We managed to leave Prague at 8am, just in time to avoid being ticketed for parking the motorbike in a place that is only free on the weekends. Our first goal for the day was to head West to Kutná Hora, home of the famous Sedlec Ossuary. Keeping to our theme, most of the trip was done on small country roads, which had it’s own set of challenges:
The Sedlec Ossuary, made up of the bones of 40,000 people, is amazingly creepy. The first thing you see when you head downstairs is a beautiful chandelier made up of each bone in the human body:
If you turn left or right, you will see monds of skulls:
The caretaker/designer of the site took the time to make some really bizarre creations, such as this bird pecking at a human head:
After spending way too long taking photos in the Ossuary, we headed across the Czech Republic going the slow way toward Brno. We saw quite a few classic Citroën’s heading the other direction for what looked like a big meetup. Many of them were driving a hitherto unknown van made by Citroën, the Citroen HY. It’s like a french version off the VW Bus, but designed even earlier (1947):
Seeing all of these happy folks in their aircooled vehicles really made me miss our 1971 Volkswagen Bus that we are storing in North Carolina. Much of our day riding was waiting for temporary stop-lights to trigger in the various construction zones we happened to run into. We wandered the countryside, seeing all sorts of neat little towns, and even some kids selling peaches:
We settled into Žďár nad Sázavou for some lunch and a chance to download waypoints for our next few stops.
Our intent was to stop by Moravian Karst, a network of caves, gorges, and rock formations before reaching Brno. However, by the time we arrived, the park was shut. Thankfully the roads around Blansko make for a really nice ride:
By the time we arrived in Brno, we were tired of going places and seeing things. We parked at the hotel, and walked across the street to a bar that served food. There was an English menu, but the waiter didn’t understand us very well. The food and drinks we purchased there were not quite what we had ordered, but close enough not to make too much of a fuss.
The only entertainment we had in Brno was watching all of the dogs owned by the customers at the restaurant roaming free and rough-housing with each other. This dog kept hanging around my plate waiting for me to spill my rice. He looked as hungry as I was tired:
The next morning we celebrated the closing of the first week of our travels, and headed on toward MarchEgg, Austria. We saw dozens of sunflower fields along the way there, but most of them looked rather droopy. Dallas really wanted her photo taken with a sunflower field, but each time I would ask her if she wanted to stop, she would mutter something incomprehensible in the headset, or answer a half mile after we passed it. Finally, I saw one that looked special enough that I wanted to stop by it.
The photo was totally worth the stop. We had a few more quirky obstacles before getting to MarchEgg. Typical European stuff like highways suddenly becoming a one-laned entry-way through a 1000-year old walled city:
Our intent in MarchEgg was to spend a few hours in the world-famous WWF Stork Sancuary. Dozens of White Storks fly up from Africa each spring to nest here. We saw at least a dozen ourselves while we were there:
To be honest, we only spent about 15 minutes at the park. It was all we could handle as we were being eaten alive by a very prolific colony of mosquito’s. I counted at least 25 on Dallas alone at one point. We practically ran out of the reserve to head back to the motorbike and head on to nearby Bratislava (Slovenia).
Riding toward Bratislava, we observed a magnificent green castle sitting high above the city. I was really excited to check it out, but when we stopped for lunch there, it was pretty obvious that it was just construction materials.
Bummer. Bratislava was indeed a pretty nice looking city, but we had to get to Budapest by nightfall, so we didn’t spend any time there. Bummer x 2.
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