Cesky Krumlov

Two days ago we arrived in Cesky Krumlov, a UNESCO world heritage site. It is in a group of little hills along a river and surrounded by trees. At the top is the castle, the elaborately painted tower that you will see in the last pictures. If you have seen the movie "The Illusionist" you have seen the castle, it is one of the most unique and magical looking places I have ever seen. Yesterday we got a tour from a woman whose family has lived in Cesky Krumlov for generations. Both of her grandfathers were sent to labor camps in WWII, one escaped and hid in a monastery until the war was over and the other had to be the truck driver that went through towns with a siren warning about air raids. Both of her grandfathers survived and moved back to Cesky Krumlov at the end of the war.

Here is a view from the top of the Castle gardens. The castle is supposedly haunted by a good spirit named Perchta. She was forced to marry a man she didn't want to and who was terrible to her and on his death bed he recognized how terrible he had been and asked for her forgiveness. She couldn't find it in her heart to forgive him so he cursed her before he died. She lived for 3 more years but had more joy than she had had during her entire marriage. After she died she began to appear to young children who were alone or needed protection and also to people as a warning. If she wore red gloves she was warning about a fire, black gloves meant death, and white gloves meant good news. I'll keep my eyes out for her!
This is the castle tower. The amazing frescoes were made in the 1500s and then painted over with plaster in the 1600s. The plaster was removed in the 1900s and had preserved the frescoes really well so that is why the colors look so great. On the bottom you can see what looks like yellow bricks which is actually just painted to appear to be bricks. I guess they wanted to make people question reality and what was really real or fake and then look into their lives and think about what they took for granted as real or present that really wasn't.