Film Festival and Castle

Venturing deeper into local stories and culture

05.07.2011 - 05.07.2011 16 °C

Hotel Goethe served good breakfast. Loket castle was open to the public today, naturally I went in to explore the castle before going to town for the international film festival. Loket castle is actually quite significant throughout the ages. It has served as a stronghold, converted into political prison and is of strategic importance especially during the age of kings. The tombstones and the archaeological findings on display are very interesting. The prison and the torture chamber, equipped with audio samples of cries of pain and sounds of torture instruments, feels more like a freak dungeon that scares little children rather than just an exhibition. The mood is indeed there as the exhibition is actually inside the dungeon. The gruesome deaths depicted is quite graphic.
So, I will not put any pictures of those here.

It was drizzling the entire morning. The rain feels gentle and clean and I love to stroll in this weather
Tried to figure out a way to get to Karlovy Vary for the film festival at noon. Turns out that public buses only runs at 12 hours interval, waiting would not be possible, I walked out of the main town of Loket and started hunting for those small little rural train station. Got the timetable and tickets with great difficulty and thankfully some kind stranger helped me out when I am supposed to change trains midway (or I would have went to nowhere). Wandered around the outskirts of KV before heading into the actual town for the festival.

Managed to catch some indie films, I watched Transformers recently and compared to these low budget films, Transformers sucked because it was so empty in contrast. Played around in a few exhibition booth (Sony, Audi) and decide to get back to Loket to spend my last evening there.
Before that, another picture (lovely people make the extra effort to arrange flowers in public squares)

The journey back was creative. Today was a public holiday and thanks to my ignorance, public transport ends their service at 3pm. Had to walk, hitchhike and get on those really old trains to get all the way back to Loket. It was unpredictable, I had fun. There's also a random couple that I met along the way that actually understood English. They gave some really helpful pointers and thanks to these guys, I didn't get lost
Booked a taxi for tomorrow for my travel back to KV because I'd need to avoid the hassle of unpredictable public transport in this area
My last evening in Loket was a quiet one. I walked along the river and then up a hill, enjoying the view as the sun sets. I realized that this could be a great place of solitude if I need one in the future.