July 1st: The Black Forest

After an overnight stop at Nuremburg, we arrive at Lake Titisee. There’s also a small town of that name at the opposite end of the lake to the camp site. The site is at the lakeside, in terraces, so each pitch has a view of the water, trees permitting. The trees aren’t permitting you to see our caravan. 

There is a lovely lakeside walk to the town on a wide, well surfaced path. Titisee itself is very commercialised but pleasant for all that, and its many cafes do good coffee and kuchen, with a splendid outlook as in the photo.

The tripper boat on the right glides around the lake powered by an electric motor so that the environment isn’t polluted. We can vouch for that as we did the cruise and we weren’t polluted or even electrocuted. The majority of visitors in the town are of the older age group, so we fit in here comfortably.

Until the 1920’s much of the central Black Forest was isolated from the outside world so tourism is of fairly recent origin. In fact, many of the old tracks and trails have been turned into a highly organised network of footpaths that attracts many hikers, and to show we weren’t totally in the old fogies camp just yet, we did walk the 4 ½ miles around the lake.

We also paid a visit to Freiburg, the “Capital of the Black Forest”. The city considers itself as much Austrian as German since the region was under the protection and therefore influence of the Austrian Habsburg Empire for 450 years.

It’s certainly a splendid city that suffered a relatively small amount of war damage, from a single air raid, in 1944. The large cathedral, dating from about 1200, is especially magnificent. It is made of dark red sandstone and, as with many large buildings in ancient towns, it’s almost impossible to snap a view that does it justice, not only because of the press of other buildings but here in the Munster Square there is also a big market and several marquees all fighting for space. The central tower was the best I could do, and even that is partly hidden by scaffolding. The church interior was closed for renovation.

Some attractive buildings elsewhere, too, like the theatre.

This is one of the old town fortified towers that blends in beautifully with the later style buildings, but maybe not so well with the Pedestrian Zone sign.

The streets even retain the open gutters of the ancient sewerage system. Only water runs through them these days, although it was a shame that I hadn’t got the caravan toilet to empty so as to check that the system was still fully functional.

As can be seen, the streets in the old town are cobbled and there are many alleyways and little courtyards that make it an interesting town to explore at random.

Some of the later buildings, probably 1920’s, had some interesting carvings as for example the Pan figure flanked by two bare-breasted maidens who could almost be having mobile phones conversations. 

It is ironic that these scantilly clad females are fronting a building occupied by the Salvation Army (the two red shields between the figures), but then perhaps it advertises their willingness to guide such women back onto the straight and narrow.

We have been in Titisee for a week: a very relaxing, if rather wet, week. Tomorrow, 9^th July, we head for home, but are calling in on Adam and Alison first for the weekend. 

26/27 June: Prague

On each of the two days we visited Prague we drove the 60 miles from Jablonec into one of the city’s Park & Rides that connects to the centre by metro. Both the parking and the metro were cheap (park: 60p all day; metro: £1 per person each way).

It perhaps suits us to think of constructions from the Communist era as clunky and crude compared to our Western equivalents, but credit where credit’s due and the metro is a model of design and efficiency. This is our Park & Ride station; the train itself is on the left side, and it was all beautifully clean. 

The centre of Prague is predictably impressive. You know you’re in ‘A’ list tourist territory by the large numbers of tourist groups gathered around a coloured umbrella or flag, and the Hop-on Hop-off buses, and the Segway tours, and the street performers. I can’t complain because we’re one of the visitors.

We started at the Old Town Square; this is one side of the square, with the Tyn church dominating. You’ll notice the crowds are pretty dominating too.

The most popular monument is on the other side of the square. It’s the astronomical clock that forms part of the old Town Hall. Crowds gather to watch the hour strike when parades of mechanical figures perform a set-piece, Death, a Jew with his moneybags, a Turk, and so on. This is the clock, but not in action, although the coloured umbrella clearly indicates a flock assembling in anticipation of the hourly event.

In another must-see square, Wenceslas Square, we happened on a small military tattoo designed to showcase marching and manoeuvring skills. Some of it was quite entertaining, but on the whole it didn’t quite hang together as it was too disjointed with a huge mixture of different military participants.

This troop looks quite scary, as if they might be coming to pluck you out of the crowd and whisk you away for interrogation. 

Yet the next detachment could be the British Legion on Armistice Day Parade back in the UK (apart from the rifles with fixed bayonets).

Wenceslas Square is a large oblong boulevard with elegant buildings mostly 100 to 150 years old containing up-market shops- even Debenhams and M & S, where we had lunch.

The M & S café was part of the food hall and operated on a different basis to the UK. We wanted soup, so asked the assistant (she spoke some English) what sort it was. She led us into the food hall and pointed to the soup section. We understood: pick any can and they warm it up. Bread rolls to go with the soup?  Just choose them from the bread dept. We took our selection back to the café where they charged us the food hall prices and a few minutes later hot soup, rolls & coffee. All for about £3.  

The square is named after “Good King Wenceslas” of Christmas carol fame, a revered Czech historical figure. I’m not too sure why, because he was a duke rather than a king and seems to have fallen out with a lot of people. He was murdered by his brother Boleslaw the Cruel in 927 AD at the age of 22 so hadn’t had much time to do a lot of good.  

We visited the castle on the Hop-on Hop-off bus. It was one of the largest castle complexes in the world, and is a huge palace rather than a moats and keep kind of castle. It’s still the administrative centre of the Czech Republic and includes the President’s official residence. The castle profile from river shows the spires of St Vitus cathedral on the skyline. After all that build-up, it doesn’t look that grand in the photo, just something in the distance, but it’s a nice shot of the water.

It’s a lot more impressive when we get there. This is the entrance into the first courtyard.

Then through the second courtyard and into the third, which is a large square, where stands the President’s residence and St Vitus Cathedral. But wait, there is another military parade just starting. This one is different and starts with a display of precision riding by the President’s motor cycle outriders. Quite brilliant.

The soldiers also performed some impressive drills to the accompaniment of the military band you can just see dressed in red uniforms behind the soldiers’ ranks.

St Vitus Cathedral was started in 1344 and officially opened in 1929! It was worked on all those years but still has the appearance, inside and out, of a typical gothic cathedral like, say, Lincoln or Peterborough. The art nouveau stained glass is less than 100 years old, and is beautiful. It looks unexpectedly in harmony with the cathedral’s ancient appearance; in other old churches modern stained glass designs usually seem to jar. 

There are some nice views of the Old Town from the castle gardens and we descend via a series of steps towards the river which we cross on the Charles Bridge to arrive back in the Old Town. The bridge is one of the icons of Prague and dates back to the 14^th century. It’s full of stalls and buskers and crowds. 

On the Hop-on Hop-off tour we stopped to look at the second largest sports stadium in the world, built in the 1920’s. It appears nearly derelict, because it is.

The problem is that the football pitch is surrounded by a large grassed area to cater for the massed keep-fit assemblies popular when the stadium was built. So the stands are too far back to see the football clearly. People seemed to put up with this until the fall of communism, but not since, and keep-fit activities have changed too, so nobody uses it. Perhaps they should turn it into a Hop-on Hop-off bus depot.

So that’s us done in the Czech Republic; the areas we stayed in and visited were part of the ancient kingdom of Bohemia. Especially in the Jablonec region we noticed a number of older men with long hair and scruffy, outlandish clothes whose appearance you would describe as, yes, bohemian.

Next move on is a two day journey to the Black Forest.