Šumava Mountains

After orientation, Eva and Vaclav brought me to Strakonice (Strak-oh-neat-zah), my new hometown. I stayed with Eva for the weekend, who had tons of events planned.

On Saturday, we went to her brother's weekend house. I'd compare this to city people having summer homes in the Hamptons. A lot of people live in flats (small apartments) and then have cottages and weekend homes elsewhere to get away. Her brother works in the film industry, and clearly does rather well for himself. This was an old mill that he had converted into a house. It was humongous, and had this wicker chair swing in the middle of the living room. Yes, I definitely sat on it.

I thought it was cool that they had a totem pole in their backyard.

They recently added a swimming pool this summer, and it's heated! We didn't go swimming this time around, but it was interesting how their pools are so small compared to back home. Then again, Americans like everything excessively large compared to most Europeans.

On the other side of the backyard, you can walk across this bridge...

...which overlooks this creek.

They also have a nice little eating area...

.. that overlooks this meadow.

Overall, I was pretty impressed. We ate lunch here, then were on to our next stop, which required driving through the countryside for about another 45 minutes outside of town.

The Šumava Mountains is a National Park, one of the largest and prettiest in the whole country. I'm lucky to be so close to enjoy it whenever I want.

At one point, the river flowing through this park covered all of these stones and rocks completely, but the river has lost a lot of its water over the centuries (thanks global warming). 

I think it still looks rather gorgeous.

Šumava Mountains

Eva

There were various picture opportunities throughout the park.

This was the end of our 2 hour hike through the park. We stayed on the main trail, which was about 7km (4.5 miles) long.

I can't wait to go back in autumn, when the leaves start to change colors. I was also told there is an observation tower there, so I definitely want to go up it next time around!