Czech Republic

One of the more interesting, yet mysterious, artifacts at Vesely Kopec was this giant birdhouse, larger than a barrel. What's mysterious about it to me is that I can't understand what its use would have been. Maybe some farmers somewhere likely having small birds around, but I would expect that small birds wouldn't be for food. Obviously, they might have helped control insect pests, but birds themselves usually eat crops. Maybe a farmer on iPernity could clarify why a farmer would want small birds around, because as a non-farmer I'm stumped.

I've only occassionally taken photos in Mnichovice, and it stands to reason that most have been rail-related. This is the station, which was restored during the recent corridor reconstruction. I remember that before the construction, it lacked platforms, and was more or less blank grey stucco, albeit with a huge amount of dirt, decay, and grafitti. Now everything is in more or less good condition, and there's a passenger subway for when both tracks are blocked, a common occurance now that the timetable schedules local trains to meet here.

This is the village square in Mnichovice. Although that building in the background looks like a church, my understanding is that it's the village hall, or radnice.

This was the next morning, at the Usti nad Labem stop. I took this photo because I liked the low-lying clouds and the smoke from the various industries there.

When I took this in Mnichovice, it was still January, so there was still snow on the ground. That's a City Elefant in original livery departing to the south with a Benesov service, operating PID Linka S9.

Mnichovice actually has two station buildings. The main one behind me which I've shown in other photos, and this one, which shelters southbound passengers. This building, as you can tell from its appearance, is also old, so it doesn't date to the recent corridor reconstruction. Mnichovice now has a passenger subway at the north end of the platforms, but this subway doesn't cross in the middle of the platforms, and to the best of my knowledge Mnichovice hasn't had a passenger walkover recently, so this shelter is actually quite practical. It would just be nicer if it was a proper, enclosed building with heating.

Here's a northbound City Elefant operating Linka S9 again. This was the same day as the previous two shots. This would normally be a shot where the number would be easily visible, but the shot blurred, so it isn't.

Zamek Pruhonice is on a hill, and this is evidence of its heritage as a medieval castle site. Many zameks, or chateaus, in the Czech lands were originally hrads, or castles, so when "zamek" and "hrad" are translated, they are frequently both translated as meaning "castle." The Pruhonice site is of somewhat unknown origins, but written records go back to the 1270's, when the Zdislav family owned it. The oldest building nearby is the Chapel of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, but the rest of the comlex is more recent. The first renovation was in the 16th Century, and it is believed that at this stage it retained its defensive fortifications, although no pictures have been found of the castle before or after this rebuild. It is believed that the entire estate was heavily damaged in the Thirty Years War, with the current buildings probably dating to the time that Sir Antonio Binago owned it, starting in 1636. However, several more reconstructions followed in 1742-1744, 1800, and 1889-1893, with most of these reconstructions being intended to make it more habitable for the nobles who lived there. Over the years, it has served as a manor house (prior to 1669), as a monastery (1669-1685), as a manor house again (1686-1927), and came under control of the Czech government in 1927. Although it remains a tourist attraction and can be a venue for weddings and other public functions, its official use is as a laboratory for the ASCR, which roughly translated is the Czech Institute of Botany. Extensive greenhouses are maintained on site for this purpose.

This is much closer, obviously, through the parkland added to the site in the 1740's. Out of frame to the right is a tea house which is open to the public.

This is behind the zamek, showing the pond, which is artifically maintained by a dam out of frame to the right (although exactly how it works is unclear to me, as it appears to dam up water coming in from the right in this photo, rather than the other way around). The official name of this pond is Podzamecky rybnik, or "Behind-the-Chateau Pond." I am unaware, however, of which reconstruction added the dam and pond. On this occassion, it was frozen by the cold winter weather, which as about -16 Celsius, or just above 0 Fahrenheit, if I'm remembering correctly. This was in contrast to the rest of the 2013-2014 winter, which was very mild, almost like summer.

Often, even in very cold weather, fast-moving water doesn't freeze, so while the Pruhonice pond froze, the faster-moving water by the dam didn't. The dam, like many dams, creates an artificial waterfall.

I took this on a bike trip from Beroun to Smichov, which would be my longest bike trip to date. I've called structure this a "bunker," but it's technically a pillbox, if I'm not mistaken, both because of its shape, and because it's above ground. I don't know whether it was built by Czech forces during the 1930's, or by Nazi Germany, but it's unlikely to have been armed with more than a heavy machine gun. It would have been built to stop enemy traffic on or alongside the River Berounka, visible on the right.

This looks like one of the gun ports.

This was where we stopped for lunch. Dobrichovice isn't too far from Karlstejn, the famous castle built by Karluv (Charles) IV.

I don't know if this is technically a waterfall (it might be man-made), but it has the look of one.

I had meant to visit the aviation museum at Kbely airport for many years, and in 2014 I finally got around to it. The photos I'm posting today barely scratch the surface of what I found there, as I took pictures of almost every public exhibit with my cameraphone. However, these are examples of what I took with my Zeiss-Ikon Contina LK, loaded with Kodak Tmax 400. These two fighters are the first in the series, being both Soviet-built MiG-17 jet fighters. They look different because the one on the right has radar, with the distinct bulge in the intake (a very imaginative design), and appears to be two-seat, hence the longer canopy. These were some of the earliest jet fighters used by the Czechslovak air force, other than some Messerschmidt Me-262's built at the end of World War II, some of them by Avia. The Czechoslovak air force also had MiG-15 fighters, but older pilots have told me they were only used as trainers. Of course, the Czechs also built the Aero Delphin, which as an entirely Czech design, and the museum has at least one. However, the Delphin was only a trainer.

This Ilyushin Il-14 airliner appears to be ex-air force, but Ceskoslovenske Aerolinie (Czech Airlines, or CSA), were the primary users in Czechoslovakia. The Il-14 was one of a series of improved DC-3 and DC-4 copies developed in Russia during the 1950's, and many survived into the 1980's. Today, while they no longer work for Aeroflot or CSA, they are used by smaller airlines and charter services, especially in Africa, as they can land safely on dirt runways. This applies mostly to 4-engine Il-18's, though, rather than 2-engine Il-14's (the Il-18 was more than simply a DC-4 copy, however, and was by far the most advanced of the series). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-12 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-14 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-18 This is not unlike the fate of the surviving Douglas DC-3's. As historians will note, Ilyushin were not the first Soviet design bureau to copy the DC-3, as the Lisunov Li-2 was an even closer copy produced during World War II. The Kbely museum actually has one that they keep in one of their hangars with other World War II aircraft.

The textbook trivia answer as to the first jet airliner, is obviously the DeHavilland D.H. 106 Comet, introduced in 1952 after a 3-year testing period. However, it was initially a disaster, quite literally, as four crashed fatally in only the first two years of operation. Later variants fared better (after the initial losses were traced to a badly-designed fuselage that couldn't deal with both pressurization and high subsonic flight), although in total 26 of 114 Comets were lost, a rate of 22.8%. The second ever jet airliner to be introduced was the Tupolev Tu-104, seen here, and it fared far better. Introduced in 1956, 204 were built, and 32 lost to crashes (37 were lost in total, as 5 were destroyed by terrorists), a loss rate of 15%, if you exclude terrorist attacks. In addition, many Tu-104 crashes were non-fatal, to the point were over a third of passengers survived on average. A particularly notable incident was the first one, in 1958, where the pilot successfully landed with no engines (they had run out of fuel) albeit short of the runway. The reason this Tu-104 is displayed at Kbely, though, has nothing to do with any accident. Instead, it is significant to Czech aviation history because CSA were the only export customer for the Tu-104, thus making them only the third airline in the world (after BOAC and Aeroflot) to operate jet airliners. Another surviving CSA Tu-104 can be seen in a park in Olomouc, where it has been converted to "The Aeroplane Bar."