Cesky Krumlov

In early 1992 I visited Cesky Krumlov with Duncan Dey, a friend of dad's from Sydney who was teaching English in Austria... I was nineteen years old; it was my first visit to Europe, in the dead of winter, and Czechoslovakia (as it was then) had only just emerged from the shadow of communism after the Velvet Revolution... my memories of Krumlov include bitter cold, deserted cobbled streets, eating lunch in a crowded cellar-cafe where we were the only foreigners and I the only female, and discovering bears in the moat of the empty and echoing castle... I took the photo below during that visit; I found the town absolutely magical and always vowed to return, and the photo has long been one of my favourites ever (not the best quality, I'm afraid, as it's been scanned from an enlargement).


Well, a couple of weeks ago I finally returned... only took me fifteen years. David and I got up early and negotiated the treacherous misinformation of a Prague bus station, making it onto the coach with moments to spare, and took a day trip to Krumlov. It was a strange mixture of the familiar and the unknown; I had clear memories of some things, and other things were just a blank. It was much more crowded than it had been - let's face it, ANY increase would have been noticeable; I'd never seen a place more deserted than during the first visit - and many things had been repaired and painted and made beautiful... it was lovely, but I'm so glad I made that first visit and saw it like it was.

Oh, and I took this:


You can see why the whole day was dreamlike, and not a little disconcerting...

PS There are still bears.