August 2014 was my third long trip to the Czech Republic and the first where a major portion of the trip was not part of an organized tour. It had been a dream of mine for a number of years to attend the bagpipe festivals in Domažlice and Strakonice and I wanted to participate in a two-day workshop on the Czech bagpipe (dudy) before the Domažlice festival. The ten days between the festivals I would mostly be staying with friends in Brno, with a weekend break to visit distant relatives in Veselí nad Lužnicí and the surrounding Blata area. Another dudy player from Nebraska, Sue Placek, and her husband would be joining me for the Strakonice festival and we planned to travel together by rental car the week after, doing some exploring and shopping for the Czech museum in Wilber, Nebraska.
So that was the basic structure for the
trip. The challenge was getting between the various locations by a combination
of buses and trains. I have very limited Czech, a tiny bit of German, (and a
good background in French which seems to be useless in the Czech Republic!) I
had taken a train and a bus solo on my 2009 trip and had done a fair amount of
research ahead of time on the http://jizdnirady.idnes.cz website, which
allows you to search train and bus schedules in English. So I knew it was
possible to make connections and get where I needed to go. But transfers needed
to happen, sometimes from bus to bus, sometimes from train to bus, and this was
where things got difficult.
Saying goodbye to twin grandchildren for a month:
Son and twins, with daughter and another grandchild on the way:
Saying goodbye to twin grandchildren for a month:
Son and twins, with daughter and another grandchild on the way:
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