The landscape around Berlin is as flat as the line on a ECG monitor gets just before the surgeon turns to the adjutant nurse and says, "time of death 11.52 PM". Bemoaning the flatness of it all and yearning for some blips and peaks on my lifeline, talk moves at midnight to the nearest undulations. The lodger —medical student by day and sardonic Saxon come evening time— mentions having heard a patient in intensive care talking about some dark and menacing cliffs in the North of the Czech Republic. He has heard the rocks are popular with rock-climbers and even geologists. But then rocks usually are.
I drive through the night, through the smirking dream of fairy-tale Dresden and along the river Elbe as she flows black and restless beneath the veiled moon. Below Dresden, in the sächsische Schweiz, the brooding Elbe river rises up into the Krkonoše or Riesengebirge on the north-western borders of the Czech Republic and, a hundred hills beyond me, is met by the Moldau river of northern Bohemia —terrible twins twisting in the night.
Abandoning the car at daybreak a mile or so from the border, I head out into cold grey light of dawn and gasp the chilly, bracing air in.
The portly border-crossing guards stare at me with amusement, a gaggle of coffee cups
steaming near the orange glow of the gas heater, pretzel crumbs clambering up their beards. I am bemused, I am also becoming numb with cold. I need to keep walking but have to stand and wait for the KeyStein Kops to finish their investigations. Jogging on the spot with my arms dangling by my side turns out to be a bad idea. It seems they don't get many pedestrians around these parts and my vehicle-less-ness has raised suspicions as well as bushy eyebrows.
Occasional transport lorries rumble back and forth behind us as our passports are thoroughly checked and rechecked to a dawn chorus of hmms and aahs. Scoffing grins finally return to the faces of the Hercule Poirot fan club in the über-tollbooth and we are waved on.
The road ahead into the Czech republic offers a pleasant brown muddiness to contrast with the ashen sky and smell of burnt rubber drifting in the air. A courtyard full of heavily used farm equipment is followed by two stores befronted with rows and rows of garden gnomes, wheel
barrows and galvanized steel dustbins. Tempting stuff for any passing tourists. Not a soul can be seen, but the army of garish gnomes and their beedy menacing eyes are unnerving me. On, on to Bohemia, past wheelbarrows and armies of gnomes.
There are times in life, when leaving the path and heading up the adjoining embankment is the correct response. The border-crossing booth and gnomeville disappear from sight as the first snow begins to fall. The forests and hills of Bohemia lay stretched out ahead and the teetering red needle of a brass compass shows the way.
Yomping over the Bohemian countryside is both invigorating and bewitching. Through beautiful forests and over joyful hills. Brushing our way through gulleys and copses then over streams that trickle playfully swelled slowly by the fallen snow. Moving, reflecting, drawing the smell of cedar in, the only sound that of water running through and the cracks of old bony branches underfoot.
The snow is falling thick and heavy and the path through the forest s narrow and clandestine. A figure emerges through the snow, a Czech with the face of a fawn and I wait for the Ice Queen to coming sleighing through as I search for the wardrobe and fur coats.
The snow falls thick and fast as I raise my eyes to the dark pride of the cliffs ahead, they rise prominent in the distance above the snow capped forest. Onwards.
The Name Czech Switzerland or Bohemian Switzerland, in Czech "?eské Švýcarsko", was inspired by certain Swiss artists, who were reminded of their homeland by the geography of northern Bohemia. Czech Switzerland is the czech part of the Elbe Sandstone Mountains in northern Bohemia. The area has a dreamlike quality that loans itself to discovery.
The darkness of the cliffs is surprising. The walk up through their high-walled corridors is a steep and icy one. Caves and wind-riven tunnels nest amongst the channels of the soaring cliffs.
One such cave offers shelter and the chance to fire up the primus burner, reflect amid the hail storm as warm tea runs down inside me. The only sound is that of ice beating down on rock and an ocean of wind crashing through.
Later, as I return through a forest dotted with dwellings and dogs leashed with a rope fit for mooring ships -the houd of the baskervilles mated with a brown bear to produce this bellowing monstrosity and yet I percevere.
There is a meditative quality to clambering alone amongst high rocks while the elements lash down and around. The silence couples with the natural force and beauty of this Bohemia and standing upon the highest point, clear of all, my eyes gaze upon a serenity of violet heathers across a spellbinding undulation of Bohemian hills, forests and vales. Far off, the tail of the storm slides silky grey over a distant valley leaving just a dance of air as a reminder. My heart is beating full once more. I am alive.
