Jemnice – a small town in the Czech Republic

I had a mission of my own on this trip and that was to visit my “American familys” ancestors birth places and see what they looked like. Unfortunately I could only find out about one of them but luckily it was pretty much on our way to Kutna Hora and the Bone Church on our way up north. It did turn out to be a pretty time consuming detour though – possibly the GPS lead us on to the small and winding roads a little too early so it took a lot more than the extra 1 hour we were told by the stupid little navigator. But looking on the map it pretty much looked like a shortcut! Oh well, luckily the roads were really nice and fun to ride and the landscape was very nice. And the sun was of course shining!.
Below are a bunch of pictures of the surroundings of Jemnice – as the little town is called – and of course of the square in the middle of the place which naturally is all built up around a neat little church. Very nice looking and tidy place but the first glance of the place when entering Jemnice I got a little puzzled of what I saw – a junk yard!

Pretty flat landscape in the whole area

First time we saw a cross like this by the road

Welcome to Jemnice huh!? Hmmm

Approaching the town center.

Are there no people living here?

Nice and tidy though.

It was sunday just after lunch so I guess that’s why the shops were closed but there were no people in the church either.

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It didn’t take long to finish the Jemnice square tour so we went for some lunch instead! Jan seemed to have ordered potato croquettes but it did say pineapple and chicken on the menu too. We think. The lady in the restaurant barely spoke any english at all and the menu was hard to understand.

And I got a healthy fish and no potatoes 🙂 Cant believe how cheap the food was here. Both our courses with drinks did cost about the same as one big beer at a fancy restaurant in Stockholm! And it was delicious too!

The church on top of the hill.

Jemnice outskirts

Time to continue the trip.

A neighboring village on our way towards Kutna Hora.

So my curiosity got satisfied! I’m glad we made this detour even though Jan didn’t seem too excited at first which is understandable since he didn’t have any connection to the place at all. Anyway, I hope my friends “over there” will find it nice to see what the place looks like.

Photo by Svetislav Todorovic

We got some photos sent to us from Svetislav or “Steve” whom we met in Lepenac in Serbia. I really love the hay stack image and asked him if I could share his pictures on this blog. So we could.

Below are some of his pictures from this beautiful country different times of the day and from different parts of the year. Enjoy.

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Polferries from Gdansk to Sweden

Back home after 19 totally fantastic days on the road. Not a single drop of rain, nice and sunny weather every day after our visit to Auschwitz which I think had the best possible weather to get the right feeling of the horrible place (grey and misty). Even when we got home to Sweden today the sun was shining. Again! We’ve had so much fun and have met so many nice and friendly people and I’m just totally happy! Now back to work and start planning for the next journey somewhere sometime…

I will post some more pictures here the following days to catch up with the past days of traveling and maybe some more. There has been long days on the bikes the last days and not too much spare time to sit by the computer. Especially not on the ferry last night because the sea was very rough and I actually started to feel a little sick, but after a sea-sick pill and a glass of wine I was back in business :). Dead tired though so the last night was not much of a party.

Jan wrote something about the horrible food on the ferry we had for dinner last night… well take a look at what they served for breakfast!! Yikes.

Well this is only decoration in the diner, thank god…

Approaching Nynäshamn – the Polferrys destination is 50-60 km south of Stockholm City. Nice weather and sunny even in Sweden! 🙂 A little colder though but not bad, about 16 degrees celsius today.

First stop in Sweden was my house, Jan has another 10 km home so this is where we said bye bye. When we left that friday almost 3 weeks ago I forgot to set my trip meter at home but I remembered it halfway to the ferry in Nynäshamn so I zero’ed it on the road. The strange co-incidence is that when we passed the exact same spot today my meter turned to 5000 km sharp! My total milage on this trip ended up at 5030 kilometers. Pretty good I must say and I’m so happy my bike was cooperative with me all the time – I mean, it IS a Harley after all… 😉

…more later
//Tina

Last breakfast in Poland

Had a long day on our bikes yesterday, traffic in this country sucks. Today we have 250 km left to travel but we better calculate that it’ll take all day… Yesterday we passed a tragic accident on the road and the traffic stood probably still the whole afternoon. We passed it smoothly with our bikes though. We had some grey skies too yesterday (late afternoon only) and for the first time we had trouble finding a hotell that was not full! We ended up in Gniezno finally finding a nice place so yesterday did turn out great after all. Total milage yesterday: 480 km.

And today the sun is shining. Again 🙂

This pic is taken at a very nice sunset in the mountains of Serbia, actually the very same day my regular camera ran out of batteries that Jan kindly wrote about earlier. Surprisingly nice shot for being taken with a phone camera I think…

Kutna Hora in Czech Republic

Today we drove from Bratislava in Slovakia to Kutna Hora outside Prague in Czech Republic. We went through the countryside on small roads to check out a town called Jemnice. More about that in another post. When we entered the Czech Republic I almost missed the border when leaving Slovakia, not even a boot to pass through, it’s easier to travel the more far up north you get. But what I did notice was that roads are in bad condition here – both the concrete highways and the small roads in the country side. People don’t understand english either so I got a little frustrated when trying do buy a coffee from a vending machine at a gas station that only took Czech money and the woman behind the counter refused to help me to change from Euros 😦 Better luck at the next place because the staff was very helpful there. The flip side of the coin was that I actually got chocolate instead of coffee but I was happy anyway 🙂
Now food time and then hit the sack because tomorrow will be a long day.

I checked the trip meter tonight and we have been driving approx. 4200 km since we arrived in Gdansk in Poland a little more than 2 weeks ago!

Cute little moon in Kutna Hora.