Czech Mini

Czech+Mini

After Living In Prague For More Than A Year, My Czech Girl, Katka, And I Would Have Liked To Get Out Of The Town And Go On A Summer Holiday.

After living in Prague for more than a year, my Czech girlfriend, Katka, and I needed to get out of the city and go on a summer holiday.

At the time, in 2k, it was relatively inexpensive to go by bus throughout Europe. Of course it's inexpensive! It takes hours to get anywhere! So we bought two tickets for an exhausting eighteen-hour bus ride to Split, Croatia. The ride was basically quite nice, through eastern Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia and into Croatia (Split,Dubrovnik,Makarska).

We'd heard that the islands off the Adriatic coast of Split were amazing getaway locations. We arrived in Split very early in the morning and waited for the ferry to our first stop, the island of Brac. I was quite apprehensive of ferries, but these ferries looked relatively safe and the ride wasn't but only an hour or so.

The ferry dropped us off on Brac at the city of Supetar, the largest city on the island of 3,000 folk.

It's a quiet city, but when we were there, Supetar was quite touristy, with hosts of German, Italian and English cruising the early Christian Age streets. We settled in a quiet campground near the centre of town. It is a perfect place to slink around and discover the Croatian culture.

After a couple days we ferried over to Stari Grad on the island of Hvar one of the oldest settlements in Europe. Stari Grad goes back to 3,500 B.C. It was inhabited by Neolithic tribes, then ancient Greeks took over. Romans came into the picture around two hundred B.C. And took control for roughly one thousand years.

After the 8th century, Stari Grad was controlled by the Slavs, Venetian Republic, Turks, Napoleon and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The island offers architectural ruins, churches, winding Western european cobblestone streets and aesthetically gorgeous views.

We set up camp in a walled-in kiwi vineyard. It's a large square piece of property with kiwi vines winding around poles and wires. If you've ever been camping, you know what it suggests to "rough" it like sleeping on the ground or using the lavatory outside. We were situated near one of the walls of the compound and I had to go to the rest room. So I meandered over to the wall to alleviate myself.

While I was doing my business, I thought I might take out my torch and see what I was peeing on. My light came on and about a foot from my business maker, there had been a scorpion hanging out on the wall! I jumped back, and headed back to Katka to inform her to be quite careful cause we had neighbours. (As a matter of fact, the day after we saw 1 or 2 rats and spiders crawling around our tent also.)

Hvar has clear as crystal blue water good for any snorkeler to jump headlong into. Katka and I brought our diving gear, and our 2nd day there we found a great small rock jetty overlooking a small cove with a sunken rowboat in the middle to explore.

Jumping into the azul water, I was confused by the clearness of the water and the quantity of animal life. I swam with faculties of tropical, colorful fish in 20 or so feet of water, circling around a rowboat that just about appeared like it was sunken on purpose for folks like me to feel like Jacques Cousteau.

While on the island, we leased a scooter to explore at our own pace. We were able to get some coarse "Hvarian" directions on getting to the opposite side of the island which was through a kilometer-long tunnel AKA the "Tunnel of Death." This tunnel is only wide enough for one automobile to go through, so a person working at one end of the tunnel calls another man at the other end to let him know precisely how many cars are coming.

I was behind one or two vehicles when I entered the dark tunnel. It was cold and damp. The walls were jagged rock. The road itself was not extraordinarily smooth, and I had to lower my sunglasses down the ridge of my nose, causing my eyes to water. I tried to keep the handlebars straight and follow the red taillights of the vehicles in front of me.

Nevertheless these vehicles were going faster than we were, and their red lights shortly faded into the darkness. Here we were, deep in a Croatian mountain, cold and damp from water dripping down and our scooter's headlight pointed at the ceiling of the tunnel! I can recollect stopping several times because I did not know if I was going to hit the side of the jagged walls. Katka grabbed onto me like we were about to leap over the Grand Canyon, Malicious Knievel-style.

Eventually I saw the time-honoured light at the end of the tunnel. We rode out into the bright sunlight happy to be alive. I had to stop to permit my hands to stop shaking. That was the most hazardous journey I'd ever experienced! That is reported tagza.com.