česky krumlov

We just spent the past two days in a little town called Česky Krumlov. It's a very old Renaissance town that has basically managed to remain super-preserved for hundreds of years due to the fact that it has basically no strategic significance to anyone. There's a big castle which was interesting because rather than being built of stone, they built it of...plaster? and painted it to look like it was made of stone.

The town is cut through by the Vltava river, so the very center is kind of like a little island. It's very cute and cobblestone and there's lots of restaurants. It's a very touristy place but not in the bad McDonalds-and-Starbucks sense. In general it seemed a bit more expensive than Prague but I still got pork, fries, beer, and apple strudel today for $10, so maybe I'm wrong. We stayed in a pension that was also really nice.

So the town was very pretty but there was not actually a ton to do. We took a tour of the castle and the castle theater, which were cool. Other than that we tried to find the "Fairytale House", which was recommended by our program leaders, but we couldn't find it and in my opinion it doesn't exist. There's an art museum too, which I didn't go to. Mostly you just wander around.

The absolute best part of our two days (really one-and-a-half) was dinner Sunday night. We ate at a restaurant in this back room that was really cool and medieval, the walls were all stone and curving in and there were big wooden tables with benches. I may have pictures later. But the best part was the GYPSY BAND that CET hired to play for us. They were fuckin SWEET. We danced, a lot, which basically consists of clapping really fast and hopping around, or grabbing hands with someone else and hopping around. We also drank a lot of beer. Basically it was awesome.