Wisdom is a good thing. Sometimes I have it and sometimes I don’t. Wisdom: managing to navigate my second Czech detour successfully (“Is that a detour? It looks like a detour. I’m following that truck.”) Wisdom: coming to a parking lot area full of people walking up a road, and seeing a sign we could not read, but that had a picture of a car and a motorcycle on it. We had no idea what the sign said (it could have been “No cars in winter”), but we agreed it looked sketchy, and we planned another route to Pustevny.
He don’t look wise: seeing two signs that led up the hill to the town of Stramberk from public parking. One was was along the road we had just driven down, which seemed long to me. So I advocated the footpath, which turned out to go mostly straight up the hill, steeply, on washed-out gravel footing.
He don’t look wise: seeing an example of Stramberk’s specialty pastry, a gingerbread cone called an “ear,” I decided I had to get a large one filled with whipped cream. Turns out a little whipped cream goes a long way, and the ear would probably have been better if it had been plain (they were very good).
He don’t look wise: taking a pre-dinner hike on the red trail at Pustevny, and despite frequent exposure to how wonderfully well Czech trails are marked by blazes, we kept wondering out loud why it had been so long since we had seen a blaze and why the trail was not showing any real vistas. We found out on the return trip that we had missed a well-marked branch off the dirt road we were on. If you don’t see a blaze on a trail in Czechia for five minutes, you are going the wrong way.
At any rate, travel is like that. In addition to my own wisdom and lack thereof, we have gotten ourselves deep enough east in Czechia that signs show directions to Polish and Slovakian towns. We were warned by our Jewish guide in Prague that we were going into an area where people did not speak much English, and she was not wrong. We keep having endless fun watching the other one of us mime things to patient Czechs. In general, we are managing, but Mer admits it is unnerving, since it has been over twenty years since she was so linguistically challenged (not since she lived in a Hungarian part of Transylvania in 1995-96, and even then, she was a quick study for Romanian, which was widely spoken).
It was the longest driving day of the vacation, or so Meredith tells me. It was a little over three hours to Stramberk, and then another forty-five minutes to Pusteveny, except for the road mistake we made that made it more like an hour and a half. Despite all the time in the car, we still had a good day. Stramberk is an adorably cute town nestled in a high valley under a stone tower. The tower is available to climb, so of course we did that. Meredith loved the views from the open windows, while I managed to peek at the views through the arrow slits. Until I got halfway around the tower and could not take any more, and retreated inside. I sat at a closed, inside glass window and felt much better while Mer made her way around the outside twice.
After the tower, we walked down into the small town square, where I ate my poorly-chosen “ear.” Then we continued down though the town along the easy-to-walk road we should have come up. The best thing about the poor choice of a trail is that it came out at the tower instead of the town square, so we started with the literal high point of the place.
Back in the car, to one suspicious road, to a nearby town’s tourist information center, and finally on up a surprisingly good, wide road to our hotel for the evening, in the ski resort of Pustevny. During the summer months, it is a busy place during the day, with hikers and mountain bikers, but by 6:00 things get quite quiet. Which is one reason neither of us questioned not seeing anyone on our hike of the red trail that wasn’t. It was not a total waste – the forest through which we walked was pleasant, and we could get occasional glimpses of the valley below. Above all, it was very quiet, which is how we heard the pickup truck coming up from behind us on the return walk. Where he was going, I have no idea, but he turned off on another track just as he got up to us; he stared at us – I’m not sure he was used to meeting people up there.
Returning to the lodge, we had supper and retired to the room. The room has a superb view of the eastern mountains, and the air is cool. While we can be questioned on many choices, no one is going to wonder about the wisdom of choosing this room.