Day One

We got here the day after summer ended. Everything went smoothly --- the flight, the car rental, even driving out of Prague wasn’t too bad. We arrived in the village of Kristofovo Udoli at 11 am, an hour before our appointment with the real estate agent so we had to time to drive and walk through this lovely and picturesque village. It was a perfect fall day ---the mountains in reds and yellows, bright sun… Unfortunately, the house turned out to be a dud. It looked nice from the outside, but inside it would need a complete overhaul. More work than we would want.

Then, we parked our turquoise Skoda by one of the four village hospodas and walked to Jenda and Marcelka’s house. His house is a beautifully renovated traditional village house. We had lunch of mushroom stew and knedlik with a bottle of Moravian wine and a home made apple strudel and then the four of us embarked on house hunting. First, we stopped at the house of Hanka, Jenda and Marcelka’s daughter. She and her husband bought an old house 3 years ago, gutted it completely and essentially built a new house inside the old walls. The result is stunning. If we could find something like this, we would jump on it.

On the way out of the village, picked up Petra, Jenda’s real estate agent friend and the 5 of us proceeded to the village of Hermanice to look at another house. This one was in a gorgeous location, beautiful sunny slope with fruit trees, a stream, red currant bushes, but we couldn’t get inside to see it. When we called the listing agent, he told us that there is a reservation on it until Tuesday. If the guy can’t come up with the money, it will go back on the market.

Then we drove through narrow country roads to the village of Zdislava, where we saw another house (bad condition) and stopped by in a house that Renata’s (Bo’s friend) step daughter Nika bought there about a year ago. Nika happened to be home and was shocked to see us. She showed us her house and the two goats that she bought recently. We couldn’t say long because it was getting late and we still had placed to see.

After that, Jenda took us to a brand new house built to look like a traditional house from this area. It really looked very attractive. Jenda was trying to convince us that it’s a better way to go --- to buy a pretty lot and build a new house. We started considering it so we stopped in Petra’s house (a converted electrical transformer) and her husband, a former mayor of the village of Krizany took us through the village to show us empty lots for sale. One of them was pretty good. By the time we were done, it was 7 pm so we went back to Jenda’s house for dinner (goulash with knedlik) and the evening ended in the U Uhliru Inn (hospoda) where a bunch of village people gathered with their guitars. A steady stream of beer, occasionally interrupted by slivovitz and Czech champagne + singing continued until who knows what time. We said “dobrou noc” at a quarter after midnight and went upstairs to our room and called it a night.