Bears Guard Czech Castle

Yet again, it was cold, cloudy, and rainy on another field excursion. Will spring ever come? We are starting to lose hope. The current joke is “Oh, this would be so nice in warm, sunny weather”.

Today took us to Cesky Krumlov, a quaint town in southern Czech Republic dominated by an enormous and well-maintained castle complex. Our educational focus was tourism, so it’s funny that we were studying the service of tourism by being tourists. Despite the cold weather, it was a beautiful place to be- a lot of people’s favorite trip so far. It is a town of 15,000 people and gets around 2 million visitors per year! The castle that seems to grow straight out of a rocky escarpment, overlooking the beautiful countryside, is the Czech Republic’s second most visited place.

While most of the services provide for tourists, the town still functions for the locals. We were toured around the cobblestone streets by a Charles University grad student, Christina, who grew up in Cesky Krumlov surrounded by this gothic and baroque architecture. As she toured us around the main square, the gardens, the church, and the castle, she pointed out a huge ballroom where she used to have dance class and had high school prom! Imagine, just for a second, having prom in the heart of a castle founded before 1250. As much as I loved my prom at the Sheraton Hotel in Stamford, CT, I just don’t think there is any comparison.

So you would naturally think that water filled the moat that surrounds the castle, but as of 1707, grizzly bears inhabit the moat! No, there are no grizzly bears anywhere in the Czech countryside, if you might ask. But rather, the Rozmberk clan brought the bears to the castle in the 18^th century to be unique and impress the rest of the world.


My favorite part of the day was when we got a tour of the theater- one of the most preserved baroque theaters in the world. It was built in 1765 and is still 80% original (our tour guide was quick to say that they do restoration work, NOT reconstruction). We walked into the cold, dark auditorium to see a magnificent stage with the original scene work. The theater pioneered in quick scene changes (8 to 12 seconds to change the whole scene with ropes and pulleys from beneath the stage), special machines for sound and lights (she demonstrated the separate wooden machines used to create rain, wind, and thunder sounds), and optical illusions (the stage was only 12 m deep but looked huge!). In fact, they even used the relative size depth cue (hi I’m a psychology major) by having adult actors act in the front and children, wearing the same clothes, act in the back. I would have wanted to be an invited guest to one of these private performances! If this were London, it would have been a Shakespeare performance at the Globe Theater.

Our next adventure takes LJ, Julia, Rachel, Annie, Ana, Heather, and I to Krakow and Auschwitz. It will be an interesting time to be in Poland with recent events. So an overnight train for us tonight, and then an overnight train back tomorrow night! I can’t wait. Tylenol PM anyone?

Hope is well with all of you at home! We miss you!