hello and Dublin it is a snowy winter day and I'm on a tram in the Czech Republic and I'm here with my old school friend Andrew who is making his first appearance on the channel since 2019 when he famously said this I've seen words views and we'll have more of Andrew's insights later but today's video is not about Andrew and it's not about a tram today's video is about a hotel built in the late 1960s on the outskirts of the city of liberet but Tim since when does your channel done hotel reviews
well it turns out it does when the hotel looks like that welcome the hotel yesjed [Music] so why have we come all this way to see some old hotel from communist era Czechoslovakia well it's not just because it looks like an alien spaceship crash landed into the secret mountain lair of a 1960s Bond villain this is one of the most famous buildings in the Czech Republic but because most foreign visitors only ever go to Prague people from outside czechia don't seem to know about it and today we're go
ing to try and change that all we need to do now is figure out how we get up there what's it say we're obviously here because it says you're here so we're following the road that way he takes us over here and then I guess background up here in the end yeah there's any scope for shortcuts going straight up would seem like a bad idea makes sense there used to be a much quicker way of getting to the summit but sadly the yesjed cable car is not running at the moment following a serious accident in 2
021 so we've decided to hike all the way to the top which means we're going to need a montage and while we're doing that let me tell you a little bit more about hotel yesjed it was designed at the height of the 60s Space Race with construction starting in 1966 but it was only after seven years of technical challenges and Engineering magic that it finally opened in 1973 during which time Czechoslovakia had seen two regime changes one Soviet invasion and the first American astronauts stepping on t
he moon I think this is it it's traditional for me to say I think this is it when it's very obvious here yes we have reached the summit and today the hotel is very much inside a cloud despite what this poster might tell you 1012 meters in a rare moment for this channel we've climbed an actual Mountain I'm knackered when the hotel first opened its doors 50 years ago it was the most strikingly modern building in the country but if you came here 15 years ago it was already a rundown and tired old r
elic of its time I found one article saying the hotel looked like it had gone through the seven stages of grief but that all changed in 2015 when a group of locals stepped in to try and save it they launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise a bit of money and then work together with the original interior designer to bring everything back to its 60s 70s glories and the business is still run by the same group of people who revived it but never mind that what does some random bloke from Reading thi
nk about it it's time for Andrew's exclusive Hotel review well it's colorful that is so let's have a look I think which is good yeah I've got a wardrobe which is good it's very 70. it's quite cool it's a big group as well just about big enough for you um well by Andrew's standards that is a pretty glowing review but what about my room and I have different wallpapers otherwise it's pretty much the same oh I've got better wallpaper like it I mean it's very intense that's a very International Rescu
e I think I'm slightly in love but while we're here let's just imagine what this place would have looked like to the average Czechoslovakian in 1973. okay we're gonna have to make some generalizations and simplifications here but in the days of Communism many of the places where you stayed on holiday might have looked quite uniform at least on the inside if not the outside with the same cheap mass-produced products that you saw absolutely everywhere of course that's not unique to 1970s Czechoslo
vakia but you get the point oh it's just like back home isn't it Mildred so when the first guests came through the doors of yesjed and saw the custom-made Space Age Furniture the custom-made Space Age fittings and the custom made Space Age plates and glasses they gave you at dinner time I think it would have blown their minds what we're looking at is an explosion of creative freedom and individual expression that feels like it happened despite the authoritarian regime of the time rather than bec
ause of them so how did anyone get away with building it in the first place well it's a long story and it starts with a hotel caretaker and an accident with a Blue Torch you see this is not the first hotel yes jet the original Hotel yesterday was a grand wooden Lodge that stood on top of the mountain since 1906. but one cold evening in January 1963 the caretaker attempted to defrost some pipes using a Blue Torch one thing led to another and he accidentally burned down the entire building and thi
s led to a competition to design a replacement the rules of the competition were fairly simple they required Architects to submit designs for two separate buildings a new replacement hotel and a new television transmission tower but one architect a man called Carol hubacek decided that rules were for losers why not simply put the hotel in the transmission tower and he produced a stunning design straight out of 1960s science fiction it took a while but public support for his crazy plan gradually
grew and grew until the authorities said all right then if that's what you want we're going to let you build it problem was now he actually had to do it hubertech woke up the next morning knowing that his design was a brilliant idea on paper but constructing it on top of a real-life mountain in real life weather conditions was going to be a whole other question and as if that wasn't enough to be dealing with it's now 1966 and quite a lot is about to happen in Czechoslovakian Politics the leader
at the time was a guy called Antonin Novotny an authoritarian Hardline communist who'd been in charge since the early 50s and honestly I'm not sure exactly why someone like him allowed huberchek to go ahead with such an extravagant and Maverick building project maybe he genuinely liked it maybe he just thought it was going to make him look good or maybe he was under pressure from a public who were demanding more democracy and more freedom if your check or Slovak and you know more than I do I wou
ld love to hear what you think but what I can tell you is that by 1968 Novotny was out replaced by the much more liberal Alexander dubcheck and he starts a program of reforms and liberalization in a period you may know as the Prague spring if anything this was good news for huberchek who came out publicly to support even more radical reforms but of course it didn't last a few months later the Soviet Union sends in its troops Chucks out Dub check puts a stop to all the reforms and installs a new
leader to return things to what they call normal but while all of that was going on back at yesjed Huber check was trying to build a hotel and to the surprise of Structural Engineers absolutely nowhere the architect ran into technical problems almost immediately but to be fair hubuchek knew what he was doing by which I mean he brought in some Engineers who knew what they were doing first there was the extreme cold of the winters up here which was a problem not just for the hotel but also for the
delicate TV equipment so they ended up giving the building custom made laminated protective cladding and then there was all the snow and ice that would crash down from the top of the tower as soon as it thought so they also had to import special reinforced windows from Belgium and then there was the wind Hoover check had made the top part of the Tower so thin that the moment there was any sort of wind it began to suffer from worrying wobbles some people might call them transverse oscillations b
ut they're probably just showing off the problem could have been easily solved by adding great big industrial style strengthening bars but the architect didn't want to ruin the beauty of his design so he was gonna have to try a much more experimental idea his chief engineer looked at the tower swinging about like an upside down pendulum and said well what if we try hanging some sort of pendulum inside the tower if we get the weight and the dimensions exactly right it might just balance everythin
g out and if you want all the juicy nerdy detail of how they did it then I can highly recommend the website fenimanyestjed.com but long story short yes Jed was one of the first Towers in the world to have what's called a tuned Mass damper a giant weight mounted on Springs that counteracts any wobbles these are now relatively common in large skyscrapers particularly the ones in earthquake zones but the team at yesjed were doing this in 1960s Czechoslovakia using some shock absorbers they found in
a nearby car repair shop and in 1969 Carol huberteck was awarded the Pere prize basically the Olympic gold medal of architectural Innovation for his outstanding use of technology and of course his breathtaking original design but it's now 1969 and that means there is a new soviet-approved government who do not approve of uber check or anything that he stands for and in a spectacularly Petty move they confiscate his passport so he can't fly to Argentina to go and collect his prize it remains pro
bably the greatest award ever given to a Czech architect well at least I made one successful check-in by the time the hotel finally started operating in 1973 hubercek was so out of favor with the government that he wasn't even invited to the opening and had to be smuggled in through the back doors by this point you can imagine people were already nostalgic for those late 1960s moments of freedom and optimism that this place represented for them and the fact that the government hated that only ma
de the tower more popular in the year 2000 a national survey of experts voted yesterday the most important Czech building of the 20th century and in 2023 it celebrates 50 years of surviving everything that nature and politics could throw at it while still looking pretty darn good having said that in some places the design does show its age and I'm not going to pretend that everything is brilliant by modern standards for a four-star hotel the elevator is extremely cramped there's no gym or pool o
r anything like that and the rooms that we stayed in didn't even have their own bathrooms but I guess when you try and fit an entire Hotel into a TV transmission tower there are some things you just don't have space for and ultimately if you're lucky enough to be able to come up here and look at this view I'm not sure any of that really matters so Andrew what do we think about this view are we going to go beyond not bad we might are we going to go as far as quite good yeah ladies and gentlemen t
hat is a quite good view if you'd like to visit hotel yesjed liberettes is only one hour from Prague by bus or two and a half by train and we took the number three tram to the end of the line and hiked up to the top but you could just get a taxi the whole way an economy double will set you back about 100 euros a night but be aware that because of the tight space accessibility is limited at best even in the summer when they open up the nice big ramps up to reception level you've still got to use
that tiny elevator to get to any of the rooms anyway as always thank you all for watching and I'll see you soon well it turns out it does when the hotel looks like that it's in a cloud turns out it does when there isn't a car well it turns out it does when the hotel looks like that oh it's gone
Comments
Fortunately all the mountain climbing Tim has done in the Netherlands prepared him for this
I absolutely love this video! Thank you! As a Czech, to react to your question: I dont think there were many limitations in the field of architecture for political reasons, many buildings even paid a "hommage" to some Western architectural influences etc. In certain decades, there was in fact more creative freedom than nowadays, as the construction didnt have to be commercially viable, therefore some of the most beautiful and creative pieces of architecture come from this era. Note: Of course, this freedom applies to the style, if the architect became "persona non grata", then he could have problems even building Lenin statues. Also, the amount of political ingerence varied greatly in the different decades - 50s were very hard times economically and politically, so the grip was tighter. Btw, one interesting point: there was even a mandatory "art budget" tied to every construction, so even when a lowcost blockhouse was built, there was always some kind of sculpture, mosiac or fountain built on it or nearby, since the building company (state-owned, ofc) was obliged to contract some artist to create it. Sometimes the result was great, sometimes it wasnt, anyway some very interesting pieces of art were created this way and it kept many artists going. However, there were always serious limitations in the terms of financing and availibility of materials, therefore not all the ideas made it into reality, sadly. And even more sadly, many of the architectonic gems of the socialist era (40 years, not a short period of time) were demolished or rebuilt in a terrible way in the last decades, as many people cannot really dissociate the political stuff they didnt like from the architecture that had its qualities. However, I still think there are many buldings of interest and slowly some of them get the appreciation and care they deserve. Some links: https://prague-now.com/history/communist-era-hotel-praha-now-demolished/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgas_(building) By the way, if you like this kind of architecture, you may be also interested in a book "CCCP: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed" by Frédéric Chaubin. It showcases many buildings in the "space" style that were built in the former CCCP (therefore Czechia is not included).
Additional note for everyone visiting Germany: Liberec is also a 2-3 h train ride from Dresden.
It's nice of you to visit Česko, hope you've had plenty of fun. To add my two cents of speculation on why Novotný approved the building, the Communists had a thing for impressive/ostentatious looking construction projects. "Building socialism" was a phrase you'd hear a lot in propaganda pieces. You could translate the term for it as 'Constructionism' . The new Czechoslovakian proletariat was building a brighter utopian future, and that meant building, building and building (until the state ran out of money, oops). This also included blowing up a bunch of perfectly salvagable buildings (see Ústí nad Labem after WWII), building the largest Stalin monument on the planet only to tear it down less than 10 years later (overlooking Prague on Letenská pláň), and ramming a 3-lane dual carriageway directly through Prague's city center. Because cars are freedom... So it's not out of the ordinary that they'd approve a bizarre and impressive looking building like our Liberecký vysílač. I can at least say that some of those projects ended up being interesting and not just horrendous wastes of concrete.
Little fun fact: with good weather conditions you can see this hotel from Germany when you're on the southern site of the Zittau Mountains. I remember seeing it back in the day when me and my parents were on vacation there. But back then I just thought it's a fancy looking transmission tower.
Your ability to find bizarre things about which to make videos never ceases to amaze me. Great work Tim!
I've spent half my life with my head buried in architecture books/magazines and I don't think I ever came across this hotel... loved the video! It's amazing how many iconic buildings also have tragic stories for the architect
Using a piano cover of the Grand Designs theme when showing the hotel is a nice touch as was the Bond theme. There's clearly attention put towards the little details in your videos. And also another fascinating place that is worth learning about. Keep up the good work of introducing all sorts of interesting places to us
I am truly impressed by Tims physical abilities. Not only is he capable of montaging up a snowy mountain with ease, he can even calmly tell stories while doing so.
Finally!! I have been somewhere before you Tim!! I stayed in this hotel 5 years ago and I loved it. Thanks for the good memories.
Something to keep in mind for future visits: the cablecar that runs right to the base of the hotel is currently not operating, because of a catastrophic failure that happened like a year back. However, it has been decided that the cable car will be repaired and extended to that tram station at the start of the video. So getting there in the future will be way easier!
"A od kdy mluvíš anglicky?" -- "Since when do you speak english?" You totally got me there 😁 Thanks for visiting this gem. I know there are heaps more in Czechia. Like the church where they exhumed the remains of lots of deceased since they could not fit in the cemetery anymore, and turned them into an interior decoration.
I'll note this isn't your first hotel review; have we so easily forgotten the Monte Palace?
As a Czech from Liberec living in Luxembourg, I was already happy with your video on three highest mountains of Luxembourg. But this blew my mind!! When I was a kid, we’re regularly climbing up under the cable car (not in winter). I remember my father claimed once that Jested was stolen, because we couldn’t see it. I believed it and I was so upset all the way up…and relieved when we got like 100m close and I saw it’s still there 😂 Thanks for the amazing content, Tim!
The 'Grand Designs' theme is so incredibly appropriate. Will the unique design and unusual location lead to problems part-way through the project? Of course they will.
Your "blopper" reel at the end reminded me of my first trip on the Bernina Express which we did on a foggy day and had a pre-recorded guide in four languages telling us about the wonderful views we couldn't see We had one metre visibility over the highest point.
Technically, the Perret Prize isn't the Olympic Gold Medal for Architecture, the Olympic Gold Medal for Architecture is the Olympic Gold Medal for Architecture. The Olympics included art competitions between 1912 and 1948 for architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture.
It's great seeing a video from my country, greetings from Czechia😃❤
I cannot stress enough how creatively Tim uses music in his videos. Piano rendition of Firestarter when talking about a blowtorch mishap made me giggle like a lunatic. I love it.
I did not expect to see this video when arriving at home (or at least today). I'm glad you covered Ještěd, the history and the hotel. I've never been in the hotel rooms personally, so It's amazing to see them from the video. Thanks from Liberec.