Our second stop was Lednice. It is a World Heritage Site. At the chateau there were tons of weddings going on! We walked through all of the gardens along a path to a minaret (picture below). It was the tallest outside of the Muslim world when it was built. Most of us climbed up to the top. It had rained on and off all day-- so much for the good weather report-- but by the time we made it to the top of the minaret it was absolutely down pouring! Also, I have never been afraid of heights before-- just snakes-- but there have been a few times during this trip that I've gotten slightly disoriented looking down from really high places. I've never had that problem before, so it's a little odd to me. . . . Speaking of snakes though, Karen and I had a nice comforting conversation about them. Karen is from Louisiana and at some point within the last few weeks had mentioned shooting snakes down there (when they've gotten agitated by kids at a camp she worked at). The conversation has nothing to do with shooting them, But definitely made me feel a lot better about if I run into something wild while in South Africa!
Fun fact about Karen: She did the UNH Cambridge Program that I was originally going to do this summer! She loved it. Also, we coincidentally had plane seats assigned next to each other on the last flight to Prague!
So we made it to the top this big tower-- up every one of the 302 steps. Going down was worse because I was able to go faster that way and because the staircase is spiral, I got really dizzy. It was still pouring, but it was probably about 30 minutes walk back to the van and we had to make it to our final destination by a certain time, so through the rain we went! I only had my jacket (luckily waterproof) and my camera, which I sometimes refer to as "the beast" because of its size. Thankfully I was able to fit the beast comfortably inside my jacket with me! So in my dress and sandals, I made my way along the dirt turned mud and puddle filled path. We were absolutely dripping even just minutes into the walk! Along the way was a big pond with some steps into it which some ducks and people had been hanging around earlier. Instead of ducks, we found this stout old man with one of the largest guts I have ever seen, no lie, completely strip down naked and get into the pond. We may have been slightly amused by it . . . We eventually made it back to the van, completely soaked. Never again will I trust a weather report here.
So all I knew about our last stop was that it would be where we would have dinner and that we would be supposedly sleeping in a wine cellar there. Moravia is a huge wine producing region in the Czech Republic. So we drive some more and eventually pull onto this cramped street lined with houses on one side and vineyards on the other. We eventually stop at this one house with this guy outside, who so honestly looked like a stereotypical biker guy. He was big, had short buzzed hair, actual chains around his neck and a black leather vest on. He only spoke Czech and a little German, so Geiger (our chaperone) translated. The house we had pulled up to was actually where we were staying and had just been finished being renovated. It was really nice inside-- definitely a step up from the apartments! It did have a wine cellar in it, but we didn't actually need to sleep there. I shared a room with Katherine, and then two of my roommates from the apartment, Meggi and Bre.
We all changed out of our soaked clothes and then went back down to the living room to meet for dinner. We walked up some stairs next to our house and found ourselves on this rooftop patio where our host, Ivan, was smoking kielbasa and other meats. Then, across the street from that was the place we would actually be eating. Ivan had two wine cellars off of the room you entered into, we were lead into the first one for dinner. It was so cold down there, but the food was all really good! On the tables already were pitchers of wine that Ivan had made, one white and one red. We were told that after dinner we would go into the other cellar for wine tasting of Ivan's other wines. We took up about half of the room, but the other half soon filled up with friends of Ivan's. There was live music and singing that all of the locals danced to.
The wine tasting was a cool cultural experience. He had 3 types of white and red each, and then a rose wine. The cellar was lined with so many barrel fulls, and a little room off the the side had the wine we were actually sampling in these huge glass containers. The walls were lined with coins between the cracks of brick (adding one is supposed to guarantee you'll be back within the next year) and wine mold. Ivan had this big, long glass thing to distribute sips of the wine to each of us-- clearly I know my wine vocabulary, note the sarcasm. I tried to find a picture of one online to show but had no luck. . . He had a riesling that was good, the other whites were really too strong for me, the rose was pretty good, and then the reds, minus the one we had already tasted from our table at dinner, were either too dry or strong for my liking. The one from our table was good though-- it had more of a sweet taste than the others. It was a cool experience to have had. Katherine and I think we would like to become wine enthusiasts some day . . .
Honestly, this guy Ivan was kind of a perve. He never tired to pull anything with anyone, but even with the language barrier it was really clear that he was loving having all of these young women tasting his wine-- and some of them tasting a little too much, to the point where they would kind of go along with it. I never felt scared, and he never did anything that made me really uncomfortable, but you could just tell that he was loving it . . . Needless to say, I did not add a coin to his wall. It would be fun to go wine tasting again some time, but I'm not sure I would want to return to Ivan's wine cellar without my big group of people . . .
Despite all of the rain and Ivan's questionable behavior, it was a really great weekend! The whole thing was just so different from the things that we've been able to do in the city. In all of my frustrations with figuring out my travel plans, I've really developed a better sense for traveling, I think, in that being here in Europe doesn't need to mean that I add as many countries as possible to my list of places I've been; instead, really delving into the country and culture I'm specifically visiting is more important. And getting into another region of the Czech Republic definitely was a needed experience in order to do that. That's not to say that I don't want to goth some other countries though, but before doing any of that it was important for me to have a solid foundation of the actual place I am living. More to come on all of my final travel plans soon!
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