Boomin' an' What Not

We went on vacation. Yeah, I know, I had a vacation from a vacation. You have to understand, this laziness shit really takes it out of you. I needed a damn break. You know, to go slack somewhere else.

So after much research and decision making, we hooked up with Hanka’s friends Martín and Lucka (LOOT-ska) and rented an apartment in the Šumava Mountains for a week. The Šumava are a mountain range in the southwestern part of the country that is shared by Austria and Germany. What a pretty place. Shit growing everywhere. My allergies were happy. We hook-up with them at Hanka’s family’s cottage outside Praha where we spent a week (Hanka winding down from working hard and me in a ‘transitional slack’ between the ‘full time’ slack of Praha and the ‘vacation’ slack to come.

We gather our bikes to put them on top of Martín’s car, a Škoda (SHKOE-da) Fabia combi (that is European for ‘wagon’). Škoda is the brand of car they make here, which is nothing more than a Czech Volkswagen as VW acquired them a few years ago. The top of the line Škoda is nothing more than a VW Passat with some minor design changes. Ironically, the term ‘škoda’ in Czech means ‘what a [it’s a] shame. Anyway, cool, I am so excited, The Mome, goin’ to the mountains. It’s been way too long since The Mome has been in its element. For those not in the know, ‘The Mome’ is my mountain bike, an Ellsworth Moment. So, with Martín’s bike already on the top of the car, we load Hanka’s bike and start to load up The Mome. Problem. The Mome is too big! Despite the fact that this worries me that we won’t be able to take it, I smile and say to myself: “That’s my boy, make those other bikes look like bitches!” After some minor alteration of the rack, The Mome is up and ready to go. Cool.

We head to the town of Svatá Maří, where we will be staying. It is a pretty little 650 year old village outside the larger town of Vimperk in the foothills of the Šumava. We only have to travel 150 kilometers (90 miles) but it seems to take us most of the day. That is how driving around this place is. Short distances take seemingly forever to cross. There is not much of a network of limited access highways here so almost all of the traveling is done on two lane roads that almost never head directly to your destination. It seems that every destination is reached by way of some place else, which can get a little confusing until you condition your mind to remember a shitload of different roads. Oh yeah, and get a damn map.

A side note on directions - One time when we were going to visit Hanka’s aunt, we were getting all kinds of fucked up directions to the town where they were. When we finally get to the town, they can’t even give us some reasonable directions to the house. The place is not big at all. If 200 people live there I would be shocked! So, from them we were getting some shit like: “Do you see the black roof? And; look for the big dog…” Ok. We don’t see either of these two things, but just for the sake of asking, what the hell do we do when we see a big dog or a black roof? No answer to this. I laughed myself to tears at this country-ass shit. We drove all over this little town until they finally get the family into the car and drive to a known landmark that we both recognize to meet us. We follow them to the house, a stones throw from where we were in the first place. No black roof. No big dog. Well, their dog is pretty big by Czech standards, but you can’t see him over the big fence. Once more to tears I laughed.

So anyway, back to the Šumava, we arrive. Nice town. Nice clean air. Nice. We unpack our stuff in the nice apartment and walk around the nice yard, hurt our backs petting the nice little dogs. We then walk across the street to check out the nice little dirty-ass bog they call a swimming pool. Wait. I brought my swimming shorts for this? Standards anyone? I am way too spoiled. To think that I can’t get myself to swim in the local public pool just because I can’t see any deeper than a few centimeters because of the deep DARK green color of the water is just ridiculous. I am such a snob. The owner of the apartment says that it is clean. They swim there. They change some of the water every night or so. Some. Or so. Why can’t I just get past some of these details? That and children swim here. I was a kid once. I know what happens in these things. I really want to swim too because it has been so DAMN hot here. The European heat wave was baking the shit out of us, and we didn’t even bear the worst of it, which was in Western Europe. Maybe I’ll take a cold bath.

The house where we stayed.

No need for the cold bath. It rained 6 out of the 7 days of the ‘vacation’ or ‘mountain’ slack that I had going on. It got cold too. I was not prepared for that. Damn. Rain really can hamper some shit. Biking in the super mud that can be in these kinds of climates can suck. No problem here. I didn’t take into account the level of the two other riders in our group (The fourth person in the group in on the inactive list as she is pregnant and should not do anything too active according to her doctor. Long story here.). Beginners. So, needless to say, roads, some gravel, mostly asphalt were the terrain on which we rode. I found a kind of cool trail that was pretty fun to descend (straight, steep descent with rocks, roots and stumps. I thought I heard The Mome giggling!), but I had Hanka with me and I waited for her to try to build her confidence and help her. In the process I was attacked. There are many things that want to eat you in the woods here. Being in the middle of the food chain sucks. That was pretty much it for the biking. I jibbed a bit. People looked at me funny. They do that stuff in Praha but I didn’t see it here. Funny thing about biking down in the Šumava, There are people on bikes everywhere, mostly mountain bikes. I did not see one of them on a trail, however. Not one. Shit blew me away. Good terrain, not a bike on it.

So limited by the rain, we went on some walks, one hike and visited an old castle/chateau complex called Velhartice. It was cool despite the weather. On the hike, we went to the top of one of the tallest mountains in the Šumava, Boubín. The weather was decent when we hiked so we got a decent view of our immediate surroundings. It was hazy. Normally you can see as far as the Alps in Austria and Germany. The farthest we could see was a little into Austria and Germany and the nuclear power plant, Temelín off in the distance to the other direction. We walked by, on the way down the mountain, Boubínsky prales which is the oldest nature preserve in the country. They don’t touch anything here. There is a big fence around the whole preserve which is actually to keep out animals, not humans (although humans are not allowed in there either). Nature preserve, some animals not allowed. Hmmm… Anyway, some of the oldest trees around are in this preserve. Some are as old as 300 to 400 years old! The so called ‘king of trees’, they said, was blown down in a storm in 1970. It was 440 years old! A tree, born in 1530 lasting that long. Cool! Still to think that some of the trees we saw were born in the 16-hundreds was pretty amazing. The funny thing is, some of them didn’t look that old.

Velhartice was ok. We have been to see a few of these things and they tend to get pretty repetitive. Some are really amazing old castles, rich with history. Others are not that exciting despite the history involved in them.

One day we went to view some slatí (peat bogs) that have been around since pre-historic times. They say these things can eat you. I was told this, literally. I was looking around for the mouth and the teeth. Cool nature things. I have never seen these before. I have seen peat, just not in bog form.

On our last day we went foraging for mushrooms. Mushrooms grow wild here everywhere. It is something of a pastime for the Czech people to forage for them. Almost every family has or does it regularly.

Earlier in the trip, we were grilling out some buřty (short, fat Czech hot dogs) when the owner of the house, who had just returned from foraging for mushrooms himself, presented us with one of his two baskets full of mushrooms. Tears of joy ran down my face. Chanterelle mushrooms are my favorite and this basket was FULL of them. Many different edible varieties grow here, many of which I can not name. The owner showed us his favorite type of mushroom and spoke of it lovingly with his eyes half-cocked and half-open -this probably because he had a few piva (beers) under his belt. It did look as though he was into the mushroom not for the edibility of it, but for its’ intoxicating qualities. Funny. We saved the basket for the next night when we would cook and eat the shit out of them. It was decided that I would cook the Chanterelles and the boletus would be cooked by Hanka.

Hanka cooked something they call 'Houby s Vejci' or 'Smaženice', which is scrambled eggs with sautéed mushrooms, onions and kmín (caraway). Pretty tasty stuff but in the preparation, she employs the traditional step of boiling diced mushroom with kmín before sautéing them. This is a way of cleaning the mushrooms as they can be quite dirty from the forest. I understand the cleaning, and boiling them, I guess. But to just pour the water from boiling with all that mushroom flavor down the drain is such a waste of valuable mushroom goodness! I shuddered. Strain and reduce that shit. Boom, mushroom broth. The stuff still tasted good, although more of kmín than of mushroom. Boiling being the culprit, I assume.

Me, I went to the store and bought some mletá slanina (raw, smoked bacon pieces. Surprised?), cream, corn, peas and carrots. No surprise there. I rendered out the bacon, removed it from the pan, leaving the grease, added butter to the grease and heated it to smoking hot (thanks Marvin!). Then in with the mushrooms. What a beautiful sight, sound and smell. The mushrooms cooked, I returned the bacon to the pan and added česnek (garlic), and the vegetables. When everything in the pan was cooked I let a nice fond (browning of food) grow on the bottom of the pan and deglazed it with some of the pasta water that I saved from the fusilli I cooked, and finished the whole thing with heavy cream. With the cream reduced to nape (thickened consistency) I tossed the pasta with the sauce and we ate the SHIT out of it. None left. Heaven. I swear, Chanterelles are made for pasta.

So, back to our day of foraging. We walked all through the forest and found two basket loads of chanterelles. Unbelievable. They were everywhere! So many of them were too small. In 3 or 4 days, the forest would have thousands and thousands of them. Can we stay longer?

Back at the apartment, I made pasta again, a little different this time. It being our last night, we were trying to use up the last of our food without buying any more. Kitchen sink pasta. The dish was basically the same but without bacon and no cream. I was going to use pasta water and butter but Martín pulls out some pre-made packaged crap nivová omačka (bleu cheese sauce). What the hell, let’s see how chanterelles can make this work. Truth be told, the dish was good. The chanterelles were in full flavor and dominating the flavor of the pasta. Just what I wanted. Again, pasta, gone.

The next day, we return to the cottage outside of Praha, where we settled into another ‘transitional’ slack prior to returning to Praha. After the quiet of the mountains, well, except for the roosters calling at sunrise and every 2 hours after (just about everyone has chickens and a rooster in the villages outside the city), it was hard to face the fact of being in the city again.