For our final day, we took a bus from Jindrichuv Hradec to Nova Bystrice, about 24km from our finish line. A black dog trailed us out of Nova Bystrice until we reached the village of Klaster. About 8km later, we passed the imposing Landstejn castle, then hiked through dense fern-blanketed pine forest. I half expected to see a troll or a gnome. Instead, we came across igloo-like concrete bunkers, many of which were camouflaged with dirt and tree branches.
These bunkers, it turned out, were built from 1935 to 1938 to guard the Czechoslovak border against an invasion by Hitler. But during the Cold War, the bunkers served the opposite function: to prevent Czechoslovak citizens from escaping to the West. That might explain why the area felt spooky.
As we passed the final bunker, the Renaissance-era bell tower of Slavonice came into view. We trudged through a neighborhood of 19th-century houses and through one of Slavonice’s medieval stone gates.
The tiny town looked like it hadn’t changed in two centuries, with triangular-shaped piazzas lined with old Renaissance apartment buildings painted with colorful, comic-strip-like biblical scenes. Back in the 15th century, Slavonice was a common stopover on the Prague-to-Vienna trade route. Today, it’s become a magnet for artists and bohemians from Prague.
And, of course, it is also attracting visitors like me, looking for a cheap place to stay and a friendly pub in which to rest my feet and nurse a sudsy beer after an 128km Bohemian hike. We put down our backpacks and headed for the first bar we saw.
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