Cesky Krumlov II

After several attempts and a great deal of stress I finally found my way back to Cesky Krumlov.

Five hours after leaving the house I arrived at the castle, bought a ticket for Tour 2 and ran up the hill just in time to join the group. As the tourist season has passed, the tour was not offered in English. So I listened to the Czech and read the English off of a sheet of paper in a plastic sleeve. There were two other English speakers and three Czech people, so I was not alone in staring confusedly at the tour guide and glancing searchingly at the paper. It was a bit frustrating since the guide spoke English and so could have given us a little bit of guiding...but it is about 100 crowns more expensive for an English tour and we only paid for the Czech. Bummer. Still cool though. Tour 2 takes you to a different part of the castle where the Schwarzenberg family lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. The rooms were a touch shabbier than the ones on Tour 1, (the main part of the castle with the banquet halls and things) but interesting, nonetheless. The part I remember most was the bedroom of two young princesses, whose mother, Duchess Pauline, died at the ball celebrating Napoleon's engagement to Maria Louisa. A fire broke out in the ballroom but Pauline stayed inside, desperately searching for her young daughters. Horrible. Next to one of the beds was a girl's white dress; a replica of what one of the daughters was wearing at the ball. How awful! Let's show what the child was wearing the night that her mother died in a fire. Terrible.

The Schwarzenbergs acquired a tremendous collection of early 17th century Dutch tapestries. My question: where did they get them? Strange, you never hear about how these noble families got all their stuff. Did they purchase them legally? Steal them from an enemy they destroyed? Pillage someone else's country estate? Go to Holland and take them from the workshop? I don't know. They are beautiful and apparently quite valuable. It surprised me, then, to see the windows open in the rooms where the rare tapestries adorn the walls. We are so strict about climate control and preservation and obsessively monitoring everything special in American museums, so it always amuses me to see the more relaxed attitude over here. Maybe since they have so much old stuff they aren't as concerned about it? I remember my family and I were in a small town in Austria on a tour of a palace, or maybe a town hall? and the tour guide was really strict about "No pictures!" of the tapestries on the walls because the flash would damage them. Then we turned around and saw that all the windows opposite the tapestries were wide open and the sun was rushing in along with dust from the road...We chuckled.

There was a photograph of the Austrian Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) in her wedding dress, I believe. Sissi and the Schwarzenberg Princess Eleonore were contemporaries. It was funny to see Sissi in Cesky Krumlov. The Austrians, or at least Vienna, is obsessed with her. You see Sissi everywhere--on mugs, bags, jewelry, books, postcards, blankets, shirts...etc. She is a sad figure--depression, anorexia, hypochondria, obsession with her own cult-like status...but enormously popular and fascinating in her own time and ours.

The tour ended in the Cloak Bridge, which is a two story passageway from one part of the palace to the gardens farther up on the hill. The passages were begun in the 18th century. They are beautifully decorated with painted walls, lots of windows, cool lanterns, and Baroque maps of Europe. Every 15 feet or so are metal doors folded back against the wall so you can barely see them. They are painted to blend in with the walls, but in case of fire they could be closed to hopefully stop the spread of flames across the passage from one part of the castle to another.

No pictures inside the castle--darn it, but here is the Cloak Bridge from the outside.

The Cloak Bridge is neat, but it seems sort of wasteful to take up all of that space with just a passageway. If I had been their architect in 1706, I would have suggested they build a new wing to connect the castle to the gardens. A long hallway seems to have limited uses when compared to a whole new set of rooms! But no one consulted me.

You can sort of see the white Cloak Bridge on the left of this picture. The main castle is the grey-ish beige block on the right.

I bought a ticket to tour the Baroque Theater later in the afternoon and began walking about the town in search of lunch. I had an excellent pizza at the foot of the castle. But then I started to worry about catching my bus back to Prague. I had the ticket for 3:00, so I knew I had a place. But. There are two bus stops in Cesky Krumlov. I had gotten off at the first one since I could see the castle tower from that one and figured I was less likely to get lost if I could keep the tower in view. But my ticket said the bus left from the second bus stop. I didn't know if the bus would stop at the first one on the way back, and I was also stressed about making it from my 2:00, 45 minute tour of the theater to the bus stop at 3:00. Especially since I didn't know where that bus stop was or how long it would take me to get there. So I let my stress get the better of me and spent the next hour and a half fretting. I did a "practice run" from the castle to the bus stop, which should have taken me 12 minutes but took me forty since of course I got lost. The woman at the bus stop didn't speak any English so my "Does the bus stop at the other bus stop, too?" query did not make it through. I walked back to the castle, figuring I should try to return my theater ticket since I didn't want to get stuck in Cesky Krumlov. I asked the woman at the tourist information desk about the bus and she said that it did stop at the first stop, Spicak. So I felt better. I asked another person, just to be sure, and they said it did, too. So I bought a trdelnik and settled down on a bench by the castle to try to breathe. Welcome to my neuroses.

I had a shopping list from Eva to fulfill so I spent the next few minutes accomplishing that task. When we were in Cesky Krumlov back in July she bought two mugs and some excellent dark chocolate, and she asked me if I could get two more mugs and some more chocolate. I bought myself a squat, chubby blue mug with an elephant on it. I had seen it in July and was very excited to find it again.

Then it was off to the Castle Theater Tour. Which I am so glad I stayed for. It was really cool. There are only two Baroque theaters like this in the world. One in the Royal Palace in Sweden and this one. There are some other stages and things, but only two theaters with their original buildings and stages still intact. Cesky Krumlov was apparently an extraordinarily active place for theater, which is why the occupants of the castle built this one. They had their own theater troupe and professional musicians so they could have performances all the time. The theater was constructed in the 18th century. There is a beautiful royal box and upper level where the nobility would sit.

The tour group (me, three other Americans, and about 25 Japanese people--indeed, when I was here in July the town was packed, but this time it was quite empty except for groups of Japanese people and me,) sat on the long wooden benches while our tour guide told us about the theater. She was in her fifties but she was dresses like a tween in a black plaid mini-skirt and a red sleeveless shirt and lots of big necklaces. Her makeup was something to see, too. She had a pretty thick accent but spoke slowly and loudly so it was okay. And I was just excited that this tour was in English. She was a great tour guide--very enthusiastic and excited about what she was showing us. At one point she said, "Baroque music was extraordinary. (That was her favorite word and she smoothed it out into about ten syllables). Here is a song for you." I assumed she was going to turn on the TV which she was standing next to and show us a taped performance, but instead she began to sing! Awesome.

The stage itself seemed to go on and on.

The coolest thing about the theater is that the 18th century sets and costumes still exist. There are more than 350 backdrops (extremely elaborate and beautiful), almost 600 complete costumes including accessories like shoes and hats and gloves, 2,4oo props, and lighting equipment and stage machinery. The tour guide demonstrated some of the equipment for us, using replicas, naturally. There was a machine that looked like a wooden lawnmower and made a sound like thunder when you rolled it on the floor. Another big circle thing made a rain noise when you moved it. The flying machines still exist that would raise and lower gods or angels or whatever from the stage. We got to go under the stage so see the trapdoors and all the ropes and equipment. Really amazing. They could completely change the stage with all of its backdrops and everything in about ten seconds. Something like 24 boys would be at work beneath the stage pulling ropes and dragging backdrops around and making thunder noises. It seems that the extraordinary quickness of the scene changes and the special effects were the stars of the production, not the actors or the play itself. It would have been magnificent to see it, especially since only candles would have lit the theater so everything would have been sort of mysterious and dim. It would have looked like magic.

The theater reminded me a little bit of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy. Professor Finucci and I went there one of the last weekends I was in Venice. It is older, a 16th century theater, and was designed by Palladio. But it had the same amazing decoration of the building--this is the back of the theater:

...and an incredible stage. Palladio designed it as a Roman theater. Scamozzi designed the set, which is the oldest surviving one in the world. It has remained on the stage since the first performance since it was so beautiful.

The perspective he created makes it look as though the stage keeps going and going into the distance. Apparently, to sustain this illusion, they would hire short people and even midgets to walk around at the back of the set during performances.

I like modern, spare sets as much as the next person, but after seeing these ornate, gorgeous theaters I wish a bare stage with one chair and a bed wasn't so typical today.

Back to the Czech Republic: the Cesky Krumlov theater was in a horrible condition until 1966 when it was closed and they began restoring it. They have a few performances here every year, which are mainly for studying the theater. Since this is basically the only theater like this left (I don't think the one in Sweden has as many props and machines), a lot of people come here to study it. There are some machines and other objects that we still don't understand. So they make replicas and experiment to try and figure out what in the world it was used for. Isn't that cool? The whole thing is an amazingly intact relic from another time.

My trip, including the seven hours in a bus and the stress I needlessly caused myself, was worth it just for the theater. So farewell Cesky Krumlov! I finally made it back and I can check that off of my list.