Take a walk along the path following the winding Vydra river with its huge hollowed-out granite boulders ; from a train window enjoy views of the deep valley of the Úhlava river at Brčálník with Jezerní hora looming on the horizon ; stop for a while before Bílá strž, the largest waterfall in the Šumava, and then maybe take time out to read the short stories and novels by Karel Klostermann depicting the hard life of the people in the remote mountain regions, and pay homage to our ancestors who loved these cruel mountains as much as we do.

A hot issue at present is the fate of the ”dead forest” in both the Šumava and Bayerischer Wald where bark beetle caused the death of thousands of conifer­ous trees in large tracts of the highlands.