… that if I looked hard enough, I would be able to find some evidence of the previous occupants that had not been ethnically cleansed from the city of Zatec.
There were in fact a couple, some easier to find and easier to see than others, and here’s the most obvious one
I strongly suspect that the German writing on the walls over these shops may not be the original.
It seems that once again I’ve stumbled upon a film crew – this one from Czech Television and a corner of the town has been cordoned off while they film some kind of costule drama here. They’ve picked a nice part of the town to do it in because it is relatively unspoilt down at this end.
that’s more than can be said about this part of the city.
I mentioned yesterday that the Economic miracle hasn’t penetrated as far as here yet, and there are parts of Zatec that look very sad indeed. Several buildings at this end of the city look as if they were abandoned during the ethnic cleansing of the region and never taken over by new inhabitants
The city is quite historic however, dating back to at least 1004 when the first mention of it was made.
It sits on a hill, on a promontory overlooking the river valley, and was walled and fortified. There are some of the fortificiations still remaining, as well as a couple of the city gates.
There are also a great number of Comecon-styled blocks of flats, but we’ll gloss over those.
Here’s a surprise though. As well as the usual German discount supermarkets we have a British supermarket chain operating in the Czech Republic and with a branch at Zatec too.
I went in there to buy my bread and fruit for the day and ws surprised to be asked for my club card. I wonder what she would have said had I produced it.
The drive down south was beautiful through some lovely scenery and picturesque towns and villages.
This is the town church in the town of Prestice and it’s just one example of the hundreds of photos that I could have taken had I had the time.
I saw several Soviet-era lorries too. Most of them were on the road so I couldn’t photograph them.
This one, which I think is a LIAZ, was conveniently parked up in a field while I was stopped at some roadworks, of which there were plenty along my route.
No old Tatra cars though, and that was disappointing.
Here’s my lunch stop, at Jeseni in the Sudeten Alps. And you can see why the Sudeten Alps were vital to the defence of Czechoslovakia – it’s not possible to move a squadron of tanks, never mind a division, through here in any kind of order.
It’s no wonder that the Nazis stirred up the Sudeten Germans to such an extent, in order to have a fifth column making a “peaceful” takeover of the region, but it beats me why, knowing that their country was doomed from the start, why the Czechs didn’t make a fight of it.
A guarantee from France and Britain of the security of the rump of Czechoslovakia was totally worthless and I’m sure that the Czechs realised that.
Here I am in tonight’s stop – the town of Tittmoning in southern Bavaria.
In fact you can’t get much more south than this because if you turn left and go down to the bottom of the slope you arrive at the Salz River and across there on the other side is Austria, and I shall be wetting my feet in Austria later in the day tomorrow.
Tittmoning is a beautiful little walled town with a huge and impressive central square, but it also has something or a sinister reputation.
There’s a castle here too just like at Colditz, and just as in Colditz, it was a prison camp in World War II. But not for the military (well, there were some soldiers here at very first) but for civilians – British civilians in fact because although not many people know this, part of the United Kingdom fell into German hands during World War II and many British civilians were mistreated during the war.
Tittmoning was the home for 5 years for British male civilians from the Channel Islands who were considered unsuitable to remain in their homes during the German occupation, and was in fact a halfway house to Buchenwald, where several did indeed end up as the war progressed.
