18512 well, i was mistaken, apparently we are stopping in Český Krumlov, it is a really cool little town, surrounding a castle. the Castle is up on the hill, making it very very hard to assault. technically the castle covers much of the surrounding area so the town and the castle kinda blend together, including a brewer, the town dates back to the 800s, the houses around go back to 1200s, the town is named after meandering rivers.
This used to be a jesuit brewery, the jesuits manage to burn down the the surrounding area while brewing, however now, it is a library. You can see the arch connecting the church to the brewery, there were iron walls installed to protect the church from the conflagration of the breweries the fires.
Church goes back to 1300s, to st vladislav, like many of the churches round here, it has frescoes that date back to 1400s unfortunately i have only one crappy picture, as there were no pictures allowed in the church. The schwarzenburgs buried their hearts here, to emulate the hapsburgs burying their bodies in disperate parts (they would bury the heart in one place, the body in one place, the intestines? in another.
Princiess elanor is fully buried here, other than that, thats the only info we got from the tour guide ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=default&search=princess+eleanor&fulltext=Search ) we then wandered through a Gothic church it had a baroque alter which, according to our tour guide has a good story behind it, the rosenburgs wanted a new alter in the church, they pulled out the gothic alter, and then they built an alter with a horse on it, and they worshiped it (im not sure what she meant by this, did they pull some idolatry and worshiped the horse? or they worshiped the alter that had the horse on it, and it wasnt sanctioned by the supreme pontiff in Rome, or what, but the jesuits didnt like it so, after the rosenburgs died out (see previous post about copulating cousins) the jesuits got rid of the paganesque alter and replaced it with the baroque one not seen in any pictures as we got yelled at, but it was there, ill see if i can dig up some pictures. our guide also pointed out that originally the town was two, split accross the river, cause back in the day that happened, towns developing within earshot of eachother, they had different privelages and writs according to the Hapsburg empire, and the Catholic church, including brewing practices which is obviously a big deal around here, they were ultimately united in 1555. and now they have only one town beer that i know of, Eggenburg beer, i had the light beer of theirs, and it was quite tasty. we wandered into the Castle area, the moat was filled with bears, let me type that out again, the moat was filled with BEARS... allegedly it was a symbol of the Rosenburg connection to Orsini ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orsini-Rosenberg ).
the top of the hill of the castle, has a Baroque theater, it is apparently largest castle theater in europe, one of two with exetensive sets and costumes recover, the other being somewhere in Switzerland. the stage dates back to the 18th century, it ultimately closed in 1898.
after this we found an italian place to eat at, i had some kind of alfredo pasta dinner thing, and we found a medieval restaurant bar pub thing. they had mead and grog and porridge, and all that great stuff. I ordered the cinnamon mead, the light eggenburg beer, and then the almond mead, others in our group had the moravian mead (which had moravian wine mixed), and one of the ladies of my friend group had grog, which was much like rum, but not as sharp, as its cut with water. the waiter was really cool, and recommended stuff to us, and it was an all round good time of conversation with kids from our trip, and the drink. going to sleep shortly, and TOMORROW heading to Vienna, hopefully i can snipe some interwebs to post pics
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