Wandering in the past in the Czech Republic

I spent last week near the Giants' Mountains in the Czech Republic. On account of most people opting for alpine joys, there was little in the way of cultural refinement. The surroundings would have been promising, since our base was near Jicin, the main town in the famous Imperialist condottiere Wallerstein´s domains.

At least I had a closer look at the local brewery on a hike I managed to make. It looked pretty old.

A neat but disused building just outside Nova Paka

There was a hint of the old imperial legacy in this war monument to the fallen in WWI. Not a conflict many Czechs would feel proud of.

And in downtown Nova Paka, the once glorious Hotel Central had now been taken over by a nice Vietnamese textile salesman.

Note the plastic flowers at the entrance

And even though I didn't get to taste the local beer, I tasted another. It still had this pilzner taste, but carried 11% of alcohol.

It's all a blur now

Such time as I could spend, I dug into Britain After Rome, Robin Fleming's account of the years between the Roman 'occupation' and the occupation by the Normans. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there, mostly because it has a firm grounding in archeological evidence. This often trumps the historical 'evidence', as I also noticed earlier in my review of Edge of Empire, which deals with the Roman presence in the Low Countries.

Gamewise, I managed a game of chess and a few games of Dobble (or Spot It) with the kids. But I pride myself on two victories at de Val van Rome (Struggle For Rome) my favourite version of the Settlers line. More about that tomorrow.