Day 2

We got up an went to J&M’s house. The weather changed and it was drizzling. In spite of finishing at 3 am last night, Jenda was already up. We wanted to see a few houses today so we called the real estate agents trying to make appointments, but it proved to be more difficult than expected. Real estate business is still not very efficient here. There is no multiple listing and only the listing agent can show the property, but even the listing agent doesn’t have the key so he/she has to get in touch with the owner first to get it. It’s hard to do within a few hours. We decided to just drive to these houses and see them from the outside anyway and eliminate those that don’t look good. First, we drove to the southernmost house near the Sychrov castle. It was a very charming 18th century cottage in a gorgeous but very remote location. We decided that it was too small and too remote to be considered. The next two were near the town of Jablonec nad Nisou and we didn’t like the area, which was neither village nor town with some remnants of industrial zone, and not charming at all. After that, we drove north towards the German border and the Luzicke Mountains. We found the house we were looking for and the owner happened to be in so she let us see it. This house was an old traditional farm house and with lots of work and upgrades, it could be quite good. It was pretty big, on a big lot with a nice view and next to a pond. There were was enough room there to have a big, comfortable living space downstairs (after tearing down a few walls) and a few bedrooms upstairs. It would, however, require a lot of work and a bit of money.

Then, Jenda drove us across the border to Germany to two very picturesque spa towns -- Luckendorf and Oybin and then back to CZ through a lovely village of Hermanice and a town of Hradek nad Nisou back to KU.

After dinner at their house, we went to a different hospoda to listen to the village music group perform. Petra’s (real eatate agent) husband is the leader of the band which includes 4 guitars, 1 mandolin, 1 banjo, 1 bass, I violin and a harmonica + several singers. It was so cool to see this group of not-so-young people just enjoy making music and being together.