Travel with Manfred

Travelogues from around the world

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Copyright © 1998 by Manfred P.. All rights reserved.

May 30 till June 1, 1998

Realm of the Sunken Villages

Camping on Lipno Lake in Bohemia

by

Manfred P.

Keywords: Czech Republic, Lipno, Lippen, Vyssi Brod, Hohenfurt, Horny Plana, Oberplan, Adalbert Stifter, Bohemia, tourist, travel trip report, travel log, travelogue.

Europeans tend to be religious, at least they used to be. Hence, there are quite a few religious holidays. Especially during summer. This weekend was one of those days. Monday was off turning an ordinary weekend into one of those eagerly awaited long weekends. Friends planned a camping trip to Southern Bohemia, that is at the three-country-corner where Germany, Czech Republic and Austria meet. I was just the opportunist jumping onto the chance to see a new region not too far from Austria. Saturday morning I simple threw the sleeping bag and pad into the trunk and off I was to meet up with my friends.

On some backroad the five of us drove in my friends car to Bad Leonfelden. The car was filled to the rim with food, camping equipment, and toys; not to mention us five. From Bad Leonfelden it’s just a few more miles to the border crossing at Weigetschlag. The word "schlag" roughly means logging trees. I guess people in and near Weigetschlag lived off the forests in the past. Another 15 minutes later we reached the Vltava River and the town Vyssi Brod.

Names are difficult to manage. At least for me. I speak no Czech and don’t even know how to correctly pronounce words. Most of the words (like town names, etc.) are so unusual and out-of- the-norm to my gray cells that I can’t remember them. Based on history all the towns also have German names, but these German names are not found on any street signs. And then of course some places have English names too. Not to mention that the Czech, German and English version sometimes have little to do with it. To make it worse, some towns even seem to have two Czech names. So, let us examine the first town we reached a bit further: Vyssi Brod. The second Czech spelling is Vyssim Brode. Of course there are 3 accents on the word Vyssim, 2 upside-down hats on the two "s", one slash on the "i". The German name is Hohenfurt. See the similarity? Vyssi Brod versus Hohenfurt. I have no clue what the English name is for it. So much for the language issues. Luckily many people speak German making it rather easy to make oneself understood.

Vyssi Brod has the second oldest monastery in Czech Republic. It dates back to 1259. Some ancient aristocrats "sponsored" it, i.e. provided the money for building it. I have heard the name of the aristocrats/nobility but I can’t remember it. I have also to admit that I had never heard of them before. Most likely they got rich on salt and silver which was one of the key sources of income in the past. We didn’t come to educate ourselves in history, we came to enjoy nature. Therefore, we zipped by the monastery. Just yards away is the river Vltava. Canoes and kayakers were already on their way. The road winds along the river upstream.

In minutes we reach the town of Lipno (German: Lippen). It is known only for one thing: Lipno Dam (German: Moldaustaudamm). The dam itself while not small is not mega massive. However, the size of the artificial reservoir is. Lipno Lake (German: Moldaustausee) is some 30 miles long. It was a mega project in the 1960s that created it. Environmentalist didn’t have any say. Remember, it was behind the Iron Curtain. I doubt that the government asked anyone. The lake as you can imagine flooded a large area of many square miles and swallowed many villages that are now to be found somewhere on the lake floor. Lipno Lake is the "Realm of the Sunken Villages". A catchy title that grabbed your attention I hope. People were evicted and relocated. The road crosses the river on the dam and continues to wind itself westward along the lakeshore.

Various camping places and basic bungalow holiday apartments line the lake. We cruised along the lake up to Cerna Podsumvy (throw some accents, four to be exact, on the top of that name). The camping site was selected here: On the lake, under a few shady trees, at a good distance from our neighbors. First things first. Putting up the tent, pumping up the inflatable pads, etc. By mid-day we were done. It is surprisingly close to Austria. Just 1.5 hours by car from Linz. Somehow I used to think it would be a lot more.

With everything ready we had time to explore the village. It was easy to see that the whole area lives off tourism. Rooms to rent are available everywhere and restaurants are abundant. The houses are in reasonable shape. The cars driving by had all sorts of license plates: Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Netherlands, Upper Austria, etc. I didn’t do a study, but I’d guess every other car is a tourist.

I can understand why. The region around Lipno Lake is a calm area. Clocks are ticking a bit slower. There is no stress. There is no industry (other than tourism) to spoil the air and the water. The scenery is gorgeous: a big clean lake with some sandy beaches surrounded by forests and green rolling hills. Nothing better than that to soothe the eye. Some poets have been writing about the beauty of the nature here. Foremost, Adalbert Stifter. To top it all off, it is also still a bargain area. Prices are about half to 25 percent less than in Germany or Austria.

Talking about writers and poets. Adalbert Stifter is the best known. He focused on nature and scenery in this region. His birthplace is in Horny Plana (German: Oberplan). His birthhouse is converted into a simple museum. We drove by it on our way to the grocery store. Adalbert Stifter. I remember him well. Our German teacher in high school used to rave and romanticize about this poet. He wouldn’t miss any opportunity to make enthusiastic remarks. Like any good high school kids I did exactly the opposite from what I was told by my teachers. I made sure not only that I never read any of his books but that no book from Adalbert Stifter ever came closer then 10 yards to me. The logic behind it is simple: If my German teacher likes this writer, he must be really terrible and absolute boring. Now I made a compromise. No, I didn’t read any lines of one of his books but I walked part of the Albert Stifter memorial trail through the hills surrounding Horny Plana.

Saturday, the weather was fine. Warm but not hot. We walked a wee bit, mostly around the village by our campground. Later I caught a few Z’s as I hardly had any sleep in the last days. After the afternoon nap we went shopping in Horny Plana, five miles north of our home base. On the way back we stopped to collect some firewood in the forest for our dinner. We filled the whole trunk with food and firewood. I then acted as the master of the campfire while my friends prepared salad, etc. We had the traditional sausages, bread and salad for dinner. The sausages were grilled to perfection with a stick on the open fire. I even made tea in a pot like Marlboro man makes his coffee in the Wild West. We were all stuffed and I was more than just full. When the sun set over the island in the lake at 9 p.m. it got cool. It was nice to have a fire to warm our bones. Even at 10 it wasn’t bitch dark, the moon was out and again we got to bed late.

Sunday we did some castle hunting. The map showed a couple of castles nearby. We went there (lazily by car) but couldn’t find anything. We walked around but the only thing we could find were some ruins, some remnants of a wall maybe a yard high, that seemed to be from a large house. Maybe this was the "castle", maybe not. But nothing else was to be found. Here just a few miles away from the lake there is no more tourism and the villages look accordingly. Many condemned buildings, many farm buildings out of use and crumbling. No renovations, just collapsing buildings. And of course there are signs like "Military test ground. Stay out. Danger of explosion. Danger to your life." next to the road but no fences or anything to keep people out. The sign I saw is only in Czech and German. While I think there is no real danger it would be amusing to see an American tourist without German or Czech language skills roam the area. Yes, this is another side of the Czech Republic.

The second castle was also a wild goose chase. All we found was a farm building next to an old wall made out of rocks. The farmer wisely used most of the old rocks in extending his farmhouse. Most likely he had over the years converted the castle into a shed for his cows. Here we also followed the Adalbert Stifter trail for a short while. Then we just cut across the hills and made our own path down to the lake.

Sunday night we had another campfire; even bigger than the day before. We rolled up 6 pounds of potatoes in aluminum foil and made grilled potatoes for dinner. Add some beer and a good tomato- onion-cucumber salad and you have a filling meal fit for a king. We watched the sunset and the clouds move across the lake while playing with the fire and the glowing coals. At midnight a summer storm came up. The rain kicked in. Lightning lit up the inside of the tent and threw scary shadows onto the tent walls. Thunder was loud, but still the center of the storm and all of the lightning was more than half a mile away. I had seen worse. I remember when we had thunder so close and loud in South Africa that it was deafening and I thought my ears lost the hearing temporarily. This was kids play in comparison. We moved our sleeping bags closed together and I tried to get some sleep despite the noise. The wind and rain held on for hours. In the morning I was the last to get up. No surprise. I have the tendency of always being the last one up. The wind was still strong but at least the rain stopped. Our second tent was already packed and in the car and most of the others sitting in the restaurant at a hot cup of tea when I finally moved my behind out of the tent. We packed and got ready for departure. A final lunch meal at a restaurant on a hilltop overlooking parts of the lake was the conclusion of the weekend camping trip.