Travel exposes you to all kinds of new ideas and experiences, which is both good and bad. After ten days of being confused about signs, not sure about food, unable to make change efficiently, and unsure of cultural rules of the road, and confusing “hello” and “thank you” in conversations, I was happy to see something familiar and welcome. Enter the Ostrava Steelers and the Prague Lions, on TV, with Czech announcers and miked referees, playing American football.

What a treat. It seems in Czech you can add a “y” to an English noun, so I was able to see stats about passy, yardy, and touchdowny. The play was solid, if slower than in an NFL game, and the play calling was more conservative, with passes over five to seven yards being rare. It sort of had the feel of a solid (not nationally ranked) college game. I caught the game in the early part of the third quarter, and had a fun time munching on the traditional football food of gingerbread “ears” while filling in commentary for my overly patient wife. I got to see the Lions beat the Steelers on a go-ahead touchdowny with 1:40 left to play, to win Czech Bowl XXVI (it really was the championship game).

But we are here to tour, so back to that. We drove over two hours to the twin towns of Valtice (where our hotel is) and Lednice. The towns are small, unless you count the 37,000 bikers who seemed to be on the road – it is a popular biking area. We checked in to the hotel, and headed off to our first sight a little after noon. Mer told me to put in a town in Austria, not because we were going there, but because our destination was in that direction. Since my Czech geography is poor, I was surprised when the GPS told me the Austrian town was four miles away. I had no idea we were so close to Austria.

We stopped short of the border, though. We pulled up to the old border crossing, where there was a building with half the windows boarded up, but the side building was open for the Museum of the Iron Curtain. Inside was a small but decent museum showing the history of the border, from Czechoslovakian independence in 1918, to German annexation in 1938, to Soviet occupation in 1945, to the installation of barbed wire across the border in 1951, and up to the 1980s. The main floor had information in Czech, German, and English, but the lower level was all in Czech, so that was harder to understand. We did get the wall where the names of those who had been killed attempting to cross the border were listed, and the detention cell spoke for itself. The museum was small enough to be seen in under an hour, but it was worthwhile to actually be at a border stop and see what had happened there.

We then drove off to Lednice, to see the Lednice Chateau. The chateau was the summer home to the princely family the Liechtensteins, who may or may not have been in with the royal family of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: it gets really confusing, especially in translation. What does not need translation is they were loaded with cash. When twenty-first century tourists think the building containing the riding stables and school is the main palace, you have means.

The chateau is the result of restless rich people mucking about for five hundred years. Every hundred years or so, the new owner of the place would do major renovations on something. The current house was remodeled in the late 1800s. It is a magnificent great house – maybe my favorite I have seen. The main floor is elaborately covered in warm carved wood (except for three rooms for the use by the ladies of the house, which were painted or wallpapered). It made the interior feel harmonious, and my favorite example of woodcarving in the house was the spiral staircase which went from the library up to the prince’s rooms, which was beautiful.

We toured the main level with about twenty-five other tourists, with a guide speaking Czech. We had English printed handouts. That worked well, except for the size of the group, which sometimes had trouble moving through hallways. We also took a tour of the family rooms on the second (upstairs) floor, but this time it was just us and two Czechs with a Czech tour guide. It is a strange thing to be on a tour of five people and never really be acknowledged. I don’t blame them, but it was an odd sensation.

While waiting for tours, we explored a small part of the extensive grounds, mainly staying in the formal French garden. If weather allows, we’ll go back tomorrow to wander in the area one of the princes had converted from swamp lands into small lakes and park grounds, complete with building a Turkish minaret at the end of the park, as one does on a formal chateau grounds.

We finished the day with a short walk around the main area of Valtice, which has an excellent central square with a wide lawn, on which many families were relaxing or playing. We had supper and then went up to the room to see the exciting second half of the game. A day of new experiences and new-old ones too.