So we left Brno and made our way to Vranov nad Dyji.  The ride there was really beautiful and not too long.  While we were weaving through the hills we saw a castle or something on the top of a hill that was so absolutely beautiful and enchanting.  I thought it was just something awesome that were passing by (which we did a bit: “what is that beautiful big building off the side of the road?” “Oh, just like an old castle, I guess.”), but the town around it was where we were staying for the night.

When we get off of the bus I think that all of us took the same picture of the castle a few hundred times.  We still weren’t able to capture how beautiful it was with out camera, but the most amazing things usually cannot be.

We were basically the only people in this teeny tiny town, and we went to the only restaurant that was open.  It was western themed.  as in wild old western theme.  Like it was called a saloon with the small swinging doors at the entrance, and tipis, buffalos, and indians painted on the walls.  Hilarious.  We got dinner there and then a Czech folk music group came.  It was a quartet with violin, viola, bass, and… I can’t remember, maybe another violin.  Besides playing their instruments they sang really loudly like shouting.  I loved how over the top that was.  They also wore these traditional white embroidered shirts, well except the bass player.  He wore a plaid shirt (those cool bass players, right?).  It was really good music, and in their second set we all got up and danced.  When we first started dancing, I asked one of my RAs who came on the trip what would be a typical dance to this type of music.  She thought for a bit, and then said “maybe like this?” and did basically the twist.  Regardless of what the proper way to dance actually was, we danced pretty hard and had so so much fun.  After the restaurant - which we were at for like 4 hours - all 20 or so of us on the trip hung out, witnessed the clearest night sky I’ve ever seen, and watched this kid jumped in a river for attention.

We left pretty early the next morning for Lednice and Bzenec - I’ll write about that a bit later :)

More photos on flickr!