There have been so many iterations of this itinerary that I forget exactly what my original plan was.
It started with a list of places with shiny Christmas markets that included – in no particular order – Vienna, Budapest, Salzburg, Lille, Geneva, Tallinn, Bruges, Brussels, Krakow, Gdansk, Poznań, Cologne, Dresden, Basel, Plzeň, Merano, and Prague. Ljubljana popped up at one point (a very nice person in the tourist office emailed back very quickly) but then dropped off the list again as the ÖBB site started showing rail replacement services due to work on the line; far from ideal when travelling at a time of year when you don’t really want things to start going wrong.
With much faffing I whittled this list down a few times until I ended up with a starting route of Angoulême→ Zürich→ Nürnberg→ Plzeň→ Leipzig-or-Dresden→ Essen→ Liège→ Brussels. Another revision took in Leipzig then Plzeň before Nürnberg, and another included Hamburg — to be able to use my “Bah, Hamburg!” pun — but in the end, having accidentally booked reservations for my first and last stops, I started to make this far too complicated.
Essen Hostess (inadvertently) tried to complicate things more by sending me a glorious Weihnachtsmarkt Magazin offering a glossy abundance of 1088 new and exciting “romantic Christmas markets” to choose from “at a glance”. Zug Hostess, meanwhile, was also wondering what my plans were.
In the end, I made something up, a plan was made, and Plzeň was part of it. I needed somewhere to work for a couple of days, and booking a hotel room in Plzeň was much cheaper than even a hostel in Prague, and the first hotel I looked at on the booking site of choice that fulfilled my exacting criteria (bed, bathroom, roof, cheap) was the Hotel Victoria. I was sold on the basis of the exterior photos alone which made it look like an old seaside hotel — the sea admittedly a topographical feature lacking from Bohemia, but geography was never my strong point — looking a little bit tired but nonetheless utterly lovely. I had expected to walk from the main station until I realised my train from Prague also stopped at a station adjacent to the hotel. In fact, I don’t think the hotel could have been closer unless it were in Norrköping.
My room is plenty big enough for one person, has two beds, a desk, a fridge, a decent-sized bathroom, and lovely old-school fixtures and fittings which an overly-eager new owner would almost certainly rip out, simultaneously ruining the character of the place. And it had a vestibule, so I could close both my room door and the door to my room. These things are important. In the hotel there is also a spa, sauna, bar, restaurant, and a lift (all the way up to the first floor, were I am), so a longer stay would be perfectly comfortable. Things are a little bit 80s brown, but that’s nice too.
I started my day in the restaurant for my complimentary buffet breakfast, quickly reliving the Groundhog Day breakfast from the hotel in Prague where every time I got up to go to the buffet for more, I’d come back to discover my place had been cleared. The first time, I think after some lovely bread not of the kind I’m used to and cheese, I left my cup of coffee and took my leave to browse for something more to graze.
When I came back, my coffee had gone, so I put my plate down to get a new coffee only to come back to find my plate had been cleared. Efficient, admittedly, but an extra breakfast challenge I wasn’t ready for in my early-morning state of uncaffeinated confuddlement.
Eventually I got it all coordinated sufficiently that I was soon enjoying a poached egg (I think they’d ‘poached’ it in oil but I’m not complaining as it was all the better for it), roast mushrooms (oil again, herbs, proper lush), and some sort of beans in tomato sauce which I think were maison rather than out of a tin. I quite fancied some toast to go with all this, but had learned my lesson the hard way and was afraid to leave long enough to go to the toaster, so resigned myself to the sliced bread as was, a yummy rye affair.
It was a lovely breakfast marred only by the woman having a conversation on speakerphone in a language that sounded very angry; I was wearing my slippers, but I wasn’t feeling that brave.
The walk to the Pilsner Urquell brewery took about twenty minutes, and it’s possible to walk onto the site through the main gate and from there to the visitor centre, the bar (first serving at 10am) and the gift shop. I’d missed a two-hour English-language tour by a half-hour and had obligations which sadly stopped me from being able to take any tour, English or not, in the afternoon. I contented myself therefore with a trip to the gift shop, where I procured my first bottle-shaped fridge adornment.
When Pilsner Urquell was introduced to the world in 1842 it was the world’s first pale lager beer. Its popularity has seen the word pilsner become synonymous with its particular style and on my way past the bar on the way out I decided that if there were Czech people hanging around the bar having a pint of it for breakfast, it was perfectly acceptable for me to do so too.
Any Pilsner Urquell sold anywere in the world is brewed in Plzeň, and although there are other pilsners, only Pilsner Urquell is sold as a such domestically. I’m sure that it tasted sweeter than I’ve ever tasted it before from the tap on the bar at the brewery — rather than, say, a tap in the bathroom under which I could lie open-mouthed — though it should taste the same everywhere else.
Anyway. Wherever you buy a pint, it was brewed here.
On my way back through the square I had a perfunctory poke around the cathedral and briefly contemplated climbing the tower, but realised I had to be back at the hotel for a specific time for work so couldn’t, although a post-breakfast lull also hindered progress vertically. The utterly massive stained glass windows are quite the sight and there’s some conservative gawdy.
On my way back for work, I was very excited to discover a puppet museum on the south side of the square. Once again, free time was not in abundance and so I decided that would have to wait. I had a snooze.
By the time I headed back for a proper look at the Christmas market in the evening, it was the only thing touristy that was open. It was busy, and people of all ages were enjoying keeping warm around the sparkly tat and the array of food stalls. I followed the vánočka, Plzeň’s Christmas tram which is a festive tram festooned with sparkly lights that runs to a special timetable around the city and has a special route, so people can be surprised by it (and board, if I’ve understood correctly) wherever they are in the city.
At the west end of the cathedral, a large carousel whisked delighted children round in circles while a fairground organ belted out the Colonel Bogey March with impressive gusto. Somewhere near the cathedral I discovered a man who took cards and made my Glüh(a)perol dream a reality. After all the hype it was not really to my liking — a little too sickly if I’m honest — but I was glad to have tried it.
Meanwhile there was a concert on a stage where people gathered around clutching glasses of warm stuff were having a gentle bop, sway, or a sing while kids ran up and down a flight of stairs at the top of which was a bell for them to ring over-enthuastically to let their parents know they’d found a bell.
A large selection of food vendors were assembled mostly on the south side of the square, but with a noticeable lack of non-meaty eating options. A nativity scene attracted the children not ringing bells who were evidently unfazed by the questionable biblical accuracy of the presence of reindeer, terriers, a horse on its hind legs in dangerous proximity to the little one, more wise men than I recall being present, a couple of dogs, and possibly some elves.
Earlier in the day I’d spied a Lebanese restaurant which I quite fancied on my way home, only to discover it closed. There was a backup falafel shop on Americká which saved my stomach with a nice falafel wrap, before a final pint of Pilnser in the little bar next to the hotel washed everything down and helped with the digestion.
And so drew to a close my full day of Plzeň.
