I visited Pichan quite a few times in 2022 and the village already appeared in a couple of my posts here on HIVE, but when I was driving through that area on the 29th of December, on my birthday ...
(Enlargeable)
... I saw Pichan getting swallowed by the fog, so I stopped by the side of the road ...
(Enlargeable)
... a kilometer or two from the village, to watch the church tower and the cluster of houses around it ...
(Enlargeable)
... disappear before my eyes.
(Enlargeable)
I stood there, amazed by the scene, only for a couple of minutes ...
(Enlargeable)
... but it felt much longer.
(Enlargeable)
When the scene looked like this, with no Pichan in sight, I decided to drive up the hill to see how things look from there.
(Enlargeable)
As I was approaching, the fog was retreating.
(Enlargeable)
I was able to catch only the last minutes of the fog on the top of the hill and get fewer photographs than I hoped for. Here you can see the medieval gate to what was back then the compact, fortified town, not just a small village with something less than 300 inhabitants, that Pichan is now.
This is the statue of Saint John of Nepomuk in the park in front of the old gate. In this shot, the fog provided a nice background that you can't have on a fogless day. The branches of the surrounding decorative shrubs and trees, the interplay of shadows and light, and some buildings behind the park create an overabundance of chaotic details among which the statue becomes barely recognizable. The fog is the only weather condition in which this John of Nepomuk looks good in photographs.
Here you can take a look at the streetlamp in the narrow alley which can be reached through a smaller passage that also leads into Pichan.
(Enlargeable)
A short outburst of sunlight appeared for a second or two while I was approaching the compact center of the old village. I caught it in this photograph. I didn't enter through the main gate this time because the misty atmosphere looked better in the small side passage shown in the following shot.
I'm entering here.
(Enlargeable)
In this wide shot, you take a better look at the architecture in that alley.
Here you can see some ruins on the opposite side of the village. Many abandoned stone houses are covered with ivy and the places that once were yards or gardens are overgrown with various shrubs and tall herbaceous vegetation.
(Enlargeable)
In the foreground of this shot, you can see the wet foliage of the blackberry shrubs found in one of those abandoned places on the edge of Pichan. At this point, the fog has almost completely gone from the village.
(Enlargeable)
A minute or two later the atmosphere on the top of the hill was very different ...
... and the fog ...
... was down in the valley.
It looked great from a distance.
Like a beautiful white sea.
To get this photograph, I used all the zoom that my camera can offer. The scene was breathtaking ...
(Enlargeable)
... but it didn't last long.
Just like it happened on the top of the hill where I was standing, in a matter of minutes the fog started leaving the valley as well.
(Enlargeable)
The veil was dissolving ...
(Enlargeable)
... and revealing the usual winter scenery.
(Enlargeable)
And that's it. I left the village soon. It was a short, although intense, experience, so the post can't be very long either. Hope that you'll find it fairly intense and that you'll enjoy the foggy atmosphere in the pictures just as I enjoyed my birthday in Pichan. I haven't planned to visit this village. The plan was just to drive around and stop if something cool happens along the way, or not stop at all, just drive around and listen to the music from the car stereo. That's my favorite way to celebrate birthdays. And New Year eves. And everything else, I guess. Some friends were in the car with me.
AS ALWAYS IN THESE POSTS ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK. - THE END