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Karlovy Vary is better known to Europeans as Karlsbad. Not surprisingly, I felt more like I was in Germany than in the Czech Republic. Then again, I feel like that a lot of the time in Prague. Prague is as Czech as New York is American. Our tour was run through Premiant and picked us up at the apartments at 8:45 AM. It was about a two hour drive, but you know me and moving vehicles. I was asleep before we got out of Prague.
Our first stop once in town was the Becherovka Museum. The tour itself was in many ways similar to the tour of the Bundaberg Rum Factory, although Becherovka wasn’t anywhere near as good. It was far too strong (reminded me a bit of Sambvca), sweet and… Just not my thing. Touring the factory was fun and a nice surprise. From there we had a walking tour of Karlovy Vary, which really is a pretty old town. In some ways, it’s very much like you expect European towns to look. Of course I had my obligatory flower shot, but my personal favourite was the Hotel Romance. The picture itself is crooked, but I don’t care. It looked just like it would belong in Osaka–which says something about Japanese love hotels.
We had lunch at the Hotel Thermal which looked like a beacon of communism in an otherwise ‘fairy tale’ village. Yes, there is no question that what was then Czechoslovakia was under communist rule, but did that rule have to apply to the architecture? Someone in our group raised the point that if you’re in it, at least you don’t have to look at it. It’s really interesting that they’d choose to build something so out of alignment with the look of the town.
It was a nice lunch and we then had two hours free time. Some chose to swim, I preferred to take photos and read (I *will* finish that book by the time I leave Europe!) Weather was perfect for both followed by a nap on the way back to Prague 
Today was Terezin, so there may be another post. I can’t believe this class is over in two more days!
2 responses so far ↓
1 Ute // Jun 5, 2007 at 18:09
If you had the impression of being in Germany rather than in the Czech Republik: that’s because Czechoslovakia used to be a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for a very long time. So it’s rather Austrian than German. We say: k&k. (Kaiser = emperor => Austria and König = king => Hungary.) It’s the same with Prague. Habsburgian emperors resided on the Hradshin, and you might still find some traces in cafés and restaurants. Even the language took over some elements of German (well, Austrians speak some kind of German, too) in the syntax, as a lecturer told us at university.
2 Cari // Jun 6, 2007 at 02:04
Yep, there’s still a lot of German around. Czech is more flexible with the syntax – from what I’ve read and understood, word order is rather flexible – but there are a lot of ‘import’ German words. Even if not still completely German, it’s easy to see where they derived from in many cases.
In Karlovy Vary it was more so because the bulk of the signage was in German first, then Czech, then English. Always interesting when you see something in a foregin tongue rather than the country’s native language.
Some classmates who went to Vienna this weekend came back with the feeling that Prague is Vienna about twenty years ago. Cheaper and a lot more graffiti.