Driving to Moravia

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

   We woke up early and packed our things for five days. We plan to come back on Monday, May 12^. We are going to Uncle Petr’s house and it is about 260 miles away in the north eastern corner of the Czech Republic. 

   We left around 9:30 AM and drove towards Prague. We took the new Prague bypass which was built about 2 years ago and was truly a blessing. In the past one had to drive through local streets with lots of traffic. After that we connected to highway D1 going south east to Brno and from there we continued north. We missed our exit and had to turn around. But even with the small delay, we arrived at 3:30 PM. When I was a kid and we went to visit our family in Moravia, it was an all day trip as there was no highway, we drove on small local roads. We called Petr and he met us in the village as it was hard to find the way to his house. 

   We followed him to his house where we got out and let the kids run free. We sat in the garden and Petr and Jarka prepared dinner for us. We had elk meat stuffed with elk sausage, pickle and egg (this meal is usually made with beef and is called “Spanish Bird”). The kids enjoyed just running around after 6 hours in the car. They played with Uncle Petr’s dog Becky. We also looked at the fallow deer Uncle Petr keeps at his house.

   After dinner, coffee and the mandatory plum brandy and beer, Peter and Jarka took us to their little chateau. Jarka’s grandfather bought this chateau about a hundred years ago. It is not quite clear how old the building actually are (definitely more than 100 years). Petr and Jarka use it for family gatherings and also as hunting lodge. This was our first time staying in a chateau. We had a whole floor of the large building to ourselves including a kitchen. We did not cook much (our relatives cooked great food for us) but it was very handy in the mornings as we generally just made our own breakfast. Jarka gave us home made bread, eggs from their neighbor and elk sausage. Since Petr is an avid hunter, they rarely buy meat in the grocery store. Therefore we got to enjoy elk, wild hog and deer meat during our trip.