck Republic called Plzen, which is famous for beer. Like the invention of beer. The czeck Rebublic is old like the rest of Europe, but not “quaint, cute, clean, cherished”, old. So far it's more like “nobody's made the effort to take enough care of it” old. In the cafe near me is a man smoking a cigar! A cigar in a cafe! He's not even near the window. We stayed in the grottiest hotel last night. I'm not sure when it was built but it was waaaay back and I'm pretty sure no one has lifted a finger to do a lick of maintenance on the place since then. Or at least since the 1970's (as some of the furniture is that ghastly looking poor attempt at fake wood.) There was a dirty stain on the floor that we were pretty sure was once vomit which was poorly cleaned up. There is a sink in the room but there is one bathroom for the entire floor containing 4 showers. It's like what I imagine a prison shower block looks like. Tiled floor to ceiling with the shower roes sticking out of the wall. No shower curtain. Nothing. If you wanna have a shower people could see your naked butt from the hall when someone opens the door. There's not even mens and ladies. Suffice it to say I did not have a shower this morning. Yesterday when we got here we were going to go do the brewery tour but arrived just too late after getting lost. So after eating tea we headed back to the worst hotel ever and chilled a bit. But we were bored. It it is just plain nasty in that hotel. It looks alright from the outside. But inside just feels a bit cheap and dirty. The floor creaks and is uneven. It felt like you might fall through any step. So we went out. And under the forgiving cover of darkness the town looked a little better. The soft light was shining off glinting bits of trimmings and illuminating buildings in warm hues against the cool dark sky. We wondered around and saw a bum fishing coins out of a fountain. That was pretty funny. I said “There's a man fishing in the fountain!” We both looked over to check our eyes are working right. “Oh,” I said, “He's fishing for coins.” We both laughed. We drank a few drinks in a local bar/cafe and wondered about what people and animals from back home were up to.

This morning I read in bed for a few hours waiting for Steve to wake up - he was having a good sleep and I didn't want to wake him. I am reading The Help which is really good. We are geeking it up for a bit in a WiFi cafe and then heading to Prague. 

I need to skip back a bit though as I have quite a bit to catch up on...

This is Lisa and Peter's good-luck-garden-thingie.

And here is our car with it's N.Z. identification tags so people will stop thinking we are French.

And Lisa and Peter's awesome house!

After leaving Lisa and Peter's where we had the best time ever, (Thanks again for having us Lisa and Peter!) we headed west and met up with our friends Nathan and Lisa who live in Saint Anton and who we met in Mundaka in Spain and then hung out with in Hossegor in France. We had a fun night with them eating and drinking with them and some other fun people (Sabs, Cocksy, and Paul) and stayed the night on their comfy couch. (Thanks for having us too Nathan and Lisa!)

Here is Steve at Saint Anton.

The next morning after saying goodbye we drove to Switzerland for a look. That night we slept the night in a campsite in Germany by the Bodensee.

The rest of this post was written on the 22nd June 2012.

Next morning we headed across to Fussen to have a visit to Neushwanstein Castle which Disney based the Disney castle on.

I think this must be a Kowhai's cousin!

We had a good walk up there and then began driving The Romantic Road. It is actually a rout rather than one road but it goes between a whole bunch of really cute old German towns. We stopped the
night in a town called Landsberg am Lech which was a really nice rain washed place. There was a cute as a button castle there which I wished I could make in miniature. We got a campsite a way out of town and then walked through the forrest by the river back to the town. 
On the way we thought we saw a fox! We were puzzling over weather it was or not but both thought it was acting a bit cat-like. When we got closed we discovered it was just a giant as cat!

There was a giant slug on the forrest path too. Look how big it is compared to Steve's foot!

We liked this sign.

And I liked these cute forrest flowers.

When we were nearly to town we spotted something that looked interesting so we turned off the the path and entered a wild animal sanctuary. And we saw more deer! They were so beautiful. I wanted to watch them for ages. Some had the cute Bambi spots. They were a bit skittish like deer are but we could get really close to them. We saw 9 all together.

We continued on to town and saw a Mumma Duck that only had 2 little ducks.

It was on dusk and the town was glowing warmly in it's after rain sogginess.

We discovered this lovely little castle. How cute! I want to make it mini!

We had to walk back in the pitch dark! I was freaking out all the way imagining every episode of C.S.I that I had ever seen coming true on a forrest path! Steve was trying to keep me talking. I had my head lamp but the battery was pretty much dead and only cast the faintest little glow in front of us. I stubbornly kept it on- clinging to even that much light. Boy was I relieved when we got back to camp! 

This is our camp.

We drove into town and got a morning drink. Not a bad view don't you agree?

And I wanted to go and take a photo of the cure castle in the light.

Next we hopped on the Autobahn and it was the open road so Steve got our little car going as fast as he could. In the end he got her up to 178km/h.

Then it was back onto the Romantic Road.

We stopped for a yummy lunch of sandwiches and cakes at Nordlingen (I think...)

Next stop was Dinkelsbuhl - a cute little walled town. 

We just stopped for a short stroll and a it of a look around before continuing on to Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Look at the cute signs they had there!

And schneeballen (snow balls).

It was such a lovely little town with cute as a button buildings. I wanted to make the whole town in miniature!

We got schnitzel for dinner there and then big fat rain drops began plopping down. Next minute there was a storm raging. We ate tea and then went to try some schneeballen in a bar. They were terrible! Sophie had suggested them and were thought they were going to be really good but these ones were just balls of like arrowroot bickies. Dry! We thought we would have to try a different place the following day. So we decided to make a run for it back to our camp site through the pouring rain. But after we got to the church we changed our minds as it really was raining like crazy. We sheltered under the church porch and then so did a tour group. It was a night watchman tour and the tour guide was dressed up as an old school night watchman. So cool! But the whole thing was in German! I got a few points but not much. One old guy was cracking up because he could see we really didn't speak German well. But he nodded at me when I told Steve what I thought a few bits were. He was chuckling the whole time. I really wanted to go on the English tour but we had missed it (it was at 8) and Steve wan't keen to stay another day but I was. Oh well! The rain slowly cleared and the sunset was lovely.

Isn't it pretty!

The next day we had another try at the schneeballen and this time it was yummy! It was covered in chocolate and had sort of nuttellary stuff all inside too.

We also discovered a mega exciting christmas shop - and then another one! I was very good though and only bought 3 things.

After that we walked around the wall.

And then it was time to say goodbye to Rothenburg ob der Tauber which I didn't want to leave. (And was gutted to later discover had a cool miniature museum that I would have loved to visit swell! Gutted.

Next stop was Czech Republic and a little town called Loket. Surprisingly I had to use my German skills here more than anywhere else! No one over about 30 spoke English which was pretty much everyone we came across. I was proud though that I can speak enough German to get by. There was quite a nice castle there on the hill. But it was a sleepy town really. The whole of the Czech Republic that we saw was a bit more run down than the rest of the countries that we had seen so far.

We found a cat friend there too.

The next day we headed to Plzen. Where beer was apparently invented and that is where I started writing this blog post.

The hotel looked okay when we first went inside.

But the room was terrible.

Here is the gross carpet stain!

We went for a walk and saw this funny poster. Not sure what it's advertising!

And here is Steve at the brewery where we missed the tour.

After I wrote the beginning of this post we drove to Prague where we had to pay 20 Euro a day to park at our hostel! (Making it more than twice the price we thought it would be!) The first afternoon we just went for a walk around and had a bit of a gawk.

And I'll tell you about the rest in the next entry! 

xoxo Love Amy.