19 August 2011

Woke up very early to a lightning storm. The sky flashed brightly right outside the window and the thunder followed with great booms. Josef and I watched it for a while, unable to sleep and talked about what I wanted to see today.

We went to the store in the morning for some food and I got to see the village. It’s quite small with a population of around 500 people. Everyone knows everyone and everyone knows who I am. You have to love that about small communities.

The houses are rustic and made of limestone (or some other sort of light colored stone) and they tend to be more than one building. It’s quite normal to have a house and attached to it a barn, stable, woodshed, and other buildings to house tractors and other vehicles. The properties tend to be long and narrow and the buildings on them in a row. The buildings owned by people usually adhere to one side of the property, and the wall on the other side is the outer wall from the neighboring buildings. Most of the rooves are steep and covered in red tiles.

We decided to visit his sister in Rakovnik and prepared to take the bus. I got to meet his sister, Lucie and his 5 year old nephew, Dominic. We decided to walk into down town to get food at a local pub. The weather wasn’t on our side today and it decided to rain on us a bit on our walk there, but it passed quickly.

They luckily had a menu in English for me and I was amazed at the amount of different meals they offered. The combinations tended to be on the strange side with a mixture of meats, gravy and sweet fruit together on one plate. I had trouble finding something that looked appetizing. I finally settled for a half order of chicken with mushroom sauce and “American style” potatoes. This ended up being a half order of chicken breast covered in mushrooms and gravy, and a full order of wedges. The veggies consisted of coleslaw and a few bits of carrot, cucumber and a wedge of tomato.

After returning to Hředle, Josef asked me if I’d like to go for a walk in the forest around his village. He wanted to show me the wild mushroms and some of the nice views of the countryside. The forest had a dirt path carved into it, and you could tell that civilization was near. Off of the trail, the underbrush was very thin and it was easy to walk around looking for the elusive edible mushrooms. I was impressed with the calmness that surrounded us as we meandered through the trees. The oddity was that even though we were surrounded by trees, there was enough signs of human habitation that made me feel less than isolated.

The walk ended near the neighboring village of Krušovice where we stopped at a pub for a beer before going back the way we came....in the dark! (see picture)

It was about 10pm when we finally saw lights on the path. It had been a long day, but at least I made it and was able to pass out without any issues!