Sumava

In the summer of 2010, we had lived in Germany for almost three years already. I personally like it - our room with Kiki has a nice view of where daddy works, there are playgrounds and trees to climb on everywhere, and the icecream is spectacular. But for mom and dad, it gets too much sometimes. Dad calls life in Germany "too much of a good thing". Mommy calls it simply "too much". And so we make trips as often as we can. The most beautiful place that we have been to so far is a forest in the Czech Republic called Sumava. A forest, by definition, is inhabited by forest creatures. One such character is called a Hejkal. He comes behind you in the forest and calls "Hej!" in order to scare you (Mind you, this is the Czechs' idea of how to scare somebody. They haven't seen a zombie movie, apparently. A nice and peaceful nation, what can you do). Others are called "vilas" because they live in the villas of former communist party leaders. Anyway, mom and dad took me and Kiki to meet some of these characters.

These creatures asked us to play with them, and to make hats and cloaks, like the ones they wear. Kiki, of course, was curious and got down to work right away.

But I was not sure these were real forest creatures. Looked too much like poorly dressed actors to me. In any case, I was not convinced. And this is how I look like when I'm not convinced.

Next, we traveled to another part of the forest where our friends were staying. Daddy got to show us how strong he is. If you ask me, he is not really in Olympic shape, so we let him do it only because we are still relatively light.

I also discovered that I don't care for Lego much anymore. Lego is for babies, like Simon. A man needs a stick.

To top off our stay in Sumava, we went to a medieval castle where a count, or a duke, or another such member of the minor aristocracy used to live.

This happens to be a favourite place for making movies about princes who are in love with princesses and who manage to marry those princesses only because they know how to navigate a boat. Which is not what daddy is training for in these pictures - he loves mommy and couldn't care less for some princess. He is simply enjoying the fact that he can ensure the safety of his family in the stormy waters of the lake.