Karlovy Vary - Weight Loss Program - Day 6

Woke up to snow flurries which also meant the temperature got warmer so that's a good thing. The weather stayed pretty much the same all day with a completely overcast sky but it was still a wonderful day.

After getting my morning water cure and having breakfast at the hotel I walked through town past the GrandHotel Pupp and the newly opened luxury hotel, Quisisana Palace which was built at the end of the 19th century and architecturally combines elements from the Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Gothic and Neo-Baroque styles. It’s the beautiful pink building in this picture and is directly across the river from the Pupp. I found it interesting when I went on their web site that unlike the rest of the hotels I've looked at here they actually offer hunting and fishing expeditions. I guess it's not all about the spa there.

I met Nicola and her 8 months old sweet dog, Gehry. He's just so lovable and friendly. Nicola drove us to a animal farm a little outside the city where they have deer and an enormous menagerie of I think goats. The goats (and I think there ware at least 60) were in the little hut with hay that was in the distance and according to Nicola they are not friendly and keep to themselves. They have a few good acres to roam around in their penned in area so I guess they're just happy to eat their hey and do their own thing. But the deer are so sweet and came right up to the fence and Nicola who clearly does this often had brought carrots and an apple to feed them. You can see from the pictures they were very friendly and ate the carrot right from my hand.  I gave the big apple to one deer and he chomped off some and then dropped the rest as he chewed and another deer came over and they butted horns for a while before both got a piece of the remaining apple and were both happy.

The girl deer, the one with out antlers, was the most aggressive so she got more carrots than the rest. This was such a wonderful surprise and I'm so glad she took us out there. The farm is closed to most visitors (except I guess if you want to feed the deer to walk the trails) in winter but in summer they are open to families who come to pet the animals as well as people who want to go horseback riding which I know my friend Elke who is reading this will find that interesting in case she ever comes back here.

I couldn't help but think of my Uncle Pat who loves to go deer hunting and what he'd think of this lovely farm. The animals have a huge area to roam and even part of a forest where you can see on some of the trees they gnaw a great deal at the bark and Nicola said they're cleaning their teeth or strengthening their teeth, one or the other.

He looks pretty annoyed I have no more carrots!

Across from the deer pen are two buildings one I think is the farm owners home and the other is a hall they rent out and restaurant. This is where Nicola and Jacob her fiance will get married on August 8th of this year. They're having a very small wedding of only 20 people and she's hoping she can convince her priest to let them have the service outside in the garden on these grounds but being Catholic she's not sure and I told her I was pretty sure, at least Catholics in America can only get married in a church of some kind. But it will be interesting to hear what ends up happening. But first she must get Jacob baptized or it won't matter. She has time and I know it will all work out for them both.

Jacob sounds wonderful and she is so happy.  They met at work almost three years ago and live now in an apartment near her job which is right below his parents apartment. Actually his parents own the building which is perfect because neither Nicola or Jacob who has two jobs makes much money right now. But they are both hard workers and will do great. It's just they pay so little her which was shocking when I heard. Nicola, works at Mackro, a large business superstore doing customer service and she gets 14,000 Czech Kronas a month which is about $570.00 US. But she is applying for work in one of the Muncipal offices which will be much more money and a better job so hopefully that will hope before next year. Yes, it actually takes that long around here but they're young only 24 and 25 years old so they have plenty of time and are happy to be the parents of their little four-legged barking child and have no plans to have two-legged anytime soon.

Fighting over the apple

Scarfing up the apple after the battle was over

In the middle of the battle. Look at the one in the back watching it all like it's a deer spectator sport

Gehry having so much fun running around and the deer just looking at him with pity for being merely a dog.

Deer in their private wooded area giving us the once over

So from there she took us to a beautiful town called Locket which means "Elbow" because the way the river runs through the very small town it looks like the crook of an elbow.  The castle/fortress is on the top of the hill and Gehry just bounded up their while Nicola and I took our sweet time chatting about life. The town as several hotels, restaurants and one that even has a small brewery which according to Nicola makes the best beer and they considered having their wedding their but settled on the farm.

Sculpture of a saint below the castle tower in Loket

Sculpture of a man doing yoga in Loket park

The town has a pretty open-air theatre right on the river which Nicola said has great concerts and she and Jacob  have gone in the summer and with the castle in the background all lit up at night it's really beautiful. And I found this information online about the town and found it fascinating that part of a James Bond movie was filmed there. I knew parts of it had been filmed in Karlovy Vary because I recognized it right away but I'll have to watch the movie again to see the parts the filmed in Locket. "Loket is a town of some 3 000 inhabitants in the Sokolov District in the Karlovy Vary region of the Czech Republic. From 1938 to 1945 it was one of the municipalities in Sudetenland. Loket means "elbow" in English. The town is named this due to the town centre being surrounded on three sides by the Ohře River, and the shape the river takes is similar to that of an elbow. The town centre itself features Loket Castle, a 12th century gothic castle. The town centre is a national monument and as such is preserved from modern developments. The town plays host to an annual opera festival, which takes place in an open air amphitheatre with the castle as a backdrop, and also plays host to the Czech Motocross Grand Prix. Loket was also used to portray Montenegro in the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale."

Entrance to the Castle in Locket with Gehry playing

Monument in the center of Loket

 During the 14^th year (2010) of the Plein air LOKET Annual international art workshops, the subtitle theme of Art and Design the goat sculptures were created as well as the wooden yoga man standing on his head (pictures above.) It took me a long time to find the information on these sculptures that sit along the hillside next to the Loket Castle. The Plein Air Loket organization in 2010 had 12 artists from the Czech Republic and Germany working outside (the open air part of the organization) to create sculptures that continue to be shown in public places around the town. The goat sculpture is inspired by the tale that a herd of goats saved the slopes below the castle and has now become a popular tourist attraction. The Innovation for this yearly event was open air meetings and exhibitions focus on the presentation of Art and Design - the fields, which in addition to free art has artists devote their main work activity. The exhibition happens in the month of September.

Picture of Goats from their festival website that's why it's so blurry

What I also found interesting is the plaque translated in English as well as Czech and I think German telling a fun bit of information about the Camaroon Goat featured in the sculptures. “It is the smallest breed of domestic goat and is originally from the west coast of Africa.  This little-demanding breed is able to survive in areas with very scarce vegetation and to easily overcome the most difficult terrains. It's charm is hidden in this capability since the goat can graze on and preserve inaccessible places which were maintained by the use of very expensive mountaineering technology in the past.  Thanks to their acrobatic performances they immediately became favorites of every observer.  A fact about the nature of a goat is that the least accessible plant is always the most tempting bite for them. (Sounds a little like humans who always want most what isn't attainable.) This feature is one of the breeding obstacles. As a rule, the goats never respect their allotted area. Practically no fencing or barrier we have introduced is a dignified obstacle for the goats. The goats are aware of their dominance and they watch our attempts to secure the impenetrability of the run with malicious looks and leers. Visitors to our town can often meet a herd of goats walking on the square or on the ramparts.”

Wooden sculptures of goats

I loved all that information about the goats, what tenacious little buggers they are but sadly we did not see a single goat let alone a herd today. The artists (yes there are several as I think that’s part of the plan each year for the artists to come together and work on pieces as a group) are Jörg Beier, Jörg Beier, Dietmar Sakowski, Eduar Milka, Joseph Juha, Konrad Hunger, Martin Košařová, Uwe Berger and Uwe Schwarz.  Also from my research trying to find out about the sculptures I saw in the picture I took of the plaque a contributors name, Jan Sobota who may have written the text on the sign but either way it became one of those wonderful discoveries of a great artist who sadly passed away in May of 2012.  He was a world renowned book-binder doing incredible work with unique fabrics and shapes, one looked like a suit jacket. He also, with his wife escaped Nazi and Communist Czech and moved to America by way of Switzerland where he taught the revered art of hand book-binding to college students at Case Western Reserve University and eventually at a college in Dallas. I read a tribute to him from a writer who had worked with him and whose books Mr. Sobota had bound for him over the years. The article mentioned his amazing dedication and joy for life despite the horrors of what he saw during the war in his home land but also mentioned a specific story of how when he got to the America he found out he had cancer and being that he hadn’t gotten a university job yet he ended up paying for his medical treatment out of pocket or by incurring debts he would continue to pay for years. He thankfully survived and went on to do great work teaching and restoring important old manuscripts and one day he found an very old volume and began to restore it and inside the book he found an odd mass of stuck together  pages and figured it was good to try and restore them so he soaked and carefully teased apart the pages and these scraps turned out to be a deck of medieval playing cards - the second oldest such cards known. He restored them and sold them for enough to cover his medical expenses. And what I loved was what his friend, the writer of this tribute wrote after the details of the story “Few people would have cast that glued-up mess a second glance before pitching it, nor would they recognize what they had in hand or known how to restore or sell it. God helps those who help themselves – no?”

Picture from the festival web site of the various artists working on the goat

So sometimes you find out about a unique and truly interesting person simply by looking up “Cameroon Goats, Sculpture, Loket, Czech.” Although it took a good half hour before I got to the web site about the open air festival. And Mr. Sobota’s son now runs the family business of old-world book-binding with his mother, Ms. Sobota right there in history, charming Loket.

Mr. Sobota with Goat at Festival 2010

From there we dropped Gehry off at the apartment and she took me to Globas, a huge mega store, like Walmart to get a few groceries that are less expensive than in town. I picked up some yummy cheese, yogurt and veggies.

Then she took me to a different shopping center for lunch which has a food court but unlike the ones we are used to in America this one had Czech home cooking fast food. It was delicious and so inexpensive it's crazy. The portions were enormous and really much to big to actually finish but I had potato dumplings with meat inside and warm red and white cabbage. I think cabbage of all varieties is to the Czech people what potatoes are to the Irish although the Czech people enjoy their potatoes as well. We also had this goulash soup and incredible Czech soda which tasted like Moxie for those who know what that is.

After lunch she took me along a different route back to the hotel and we went to a neighborhood, Doubi, where they have a very pretty building that looks like a small castle and it's a venue for weddings and events, a restaurant and a Christmas store. Ti's called the Christmas Chateaux and actually the Christmas store takes up most of the building and according to Nicola the Christmas decorations outside stay up all year round (see Christmas tree in picture.) This was also one of the places they considered for the wedding  but she said it's crazy expensive but really I think the farm is just so pretty that this place is more touristy although I loved all the decorations inside and where there was once chapel they have the place covered with ornaments, trees, garland, etc. to buy. It's like a Christmas fantasy land.

And in the spirit of Christmas I found a picture of what Karlovy Vary town center looks like at Christmas, beautiful isn't it. This is at the Mill Colonnade with the Imperial Hotel on the hill behind it. And in case you think that Christmas/New Years is also considered the low time here it's actually right up there with the summer high rates so best to come for just a day visit if you happen to be visiting the Czech Republic (Prague) at that time.

It's owned Nicola said by the mayor of Karlovy Vary, Petr Kulhánek who apparently owns a lot around here and lives in the neighborhood near her work which is about 15 minutes outside the city center. She said he's very well known by everyone one and not Czech person in this region would not be familiar with him. I asked what she thought of him and she sweetly said she never met him. I was thinking of weather he was a good leader but her response was perfect. I think he's kind of like a Western Czech version of a Kennedy.

And it was getting late and I had a 4:15pm treatment so we headed back to town and she took me on another wonderful scenic route which was going to lead past her church where she'll get marred unless the priest agrees to do it outdoors. As we approached the town Březová it started to look familiar and from what I had seen on the map there was large dam there which happily we went past and there is a bridge that goes over the damn but Nicola said it makes her nervous to drive that road so we went along the river which was just as lovely. And all the water that is being held back by the dam is the reservoir for the entire county of Karlovy Vary so I guess they're not all drinking the mineral water in the their taps which makes sense I think too much of a good thing could be bad.

We drove a little further along the river and I got excited when we got to the part of Březová where I had walked on Thursday right after I had fortuitously bumped into her. Yes, that was my four and half hour walking day and when I told her how long I had walked she said next time call her and she'll come get me so I don't have to walk so much. She is just so, so sweet. She reminds me so much of my friend Stacie who I call Little Sister and who calls me Big  Sis. And like with Stacie it's just funny how we ended up becoming friends. I bought some theatre tickets from Stacie's group sales office for the Manhattan Club and for whatever reason we decided to meet for lunch and we just became such good friends and now over ll years later I have I'd the pleasure of seeing her meet a wonderful man Steven, get married, have the beautiful Allyn Lily and soon to have their son. Sometimes to think about why one is so blessed with certain friends is probably pointless because we just are and better to be thankful than spend too much  time trying to figure out the whys, wheres, etc. And that's how I feel about Nicola. I had gone to the Salt Cave at the Elizabeth public spa one day when I got to Karlovy Vary four years ago and she spoke almost no English but somehow we figured out how to communicate and then we met for coffee a few days later and just became friends. Admittedly I haven't seen her in four years but it was so great to spend these few hours catching up and seeing how truly happy she is. I'm thrilled for her and we said goodbye when we got to Karlovy Vary near the Pupp and she said that it's amazing that only once a year does she go to the dentist here in town and it just happened to have been Thursday and that on her way back to her car I just happened at that exact moment to walk past the bridge and see her. Really, sometimes everything falls right into place and you truly are exactly where you need to be.

And so amazingly the church she'd get married at is the exact church I saw on my walk and took pictures of because it was so beautiful in a simple way and now I know someone who will most likely be getting married there.


So after saying bye and wishing her so much  happiness and making her promise to send pictures of the wedding which she said she would, I went back to the hotel to quickly grab my bathing suite and shower stuff and head to the spa where I amazingly had a little time to do some swimming, stretching and warming up in the sauna and whirlpool before I had the worst treatment, the Scottish Shower. Why they call it a Scottish shower is beyond me because I'm sure the Scottish people are not into being tortured but who knows, maybe they are or maybe it was some maniacal Scottish man who came up with this miserable treatment. I had it done three time when I was here four years ago and not because I liked it but because it was assigned to me by the spa manager and likewise with today's. Thankfully I only have one of them this time around and as I sit in my warm bed I can happily say it's finished. Basically the treatment is 10 minutes where you stand in front of a titled wall in your bathing suit and a technician turns on two high-powered hoses, one with warm water and one with freezing water. The hose have the force of a fire hose so it's already a little painful when it hits your body but then a few moments later she switches from warm to cold and this goes on for almost the whole 10 minutes except for the last few seconds which is all cold. The hoses are moved all along the body from ankle to shoulders during the process and the back is last which maybe is a good thing because most people would have said not way to another moment if the back was first.

Březová Church

I then had another underwater massage which was a bit more relaxing this time and then some more time in the pool and sauna before showering, having my evening water cure and enjoying dinner of feta cheese in olive oil (they come in single size individually wrapped containers so it's perfect for a one-person meal) with multi-grain bread, yogurt and a sweet treat. It was the perfect meal after a wonderful day of visiting with a friend, feeding deer, walking through snow covered lanes, walking up a steep hill, around a lovely village, in and out of a few massive shopping centers and some not so pleasant treatments.