During my trip I visited Czech Republic twice and both times I had a really nice time meeting interesting people. If you are good with maps then you are probably thinking why I say ‘twice’ if crossing from west to east should have taken me through Czechia just once in a straight line.
The secret is that I had been lucky to know people that gave me excellent advice and when you have such precious info, it’s hard not to follow it even when it doesn’t make any geographical sense.
So this story is about my second visit to Czechia, to an area called Mikulov. Mikulov is a town and a whole area specialized in wine-making considered to be the ‘center of Czech wine-making traditions.’ It’s a nice little town – though biggest in the area – with a lot of history and architecture. The wine-making area of Mikulov has a hilly green landscape mapped as the Palava Protected Area. If you decide to take a rest day here, you can make an excellent easy ride through vineyards, forests and small villages.
Vineyards everywhere
And that was exactly my plan – stay for a day, ride around and taste the wine of course. And it would be all good, if it wasn’t so hot those days in Czechia. During the day, when riding around Palava, I found it impossible to drink especially when I still had to many kilometers ahead. But I thought ‘that’s fine, I will have some in the evening instead.’ So I came back to my camp, had some rest and went out to the village to find a wine bar.
To my big surprise this area full of tourists – mostly locals – on Saturday when I arrived, was absolutely empty on Sunday. Shops were closed, bars and restaurants were closed – there was basically nowhere to have a drink or a bite. I was leaving next morning and, seriously disappointed in my organizational skills, I went to sleep. However the best was about to come.
Next day I was cycling out of Mikulov, climbing a semi-steep hill, when an old lady came out of her house and staring at me with her wide opened eyes she exclaimed some very surprise-expressing words in Czech. With my Russian knowledge I figured she said something like ‘I haven’t seen anything like this before’ meaning my loaded bike and perhaps myself.
I stopped trying to reward her curiosity with my sign-language explanations of who I am and where I am going. A little later she asked if I’d like to taste some of her wine, and of course I couldn’t say no…and why would I ?? The lady run into her house and came out with two short glasses and a laboratory flask looking thing that had wine in it. She was holding it upside down on her right shoulder and with her left hand she was keeping the wine from running out (I really regret not taking a picture but that could break the whole moment).
Like a pro – well, she was a pro – she poured us two glasses of her homemade Mikulov wine that was shining in the afternoon sun. I tohught to myself ‘this must be the best Mikulov wine I could ever find’. Not only was it actually good, but it carried all the joys of travelling and meeting the kindest and most hospitable people on my way.
After the first glass was empty, she said something else which I thought meant ‘would you like to taste another one?’ In fact, she was making sure that I liked it because next thing I knew was that she run back into the house and came back with a liter of her amazing wine and gave it to me. And this is how I almost missed but found the best ever Mikulov wine.
