040 - fri 09 jun - cesky krumlov

we met in the hotel lobby at 5:45am. this was the first but not the last of the ungodly early starts that were to plague our tour. it was a new experience for me, not altogether bad, but a little unexpected. there was no way we would have seen everything we saw without some of these early starts, so we owe a lot to them. god bless my mobile phone and its calmly persistent alarm tone. that morning we squinted into the shining, sunny early-morning reality of the professional traveller, and said 'ok we're in'.

breakfast was pastries from the train station before departing to cross the border into the czech republic. on the train uniformed dudes came in and totally stamped our passports. this didn't happen every time we crossed a border, so was majorly exciting. we arrived in cesky budejovice, the original home of the original budweiser beer, but we only saw as much as the train station before boarding a bus to cesky krumlov.

cesky krumlov is a great little village. much has been said about it, google will tell you how great it is, so i won't put my two cents in apart from to say that it is a must-see kind of place.

after checking in, our tour leader took us to a little place for lunch where we had some delicious czech food and the first of many marvellously cheap and exceedingly drinkable czech beers. our tour leader was quite the gastronomic guide, consistently leading us to great meals in different cities. suz and i figured that would probably be one of our priorities too, if we were tour guides seeing the same parts of the same towns week in and week out. you'd want to find the right place to eat.

our activity for the afternoon was a bike ride, where a bus dropped us off 10 kilometres or so out of town and we rode, mostly downhill, back into town through some pine forests and hilly vistas. i got a bit of a dodgy bike where the chain came loose. we were led down the hill by a handsome young local guy, who turned out to be in high school. we would stop occasionally and he would tell us how much longer we had to go, and point at maps along the way. he had a really cute quirk in his english where instead of saying something like 'and thats all you need to know about the bikes' he would just finish his trains of thought by saying 'and its all about the bikes.' like 'here is where we are on this map blah blah blah... yes and its all about the map.' we giggled. you probably had to be there. i apologise.

there was, of course, a pub at the bottom of the hill. we had more czech beers. our bike guy informed us that the local cesky krumlov beer was crap. we asked him whether he was old enough to be drinking. he said 'it doesn't matter, this is a beer town.' works for me. i'm sure he'd had more beers than i'd had hot dinners, and he was only 8. (slight exaggeration)

after the bikes, our group splintered and some of us ended up in a cocktail bar. we had cocktails while the soccer played on the big screen. and then we ate dinner at a vegetarian restaurant, literally on the banks of the river that runs through town. we more or less could have stepped from our table into the river which was flowing level with the bank, and flowing rapidly too. on the other side of the river, the magnificent castle. it was photogenic. so we took photos. the food was so great at this place that we resolved to return later for dessert. it also helped that our waiter was giggly and almost sheepishly cute. we think there may have been something special in his lentils, because there was something funny about him. i don't know whether to be suspicious or envious of suspiciously happy and giggly vegetarian czech people (or was he french?)

after dinner we met up with everyone and did a walking tour of the town with our local guide, whose name sounded like aldruska, and thats the best i can do there with spelling. she was vibrant and smart and spun a good yarn. and by that i mean stories. and she had crazy hair. she told us a lot of great stuff, like about haunted music schools, and about the old 'to restore old buildings or not to restore old buildings' debate, you know the one. it was an excellent little tour around town.

afterwards there was of course dessert at the vegetarian place. less than 24 hours in this town and we had found a hangout. towards the end of our desserts, we were approached by two drunk scots with matching t-shirts who sang us 'lady in red' and then practised their standup routine on us. they were shit funny (that means 'really funny'), and they were shit faced (that means 'really drunk'). then they sang lady in red again, pulled suz up for a dance, threatened to dunk her in the river, then moved on to the next table. we figured we were probably the most receptive audience they'd had that night, because we suffered (endured?) their attention much longer than anyone else that night.

click here for photos