A Night to Remember

For those of you who know Ben and I, you know that we have had our share of crazy experiences when traveling during the past couple years: the condo locking us out in Hilton Head (I didn't misspeak, the condo did lock us out), the bag debacle on the way to New Orleans, the passport trouble and Prague, and most recently, our trip to Buchlovice.
So this weekend Ben and I decided that we wanted to see some of the great sites that the Czech Republic has to offer, and some of my students had recommended going to Buchlovice. It sounded like a really great idea. The town has a chateau (Buchlovice) and a castle (Buchlov) so Ben and I planned to see both on Sunday, but little did we know the Czech "system" had other plans for us...
Let me start at the beginning... First, we got on a bus that was supposed to take us to Buchlovice; perfect we thought, we'll arrive in the town by noon and have 7 hours to see everything, but as we were on the bus, it continued about 10km past Buchlovice to Uherské Hradiště. This should have been our first sign. So, at the bus station we ask when the next bus goes to Buchlovice and we discover that we have to wait 1 hour and 45 minutes for the next bus. So we explored Uherské Hradiště.

One of the two Uherske Hradiste Squares (one is Masaryk and one is Marian, but I don't know which is which)

Leading into the other square

Church of St. Francis Xavier

Ben posing with the bicycle 

After our tour, we finally caught our bus! Yay! So we get to Bichlovice at 2:30 (4.5 hours remaining)...

And we learn that we have to walk/hike 4km uphill to get to the castle (which closes at 6) and all we have to do is follow the yellow markers to get there. Now, if you've ever been to Europe, especially the Czech Republic, you know that signs/directions are not their forte. At any rate we begin our uphill journey.

See that town way off in the distance? That's where we started.. and at this point we are about halfway and have lost the yellow markers.

The sights we saw "off the beaten trail"

The castle off in the distance.. and we're over half-way up the hill

Castle again

We found the yellow markers!!! 

Sweat marks on Ben's back from the backpack after hiking up the hill.

An hour after we began our hike we made it to the castle (we made pretty good time if you ask me)-- it's 3:30 (3.5 hours remaining). We decide to do the tour because you really aren't able to see much of the castle without it. Of course touring castles in the Czech Republic if you speak English means that you are reading from a book while someone talks to everyone else in Czech. And they are all laughing at some joke while you are reading a description of some room that you may or may not be in at the moment.

Buchlov Castle

A view from the roof of the castle

The clock tower and a small part of the courtyard.

Now that we've finished the castle tour it's (5:30); yes, it was about an 1.5 hour-- we didn't know that. So we decided to hurry down to Buchlovice so we can see the gardens of the Chateau before they close (at 7pm). So we run through the forest of death...

Please note that I didn't add any effects to this image.. it really is the forest of death; we found bones!

Back down to the Chateau. We're a little nervous because there seems to be no one there and it's only 6:15 (45 minutes until closing time), but we read the sign and it says that the park closes at 7pm in May, June, July, and August so we go in. But bad luck strikes us again and a man, speaking in Czech, tells us the park is closed for today. We hang our heads and turn away. We had tried so hard to be able to do it all, but because of unexpected bus issues, bad yellow markers, an uphill hike, and mis-communicated signs we weren't able to accomplish our goal. So you think the story's over? WRONG! 

So now we're stuck again (6:20) at Buchlovice until the next bus comes at 7:45. So we wait and wait and wait. Finally, the bus comes and the driver tells us that no bus goes back to the train/bus station now because it's Sunday. OF COURSE! After being serenaded by a drunk Czech man who told me that he couldn't live without me and crying because I didn't know how we were going to get home, the bus driver took pity on us and drove us to a bus stop where we could get a connection (THANK GOODNESS!). So you think the story's over? WRONG AGAIN!

So we finally make a connection that gets us back to the original bus station in Uherské Hradiště. So you think the story's over? WRONG AGAIN!

There are no buses going to Brno until 4:15am! So we start walking the 5km towards the train station. It's 8:45pm. Finally we arrive at the train station at 9:15 and I look wearily at the woman behind the counter and ask for two tickets to Brno and she just shakes her head. There is nothing going to Brno tonight. AHHHHHH! Now what?? Luckily, Ben spots a train that is coming in 30 minutes that might be able to get us home tonight. The woman finds a way to get us there, but we have a 2 hour layover at some train station in the middle of nowhere. But at this point, what do we care... we're going to get home tonight! After one train ride, 2 hours of playing cards in the train station, and one more stinky and over-crowded train ride we made it back to Brno at 12:58am. So you think the story's over? WRONG AGAIN!

We have 2 minutes to sprint from the train to the night bus so that we don't have to wait at the Brno bus station for another hour. About 15 of us sprinted underneath the train station, much like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=3QfwlvaghmI#t=32s. And we made the bus!!! So you think the story's over? You're Right!! It's finally over. We made it home at 1:20am. A trip we'll never forget :)