We stopped for the night in a small town in the Czech Republic called Čáslav. It is pronounced Chas-lav by the locals. Čáslav is the ancestral homeland of my wifes’ family (Semrad) and that was the motivation for making the stop there. It is a quite little town of about 10,000 people but still seems to be thriving. The town is centered around an old square. I like to call it Semrad Square. Our waitress confirmed this before she thought about it too much. There are statues and a nice park with an old church situated on one side. Shops and restaurants circle the square. One of the restaurants is owned by someone with the family name Semrad according to our sources. They were closed for holiday while we were there. I included a picture of it. There is an old stone wall that surrounds the center part of the city that is a remnant of the original wall of the city. The square is made of tightly placed stones in a nice pattern. Other walkways have stones locked into place on their sides with a cinder-like material holding them together.
I included many shots from just walking around town, various buildings and houses that caught my eye were thrown in just to give a sense of the town, not so much for photographic merit. I found a little weather station installed on a stone pillar in the square. There was some new construction around and a new traffic circle was being constructed and almost done. A body of water (Semrad river) flows through town and has a dam at one end with a drainage canal off the downside of a waterfall. The fish in the lake are plentiful. I ran across a nearby fishing supply store which reminded me of Jack.
I found an Exotik Hobby store and thought it was interesting. I stopped by later to see what it was - a pet store. Early in the morning that we were leaving there was a market in the square. People set up tables full of local produce, flowers, herbs, breads and there was even a mobile meat market truck. The vegetables looked especially good, lots of potatoes, onions, garlic, peppers and carrots. Everyone seemed to come out for the market. There were even a couple of rides for the kids set up. I do not know how often the market happens as we were only there for one morning.
Čáslav is situated in country that looks a lot like the Midwest United States. As we were driving across Czech Republic towards Čáslav it seemed like we could have easily been in Missouri, Kansas or Oklahoma. It was just good farmland, most of was actively being farmed. The main crops were corn and sunflowers. If it were not for the signs that we could not read and the weird stuff coming out of the radio I would have thought we were home. I can understand why the Semrads’ ended up settling where they did, I’m sure it felt very familiar to them.
I never met anyone that I thought may have been a relative. Our waitress at dinner was the only english speaker we met and she told us about the family Semrad owning the restaurant on the square. I tried to talk with the proprietor of the Penzion we stayed to ask about the Semrad family. Hannah did not speak a lick of English so I had some pre-translated phrases on my devices ready to go. When she realized what I was asking about she got quite excited and talkative and that’s where the conversation broke down. I didn’t understand a word of it. I tried to get her to type into my translator so I could understand her but the keys on the keyboard did not have the letters she was looking for so it was pretty much a dead-end, information-wise. However, I am sure there are still Semrads in the area but I did get to meet any of them. It sure was nice to meet Hannah and stay at her place. If you ever happened to read this Hannah - “Tthank moc!”
