Slunci a obzoru – Krainer Vratislav (2025)

What did an adventurous bike journey look like on the eve of World War II? A chance meeting by a pond was all it took for a trip across half of Europe and an experience for a lifetime. Twenty-two-year-old Vratislav Krainer decided one hot summer to embark on an adventurous bike trip from Czechoslovakia through Austria, Germany, Italy, all the way to Paris for the ongoing World Expo EXPO. At that time, he had no idea that during the 3,500-kilometer journey, he would experience a freedom that he and his compatriots would not touch for many decades. Sun and Horizon is an authentic travel cycling diary that captures the essence of interwar Europe through the observations of a young person. However, against the backdrop of ordinary, delicate human stories, the darker side of the era often shines through: Europe preparing for World War II. Young Vratislav poetically and sensitively reveals how his first encounters with other countries affect him, what the freedom of travel tastes like, sleeping with fishermen in a wooden cabin, girls in braids in traditional costumes over pints of beer, or his first swim in the salty waves of the sea. And he shows us how much our world has changed in those more than eighty years.