THE CLEARING SKIES PREDICTED FOR TODAY never materialized and it was cold and drizzling when we parked in the town square. During the Middle Ages, Telc was one of the planned settlements amid the virgin forests established to insure political control of the region. Except for the shops on street level the buildings look much as they would have 500 years ago, so much so that a German film company was using the town as a shooting location.
Telc, unchanged by time
All of the other places we hope to visit in the Czech Republic lie within 50 kilometers or so of Brno and the Birdsnest is the perfect headquarters. The rooms are wonderful with a kitchenette, new bathrooms, great wifi and even BBC. We, however, are a bit of an oddity — the first American guests — and all three generations have teamed up to serve us. Roman does the cooking and works the desk, his mother actually owns the place and lives here while son Januz translates for us. When he isn’t around Roman and I struggle through with our equally indufficient German.
Lednice Chateau from the gardens
As wonderful as the Birdsnest is, Brno is a driver’s nightmare. One-way streets, ongoing construction and road closures have our GPS in a tizzy while the trolley tracks and speeding streetcars are making me a nervous wreck. It actually took us as long to negotiate 3 miles in town as it did to travel the 30 miles from Lednice Chateau, the 14th Century home of the royal Liechtensteins. Even the dreary weather couldn’t erase the baroque splendor of the chateau and grounds.
