Langos via leipzig: Heaven in Czechia

We have been three nights at a Czechia campsite looking over Lake Lipno into an Austrian forest, and we do not want to leave. It is, physically, one of the most beautiful settings we have ever been lucky enough to spend the night.

It is in a place called ‘Czech Canada’and you can immediately tell why. Tall trees rise straight to heaven, and day and night there is the delicate whiff, and slight tangy taste, of woodsmoke as always seems the case in forested parts of Canada.

The campground is just a short walk to a little village called Frymburk, which, for the last two nights has had a food and music festival a’happening. All a go.

A passenger ferry occasionally plies up and down the lake carrying paying passengers. Further down a car ferry drops folk off into Austria. A fisherman from our campsite threw in his line this morning as I watched and pulled out two huge fat carp. Here they are edible.

At home, down in the lochs on the Murray they are piled up by the tonnage and sold off for cat food, or fertiliser. I forget which. Carp is often on the menu in Czechia and, because of its invasion in the Murray I have to avoid it. But still, I envied the fisherman his excited catch this morning. I want a fishing line!

All this weekend, in the village, they have broiled giant ham hocks atop coal burning barbecues – and countless racks of caramelized smoky spare ribs. Served only with bread. Not a vegetable within cooee. Meat eaters, the Czechs.

But, we’re loving the purple cabbage, the potato pancakes, the fat red tomatoes bursting out of their skins which taste as rich and flavourful as when I was a child. Why don’t we have tomatoes like that anymore in Australia?

And the cheeses. Drool. Not the pasty Gouda-like cheeses with little or no flavour: the Cambozola, which, I think is a cross between Camembert and Gorgonzola and is utterly divine. Tho’ from what I can make out I think it is more Bavarian than Czechian. But so brilliant I may have to import it. We’re leaving. We’re sad.