PHOTO-A-DAY CHALLENGE

Czechia Here We Come

Week 149 of the photographic documentary of my daily life

NATO is having the biggest military training event in its history blocking most of Germany's airspace and therefore we got a couple of forced days off. A skydiver's life. Could be worse.

You all know I can’t sit still for very long and especially not when I know a few days in advance already I’m going to have 5 days in a row off. Here the planning starts...

Or not. Because we don't like to overthink things. Or plan much. We agreed on a country, decided to sleep in the car and drove off.

Czechia.

Or is the Czech Republic?

"The Czech Republic’s official formal and short names at the United Nations are Česká republika and Česko in Czech, and the Czech Republic and Czechia in English. All these names derive from the name of the Czechs, the West Slavic ethnolinguistic group native to the Czech Republic. Czechia, the official English short name specified by the Czech government, is used by many international organisations." - Wikipedia

But before we could get moving, we still had a bit of work to do. Thursday was a great day in the sky, only the afternoon got blocked by heavy rain clouds. But the country needed rain after a couple of dry weeks.

Friday was a busy one and I was training a student when I took this random selfie. My face, the sun, and the plane all in one shot. I'd be lying if I'd say it was planned. But there are things I capture with the camera mounted on my chest I don't even know of.

This is me. At work.

Saturday I freaked out a little. When I saw that rainbow while freefalling toward the Earth. I captured the colorful bow mid-air and afterward on the ground.

Such days make me happy. Some clouds, but not too many. Some rain in the distance, but not too close. Some sunshine right behind me and in the perfect place to create this magical rainbow.

On Sunday my excitement was climbing with the altitude. Whenever I had a little break, I started packing the car and once we had landed from our last jump, we were off.

Czechia here we come!

We didn't have much daylight left but it didn't even take us two hours to arrive at the Czech border. And a few kilometers later, we found this lovely little campsite located on a river where a duck was guarding the lighthouse.

The church was opposite our camping spot. Soft songs of the church bell were sounding across the river as we closed our eyes.

The next day, we drove a little further North to the Elbe Sandstone Mountains. Camping in a valley surrounded by forest-covered hills, we stayed on the border between Germany and Czechia.

At lunchtime, we started the hike up on the edge of this mountain range. The spectacular rock formations were the highlight of our tour. These sandstone boulders were just like from another era.

The next morning we headed deeper into the Bohemian Switzerland National Park and had some popular hiking trails in mind but were shocked on the last 10 kilometers to our campsite as both sides of the road were burnt to the ground.

Not having done any research, I had forgotten this part of the mountains had endured a horrifying wildfire last summer that lasted for three weeks. The camp we stayed at was surrounded by large trees but many hills and entire mountain slopes in the surroundings were partly burnt or destroyed.

And even now, a year later, many trails were still closed due to a high risk of falling trees.

While we started in an area where the forest was rather healthy, we turned into a valley of destruction. It was something I hadn’t seen before. So many dead trees. So much dark brown and black.

Just the birds singing above our heads showed us that nature has moved on already.

And of course all the small things on the ground. In a year, bundles of grass have formed, fungi grew right out of the ashes and the toxic foxglove flowers were blooming all around the hills.

Life after destruction.

While we did enjoy the hike in the dead valley, we decided it was enough for one day. We didn't feel like hiking more in such a destroyed forest and looked for a new destination.

Two hours further north leading us along the border to Germany up to the border to Poland. Somewhere, where Poland and Czechia meet in the Giant Mountains, I selected a camping site at 750 meters (2500ft) in altitude.

And after the hike in the damaged forest, this lush green was balm for the eyes and the soul.

And since we loved it so much, we decided to stay a second night a do a long trip the following day.

A waterfall at the edge of a mountain range was the destination for the day. The hike took us almost seven hours until we returned to camp and we were exhausted and tired when we got back to the car but loved the adventure.

This has been my week in photographs. 7 days. 7 photographs. Anyone can join. Once. Or weekly. It doesn’t matter. We welcome everyone! Dennett started this photography challenge in 2020 and many have participated ever since.

Dennett / Erika / Eileen / K. Barrett / Juan / David / Mia / Susan / LensAfield / Kim / Barbara / Diana / Barb / Sandra / Shruthi / Ellie / Pene / Olive / Gustavo / Jane / Penny / Jillian / Shell / Ivy / Lisa / Lynne

And these are the previous weekly photo essays:

Full Moon Magic and Friends in the Sky

Week 148 of the photographic documentary of my daily life

medium.com

Let’s Go to the Lake!

Week 147 of the photographic documentary of my daily life