Self-isolating here in my home, I’ve been thinking about how, around the world, people have different ways to relax. The Czechs? They enjoy submerging themselves in a mucky peat brine. I consider this the strangest bath I have ever taken.
With so many of us stuck at home for the foreseeable future, I believe a daily dose of travel dreaming can actually be good medicine. Here’s another one of my favorite travel memories — a reminder of what’s waiting for you in Europe at the other end of this crisis.
I’m in the well-preserved Czech spa town of Třeboň. I’ve decided to supplement my intense time in touristy Prague by venturing south, deeper into the Czech countryside. Třeboň’s biosphere of artificial lakes dates back to the 14th century. Over the years, people have transformed what was a flooding marshland into a clever combination of lakes, oak-lined dikes, wild meadows, Baroque villages, peat bogs, and pine woods. Rather than unprofitable wet fields, they wanted ponds that swarmed with fish — and today Třeboň remains the fish-raising capital of the Czech Republic.
People come from near and far to soak in Třeboň’s black, smelly peat sludge, thought to cure aching joints and spines. Envisioning the elegance of the baths I’ve experienced in Germany’s Baden-Baden, I decided to give it a whirl. I’m filming a show on the Czech Republic and suspect it will make good TV.
My attendant doesn’t understand why I have an entourage (which includes my local guide, Honza, and our two-person TV crew), but she also doesn’t pay them much attention. She points to my room and mimes undressing. With the crew here working, I decide to keep my swimsuit on. She shakes her head, disappointed. The camera equipment takes some time to set up. The masseuse is impatient, anxious to get started because the peat muck only flows at the top of the hour. I climb into the stainless-steel tub, she pulls a plug, and I quickly disappear under a rising sea of gurgling sawdust soup. My toes look cute poking out of the hot brown muck.
Filming takes a long time — and this is one of the quirkiest sequences we’ve ever done for the show. The attendant wants to hurry things along. She acts like I’ll overdose if I stay in the tub too long. When we finish shooting, I stand up in the tub and she showers off the sludge, then ushers me into the massage room, where she has me lie face down. It feels like a nurse’s office with a pile of dirty sheets stacked in the corner. Honza translates what I’m about to experience as a “hand massage.” That sounds redundant at best…kinky at worst. He explains that’s literally what massages are called in Czech (ruční masáž).
We just want to film my shoulders. But she insists on ignoring the camera’s needs and giving me a hand massage from my shoulders to just about where I don’t want the camera to go. When the crew gets what they need, they leave. I try to go, too, but my earnest masseuse won’t let me. She insists on the full body massage that every patient at the Třeboň spa expects.
After finally being set free, I get dressed. Alone and still covered in greasy oil, I head out to meet my crew at dinner. When you come to Třeboň, you have to try the fish. We order all the appetizers on the menu — a good trick when trying to sample another culture’s cuisine. There’s “soused” (which must mean “pickled”) herring, fried loach, “stuffed carp sailor fashion,” cod liver, pike caviar, and something Honza translates as “fried carp sperm.” As we eat, I notice that the writing on my beer glass says, “Bohemia Regent anno 1379.” It occurs to me that I’m consuming exactly what people have been eating here for 600 years: fried carp sperm from the nearby reservoir, washed down with the local brew.
Dinner comes with a lively band. They play everything from Bach and Smetana to Czech folk favorites and 1930s anti-fascism blues. The string bass player grooves like a white Satchmo, his long and forceful bow sliding in and out between diners. The bandleader plays a 100-year-old black wood flute. During a break, I run my finger along its smooth mouthpiece — worn down like an ancient marble relic by countless nights of musicmaking. The flutist sports a big bushy mustache just like Emperor Franz Josef, who looks down at us from a yellowed poster.
Above the quartet is a high window. The heads of teenagers bob into sight — they’re straining on tiptoes and craning to look in. Each time a song ends, glass mugs of golden beer rattle on rough wood tables as the roaring crowd claps and cheers for more. As the night wears on, there are fewer tourists snapping photos and more locals singing along as the quartet sways together like seaweed in a nostalgic musical tide.
I compliment our server on the beer. He says, “These days, many Poles and Hungarians are going west to France and Germany to get jobs. But not the Czechs. We can’t find good enough beer anywhere but here. Our love of Czech beer keeps us from going abroad for better jobs.”
Back in my hotel, I climb to my attic room — careful not to bean myself on a thick medieval timber. I lean out my tiny dormer window, the sound of the boisterous bar small in the distance. The new, sturdy roof tiles around me are slick and gleaming with a light rain. The street, wet and shiny, is as clean as a model railroad town. Cars, while not expensive, are new and parked as tidy as can be. Cheap yellow lampposts light the scene. After 40 bleak years of communism, the lampposts seem to be intentionally cheery, decorating the line of pastel facades arcing into the distance. They seem to proclaim a society on track for a brighter future.
(This story is excerpted from my upcoming book, For the Love of Europe — collecting 100 of my favorite memories from a lifetime of European travel. It’s coming out in July, and available for pre-order. And you can also watch a video clip related to this story: Just visit Rick Steves Classroom Europe and search for Czech Republic.)
Want to watch the segment we filmed in Třeboň? You can check it out here.