We arrived late at night in Český Krumlov and checked into a hostel, leaving the trusty wagon in the snow outside.  Everything is soooo cheap in the Czech Republic (and Slovakia, actually) and we stayed in a really nice toasty hostel for almost no money! 

But it was a rather intimidating village to drive into - it’s seriously medieval, with huge hulking defensive walls over the Vlatva River and most of the architecture dating back to the 14th Century.  

Welcoming, though was the restaurant we stumbled across, buzzing with locals (more of a pub really) with young men playing live music in the form of fiddles, accordions and random percussion instruments...! 

And some seriously yum meat dishes.  Can’t wait for the photo to be taken before I start the taste testing process...!

After a nice warm night in our indoor digs, we spent the next day exploring the town and castle.  There has been a castle on the promontory over the river since the 13th C, but the present building is in the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles (as is the town), and largely built in the 16th to 18th Centuries.   The town was built around the castle throughout the same period.  The pubs and houses are decorated with coats of arms, the roads are cobbled and the squares are wonderfully higgildy-piggildy.  And sweet Jesus is it picturesque! UNESCO describes Český Krumlov as an “outstanding example of a small central European medieval town whose architectural heritage has remained intact thanks to its peaceful evolution over more than five centuries”.  All of which is a long winded way of saying it really truly looks like this:

We spent the first two days that we were there just strolling around in the quiet, chilly town.

We tried the local medieval restaurant, using recipes that have been cooked in the area for centuries - including cups of hot mead and lots of millet - like what budgies eat...

We worked off all that hot alcohol by climbing the bell tower, parts of which date back to the mid-13th Century, but most of which was completed in a Renaissance style in the 1500s, offering an amazing view of the castle and the surrounding village.   

Sadly, the two bears who famously live in the moat of the castle (it’s a lot less depressing than it sounds, but still fairly depressing) were hibernating, so no cute bear snaps for us.  

We did risk waking some wild bears from hibernation by going for a big walk in the snowy woods with some friends we’d made staying in the hostel.  It was really lovely going for a stroll in the snow, not that there was much hustle and bustle to escape from in the town!

After our relaxing few days in Český Krumlov we decided to continue on that theme and do some more relaxing.  But of course in Europe, there’s no need to restrict oneself to a single country.  So we hopped the border on an easy 2 hour drive from Bohemia back to Baveria - though it thankfully vindicated our snow tyre purchase:

Bavaria was where Craig, Nick’s dad, learned German while living there for a few years in his early 20s volunteering (doing “Christiany stuff” - Nick).  Those were the days (more on where this photo comes from later):

He had linked us up with Barbara and Ulrich von Schnurbein (!!!), the couple who he had lived with while he was over there, and who run Forstgut, what their website described - in translation - as a romantic holiday village in the Bavarian forest.  We were down like a double brown.  We rocked up to this romantic village and into our delightful chalet for a night in the spa on the balcony, hanging out in front of the fire and drinking the last of our (tetrapak, but still DELIGHTFUL) Italian red wine.

We also took the opportunity to start unpacking the van, sorting our accumulated clothing, food, equipment and other random gear and packing what I wanted to take home - this was one of the last stops for me, and the last place where we would both be in the van!  

The next night we spent at Ulrich and Barbara’s house, where they had cooked us an incredible feast - it really was like another Christmas!  

They regaled us with many interesting stories.  Ulrich grew up in a castle nearby, which was confiscated from the family because his dad was a Nazi soldier.  The castle is now owned by a youth church or something (I’m hazy on the details) and that was where Nick’s dad worked while he was in Bavaria.

They showed us a bunch of photos and documents that were from when Craig was with them, which was pretty cool! Here’s him playing with Nina, Ulrich and Barbara’s daughter, who now manages Forstgut and has four children of her own.

All in all, it was a very cool way to (kind of) end the trip.  Because the next day we chugged down the highway to Munich where I jumped on the Deutsche Bahn off to Frankfurt where I was spending a few days with Verena and Michael (remember them from Croatia???) in their winter home, and Nick was leaping off to snowboard in Austria. This really did feel like the end of the trip, despite the fact we were still a few days (in my case) and a few weeks (in Nick’s case) from getting on the plane home.  We were going separate ways at this point because way back in Tuscany when we were staying with Stuart and Helen in Pietrabuena I had very unexpectedly interviewed with a panel of judges from the Court of Appeal for a position that had come available as a judge’s clerk.  Well, fate intervened and instead of going back to Auckland to start working at Chapman Tripp at the end of February, I was heading home, moving to Wellington and becoming Justice Miller’s clerk...

Bon voyage to me!