Category: Eastbound, a Road Trip

Although I didn’t plan to stop in Prague, I did. And since it has World Heritage status and that’s, well, sort of the raison d’être of this road trip, I thought I’d go take a look. I arrived in the evening, and walked in the direction of the old town.

But as I stood on one of the many bridges over the Vlatava, considering where to begin, there came a sheet of rain so powerful and unexpected that I thought it was the foam of the Vlatava itself. I watched as everyone ran to their homes. The streets became empty and blue. The rain was orange, like the roofs, the facades, and the street-lamps. 

Consequently, I couldn’t see a thing. So as far as World Heritage goes, I have nothing to report. What I can tell you, however,  is that there is a little restaurant on Na Bojišti street that serves roast duck with caraway seeds, bread dumplings and soft red cabbage that tastes wonderful when you’ve just come in from the rain. And down the street, there is a hotel, the Tivoli, which has seen better days but is nonetheless bright and warm. There you can sit in bed and watch Czech television dramas until sleep finally comes.

My hosts in Běleč, M and A, are crazy about collecting mushrooms. Day in and day out, all they think about are mushrooms. Every spare inch of their house is filled with mushrooms laid out in various stages of cleaning or drying. The green of the Billiard table is barely visible beneath all the mushrooms: chanterelles, oyster, porcini. A baking sheet is propped up precariously between the wood stove and the chairs, so that you have to tip toe everywhere. The cats are shooed off whenever they come too near.

When I meet A out in the forest in her red raincoat, she smiles like a child caught doing something it shouldn’t.

‘I promised I’d be quick today,’ she tells me.

‘Why do you have to be quick?’ I ask.  

‘We’ll, because yesterday I was out in the forest for six hours. Today I said I’d be back after two hours.’

She can’t help herself. Even as we talk, her eyes move over the ground. She knows exactly where to look.  Hřib Smrkový like the roots of silver birches, Liška Obecná prefer ditches. There is no need to be stingy with insider information, there’s more than enough to go around.

Like all addicts, she is quick to point out anyone who’s got it worse. She tells me about cars that she sees which are positively sagging with mushrooms. Cars so full that their driver is no longer visible. She holds each mushroom to my nose so I can smell it’s delicate perfume.

When I wake up in the morning, the wood stove in the corner of my room has gone out, and sun shines into the room through the small window. Beyond the fields, tall, red pines bend cheerfully with every gust of wind. The clouds move by quickly. Rain falls for a few minutes at a time, then stops again. When I go downstairs, I find a bowl of mushrooms, eggs, tomatoes and butter on the table.

I make breakfast, drink a cup of coffee and walk down to the old Jewish cemetery. Ancient graves with Hebrew letters stick out of the ground like a mouth of crooked teeth. Many trees have grown into and around the graves. On the edges of the cemetery, near the low walls, wild strawberries grow. Between the graves, mushrooms.

I leave a few weeks later than I planned, just as the weather takes a turn for the worse.

In Munich, driving rain. As I head east, it clears, but remains grey. Every car on the Autobahn overtakes me.

In Deggendorf, brown foals stand in bare fields of purple earth. There, the road takes a sharp turn and begins to head up the mountain. I pass through Regen, Zwiesel.  I’d like to park somewhere and take one last look down at Germany, but there’s too much fog; I can’t see a thing.

Želená Ruda is the Czech border town. Hand painted signs advertise cigarettes. There are two gas stations and two casinos. There are four nail salons with pink, blinking signs, and blue wood smoke rising from muddy houses. To the left and right of the street, shacks are propped up, haphazardly, like theatre sets. Outside of them Christmas ornaments, bird houses and woven baskets dangle. From the road, it’s impossible to see into the shacks but given the amount of stuff out on the street, it’s easy to imagine that inside they are empty. Their owners sit outside, as immobile as their wares, wrapped from head to toe against the damp cold.

I drive through Harmanice, past wet fields ringed with birches. The birches here are straighter, prettier (it seems to me), and farther along in their change of colour. I follow a winding road that traces the black, narrow Otava river. I drive through Střelské Hoštice, Předotice, Zvíkovské Podhradi. Towns pass by in an instant and are gone forever. Apple trees heavy with fruit line the roads. Apples roll into the street and under my tires.

I stop to eat in Jistebnice. It’s evening now, and Jistebnice is pitch black, except for the blue glow of a bank machine, and the tiny yellow windows of a tavern. A group of teenagers lean against a wall near my car. One of them sees my foreign license plate, and asks with a smile, what the hell I’m doing in Jistebnice. I’m on vacation, I say. He looks confused and shakes his head apologetically. Sorry, he says, my English very few. I ask him what he recommends at the tavern and he tells me to get the fish.

The tavern is a small room with six tables and an unlit fireplace in the corner. Five tables are full. People shout and laugh. Children swing between the tables and run behind the bar. I sit down at the sixth table and order a small beer and fish. The waitress laughs and tenderly tells me that at this tavern they serve only fish, so I’ll have to be more specific. She passes a menu, all in Czech, and patiently tries to translate it for me.  I order fried trout with potato salad and mayonnaise, eat quickly and leave. Voices and laughter follow me out into the street, then the door swings shut and they are gone. The teenagers have left and the night is cold and quiet. I drive through the dark, and turn on the radio to keep from nodding off. The sky is as black as the Otava. No moon, no stars.