Karlovy Vary

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Monday, June 25

We arrived in Karlovy Vary at about 8:30 pm and had to wait for a local bus to go to our hotel. Our hotel, Hotel Kucera, is located right in the center of town. We reached the front door of the hotel, only to find the gate locked. No one picked up at the phone number I had for the hotel and only wires stuck out of the spot where the buzzer should have been. Strangely, a lot of the hotels were locked and looked closed. We did find a hotel that was open and went in for help. The lady behind the desk tried the number we had without any luck. She then called a different number and talked to someone in Czech for a few minutes, hung up and called another person whom she talked to for a few minutes. After this, she told us that the chef for our hotel would meet us in front of the hotel in five minutes. Good enough for me! We thanked her profusely for helping us and went on our way. As told, the chef showed up a few minutes later and let us in. (What I heard as “chef” was really “chief,” which explains why the lady looked very confused when I said, “So, you’re the chef.”) The “chef” said that because we had not confirmed our reservation by email (despite paying it in full online), she did not think we were coming. Lesson learned—if we plan to arrive somewhere past 5 or 6 in the evening, we now phone ahead.

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The hotel has a beautiful pink art-nouveau façade and an imposing winding staircase that allows views all the way to the sixth floor. The floors have 12 foot plus ceilings and the rooms are large with full-length windows. Our room has a pink/red motif and the windows look out into a wooded area. The inside shows the years more than the outside and kind of reminds me of a haunted house or the house in the movie “The Shining.” I have been trying to get John to walk around with me and explore the hotel for ghosts, but he is resisting.

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Tuesday, June 26

We woke up and had a traditional Czech breakfast of granola, yogurt, boiled egg, cheese, cold cuts, bread, and coffee at the hotel. We then set out to explore the town. After wandering around for a while, we found the natural springs we were in seek of where we could partake in the “drinking cure.”

Karlovy Vary is one of three spa towns in western Bohemia where people have been going to for centuries to drink the hot sulpheric water that flows out of natural springs throughout the city. The springs are housed in beautiful colonnaded and pillared halls and all of the springs are labeled with the name of the spring and the temperature of the water flowing out of it. Most of the springs are around 60-65 C. To get the full effect, you are supposed to drink the water out of specially shaped porcelain cups that have a built-in straw coming out of the bottom of the cup. John and I both bought a cup and began sipping away. The water is hot and slightly salty and tastes of minerals. It is not the most pleasant drinking experience in the world but this cannot get in the way of hundreds of years of tradition and “curing.” The waters at Karlovy Vary are said to be effective against diseases of the digestive and urinary tracts and gout.

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Emperor Charles IV discovered the springs at Karlovy Vary in 1358 while on a hunting expedition when his hound fell into a spring and was scalded. The town did not reach its heyday until the 19th century, when royalty and the elite from all over Europe came for the treatment, including Peter the Great, Goethe, Beethoven, Chopin, and Karl Marx. The town was neglected during the Communist regime and is now the sight of a lot of foreign visitors and investors, particularly Germans and Russians. All of the locals speak Czech and German.

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I enjoyed a four-hour spa treatment at one of the sanatoriums, Zemecke Lazne. The treatment included a full-body massage, oxygen treatment, massaging bath, circulation treatment for the legs, sauna, and thermo-mineral pool. It was fabulous! The facilities were beautiful—stone, columns, and marble everywhere with high vaulted ceilings and hallways running in all directions to various treatment areas. The spa has a 1-week treatment program for about $250, depending on the season, that includes various three-hour treatment sessions for 6 days. Now that’s a bargain.

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Wednesday, June 27

John and I had more of the drinking cure in Karlovy Vary and left in the afternoon on a train to another spa town two hours to the southwest called Marianske Lazne. This town is a smaller version of Karlovy Vary and is home to the Kolonada spa wafer factory and the singing fountain. The Kolonada spa wafers consist of two paper-thin wafers with a filling, such as hazelnut, chocolate, or cocoa, sandwiched between the wafers. Nearly everyone on the street is either eating a spa wafer or is carrying a box of wafers to take home with them. Of course, I had to try one and they are quite tasty. The singing fountain is one of the touted sights of Marianske Lazne but is nothing more than a fountain that plays a track of recorded music and changes spray patterns in time with the music. I’ve never been much into fountains, much less singing ones, but apparently some of the visitors appreciated the performance as shown by the half-hearted applause the “singing” received.

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We spent the remainder of the day walking around the town. John and I definitely lowered the median age of the town. To find some excitement, we headed to the casino where they wanted to charge us 10 Euros a person entrance fee. I refused to pay money for the privilege of losing more of it, so we left and went back to the hotel.

Thursday, June 28

In the morning, the weather couldn’t decide if it wanted to rain or shine, so I got a massage at a local beauty parlor. After the massage, the weather was holding up so we decided to rent bikes for the day as Marianske Lazne is surrounded by woods with well groomed, and in some instances paved, paths. We biked through the woods and up a steep logging road. After descending the logging road, we made our way to a specific hiking/biking path and had our first (and hopefully last) run-in with the local police. We overshot the path and had to turn around. Since the path was less than 50 meters away, we did not cross the road to go with the traffic, but instead went against the traffic towards the beginning of the path. As we’re making our way to the path, a polizie car appears out of nowhere and crosses over the centerline of the road right in front of me. I never dreamt it had anything to do with us so I maneuvered around the police car. The cop then turned on its lights and sirens, pulled the car over to the side of the road, and got out of the car. This is when it dawned on me that the cop was pulling us over. All of the old people were craning their necks to see what was going on. The policeman began by talking loudly and kind of yelling at us in Czech and we stared blankly at him. The only English and the only words I understood from him were a threat to fine us 1000 crowns (about $50), a demand to see our passports, and a comment that “this is not Mexico, we have rules here.” After profuse apologies and explanations, he did eventually let us go without paying a fine, but the whole experience was very surreal and scary. I felt like it was a scene out of a movie. After this incident, we scurried off into the woods where we remained for awhile before heading back to the apartment.

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Earlier in the day, we had purchased tickets for a show that evening. Since the locals only speak Czech and German, we were unable to figure out exactly what sort of show we were buying tickets to, but from the advertisement, it looked like we were buying tickets to an Eastern European band. Little did we know, but we had purchased tickets to a two-hour traditional polka band performance. It was like going to a bad wedding, but without a bride, groom, or other guests to divert your attention away. John wanted to leave during intermission, but I insisted we get our $20 worth. I even taped a portion of it so everyone can get a sense of what we endured. The band’s commentary was in Czech and then in German as were the songs. They did end with a German rendition of “Roll Out the Barrel.” Again, John and I were the only people in the quarter-filled theater below 60.