They certainly picked an interesting time to send me to a city on the banks of a river in the Czech Republic. Generally, America doesn’t really care about shit that’s going down not in America, so you might not have heard that the past couple weeks have seen some incredibly rainy weather, and the flooding and mudslides that come along with it, in Central Europe. I spent a couple nights in Prague before making my way here to Kadaň, and the city was swarming with cops and army-esque dudes throwing up sandbags and flood walls and shit. The second night, the ridiculously historic Charles Bridge was closed due to the high waters.
The flooding didn’t get too bad before I snuck out of town, but then I came here to find that my hotel was within spitting distance of the Ohře River. And predictably, the water was frighteningly high. And better yet, I found that there’s a dam maybe 1,000 feet upriver from where I sleep every night. So, like a dumb ass, I googled the floods and found a story with this headline: “Families rescued by helicopter as 2 levees break in Germany; tens of thousands evacuated.” Believe it or not, it didn’t do much to assuage my concerns…
But, after 3 days of a dreary steady rain, the sun came out and the river crested, and turns out, this place is really pretty. So, I took a stroll around and checked out the river and the sunset. Have a look…
There she is. The Hotel Split. Pretty sweet, my American dollar goes a lot farther around here, a helluva lot better than the exchange rates in the U.K. or Germany. I have a balcony and everything.
And my balcony looks over the river, and is like 4 feet from a nice little path that runs along it.
I told you the water got uncomfortably high….
Just up the river from my hotel is this here dam. I’ll be honest, when I heard that the floods were threatening several dams in the area it made it a little hard to sleep until the rains quit….
Anyone up for a dip?
Even after the rivers crested, there was a ton of water.
And the sunset just above the dam, where the river really wasn’t so much of a river.
Pretty stuff.
Went back with the tripod after the sun went down.
Nice.
And finally, the trail from the top of the dam back to the hotel…
That’s all from my current little host town. Come back soon and we’ll have a look around London and the English country side.
Don’t be a stranger.
- B. Littleton
