Czech Republic

This is Trutnov Hlavni Nadrazi in Trutnov, where I had gone in an attempt to attend the Trutnov Open Air Music Festival. The Trutnov festival is an annual mainstream rock festival with hippie roots that was one of the first to start up after the Velvet Revolution. I ended up skipping it in the end in spite of having bought the train ticket, as it was overcrowded, secured like a prison (meaning that if there wasn't any place to camp, I would be stuck there with no place to sleep), and the security looked intrusive and hostile. By managing it like Woodstock '99, they lost the large ticket price that I could have paid them, and I ended up spending the day photographing the city of Trutnov. Trutnov isn't a bad place to sightsee, after all, as it dates to the 12th Century, and features many preserved buildings from the Baroque period and earlier.

This was the radnice, or city hall, in Trutnov. A number of the historic buildings in the city centre had odd modernistic sculptures on them. I took this with my cameraphone, as with all of my photos in Trutnov. If I had known I would be photographing the city, I would have brought a real camera, but this is the advantage of having a cameraphone. If you don't have a real camera, you can still get some crude snapshots anyway.

Hostivice is a suburb of Prague, and is one of the stations on the way to Kladno, where there is a small airport. The line is unelectrified, so most of the services are either Class 854 DMU's, like the one I rode, or Class 810 railbuses, seen here.

Kladno is a junction for local and commuter services in and out of Prague from the Northwest, and this Class 854 DMU had just brought me from Prague. There is also a small airport here, which I visited on my trip.

This is an Atec Zephyr 2002LS microlight, which is actually Czech made. Microlight planes are fairly popular in the Czech Republic due to their relatively low cost (comparable to a car), and greater capability than a traditional ultralight. In fact, some of them rival lower-end light transports in certain aspects of their performance. Microlights are a legal category used for some planes classified as ultralights in some countries, but not in others (the term "microlight" is used in several jurisdictions). This means that they are heavier than ultralights but lighter than light transports, with some characteristics of both. Many could almost be flown IFR, but generally microlights are only legal for VFR. Therefore, it is common to fly them VFR at under 4,000 feet, at speeds under about 115 m.p.h. or so, compared to about the same speed for a single-engine light transport, and half that speed for a traditional ultralight (even slower in some jurisdictions). The Atec Zephyr is one of the most popular microlights in the Czech Republic, but there has been talk of discontinuing it in favour of the newer Atec Faeta. When I checked the Atec website today, however, it appeared that the Zephyr was still in production. This Zephyr is operated by Franair, a flight school based in Kladno.

This Airlony Skylane UL, another plane classified as a microlight under Czech regulations, is also operated by Franair, hence the livery. Based aerodynamically on the Cessna Skylane, although only loosely, it is scaled down, and powered by a 100-horsepower Rotax 912 engine (similar to the Zephyr, although Franair's Zephyr only has an 80-horsepower Rotax) rather than the 235-horsepower Lycoming 0-540-J3C5D used in the original Cessna. This makes it smaller than any plane currently made by Cessna other than the Skycatcher, which it can still outperform. It is also far cheaper, although it is a higher-end aircraft than the Atec Zephyr.

One additional day trip which rapidly followed on the Switzerland trip was yet another visit to Karlstejn. I didn't take any real photos with my real Nikon, since I was out of film, but I did get one or two decent shots with my cameraphone. This was of the castle, obviously.

On the path up to the castle, there was a small cafe selling roast pork, as usual, but because it was September they also had Burcak. This is partially fermented wine, still in the process of being fermented. It's sold in the cheapest plastic bottles that I've ever seen, and in plastic cups, perhaps to discourage people from storing it. In reality, although Burcak is sometimes rated for a three day shelf life while refrigerated, my experience is that it's closer to 24 hours. Once it's out of the winery, it goes bad very, very fast, which makes it all the more of a treat given that it's only available a few days out of the year.

Many of the Communist-era ex-CSD stations have stained glass in them, much like earlier 20th-Century stations. This example is from Nadrazi Kladno.

This is a cameraphone shot that I got during my most recent visit to Jested in the Jizersky Hory (mountains) in Liberecky Kraj. Most tourist guides count the Hotel Jested as a Liberec hotel, but the catch is that it's on the summit of Jested, the tallest mountain in the area at 1,012 metres. I've always thought that the Hotel Jested is the strangest looking hotel that I've ever seen, although it could have been imagined by a cartoonist for the Jetsons. It is possible to drive up to it, hike up to it, or take the cable car, which while not a railway is operated by Ceske Drahy.

This is the cable gondola station at the base of Jested. Notice the Ceske Drahy station sign.

Here's an interior shot of the station, with one of the gondolas waiting for departure. This was #2, which took us to the summit.

I took this from Horni Hanychov, looking up the cable run to the Hotel Jested.

This is on the cable car looking in the opposite direction from the previous shot.

This shot is roughly from the summit for Jested, but the apparent reflections in the photo indicate we were still on the gondola at this point.

Here's another shot of the hotel Jested, often listed as a Liberec hotel. However, I've left the city field (under my system) blank in the title since it's a bit out of town, and I don't know if it's technically in Liberec. Although I've edited this shot, it is film, being shot with Fujicolor Superia 800.

The punk festival Pod Parou is officially billed as being in Moravska Trebova, but in 2012 it was actually in Svitavy. This was not only inconvenient, as most of the fans without insider information (the directions were misleading to nonexistant), but also dangerous. This was the only road to the show from the Moravska Trebova train station, and of course real punk rockers travel by train, by bike, or on foot (unless they're driving their band's van to play at the show). This meant that the decision to move to Svitavy was not only inconvenient, but dangerous. Truckers were driving at full speed (100 Km/h) on the shoulder of the road, leaving no room for pedestrians and cyclists to survive. None of them attempted to brake, and frequently another truck would be straddling the centerline, preventing the offending truck from swerving back into its lane. This meant that everyone walking to the show had to scramble up the embankment, and then back down, since it wasn't possible to walk on the embankment (at least not easily). There was at least one memorial to a dead teenager on the road, and given the way people were driving (worse than any other drivers I've seen in Europe), it's easy to see how they were killed. Eventually, I went back to town, giving up on going to the show. Then things got a bit more interesting.

This is the radnice in Moravska Trebova, which I got to see lit up after I got back to town. Initially, I found out that there were no more trains for the day, even though they were advertised. I then tried to get a bus, but there wasn't a direct one to Prague. Then I investigated hotels, looking for a cheap one.