Day 10

Today was the 1st Annual Pilzen Rotary Charity Golf Tournament. We got up bright and early and made our way to the Pilzen Golf Course. Once there, local dignitaries started arriving by the ton! We got to meet H.E. Richard Graber, the American Ambassidor to the Czech Republic; one of the Czech Senators, the Lord Mayor of Pilzen, and the lead singer of Yellow Dog (the local Pilzen band that plays US Southern Rock in Czech. They were the ones playing "Freebird" a few nights ago). We took several pictures and smiled and shook hands for awhile. Soon, since Butler was the only team member would actually be participating in the golf tournament, the girls and I left the golf course to go see a local castle/chateau.

Our guide, Yurak, explained that there were two types of Czech castles: strongholds and palaces. We had seen many of the big stone strongholds, but today we would see a palace. He told us he would be taking us to a "hunting castle". Of course, with the accent we all thought he said "haunted castle" and I got really excited until I realized the actual translation. Oh well. Yurak took us to Castle Kozel up in the mountains by Pilzen. It is like a smaller Czech version of Versailles. It had some beautiful outside gardens and sculptures, and was made up by a campus of buildings. Inside the buildings, the rooms were decorated in Rococo/Louis 16th style of furniture. My favorite feature of the decor though was the heavy use of Trompe l'Oeil that was used on the walls. It's a technique that uses visual tricks to make you think there are things like molding, brick work, etc when really it's just painting and shading. And it was all over this place! Perhaps one of the coolest roomes in the palace was a small theater, complete with gas lamps.

After this visit to Kozel, we drove to Dolni Vlkys, or Wilkeshen. This was a very important visit for me because this was the village where my grandmother, Leopoldine Sedlachek was born, and my main motivation for visiting the Czech Republic. Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to meet Jan Soukoup, the architect I mentioned who is in charge of restoring Czech national monuements. As fate would have it, he had just finished restoring a small chapel in Dolni Vlkys, and had the back story on the village. This was a small German community about 20 miles from Pilzen when my grandmother was born. It was a pretty active village, even during WWII because of it's largely German population. However, after WWII the anti-German sentiment was pretty strong. The village was partily destroyed and it's occupants sent to re-location camps. Today there is not much more than a few buildings left, and they are turning the remains of it into a suburb for Pilzen. However, it was a poignant moment to walk the grounds where my Grandmother and family lived so long ago. It was made even more poignant, as on the drive to the village I received word that my Aunt had passed away (we had been expecting it, so it wasn't a suprise). It was a very bittersweet look at the circle of life, as I examined where one part of my family tree had been born, I pondered the loss of another part. I am so grateful that I had this opportunity, and so grateful that the local Rotary club made it possible. One of the rotarions, Yurak our guide had been calling me their "Czech grandchild" all week.

After our visit to Dolni Vlkys, we went to Yurak's house. It was an old converted farm and it looked like paradise. I took some pictures but I don't know that they did it justice. His gardens were beautiful. He also had 4 cats, which i was very happy to play with since I miss my own cats very much.

After that we stopped for lunch, and then made our way back to the golf tournament for the wrap up celebration. The wrap up celebration had an auction, which was conducted in Czech. However, being willing to engage in whatever culture we could, we soon started bidding. Allison, one of the team members bid against herself in an effort to win a blanket (which she did get). I was talking to a friend and since I was gesticulating wildly, I accidentally entered the bidding on an item. Thankfully, another person outbid me, but it was a heart pounding moment! After that we got to say goodbye to several of the Rotoract friends we have made here. We will be leaving Pilzen on Friday and it is not likely that we will see them again. It's amazing to me how you can become fiends with people so quickly! I hope to keep in touch with all of them through email.

There are no words of the day. I was too caught up in other things to worry about language. I'll try harder tommorow!