Ústí nad Labem: The new riviera

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This weekend has been a blur of people randomly showing up from all over the world, from Brno to the Isle of Wight to outer space and god knows where else and placing themselves within at most a day trip's length of Prague, resulting in me dashing all over the place and finally getting out of the house a fair bit! Unfortunately I havent been using my camera recently, and my internet connection is not letting me upload anything at the moment.. so there are no pictures from it.

It began on Thursday, when my friends Gabriela and Jana texted me saying they had come to see some of Jana's relatives in a village called alhostice in Litoměřice district, which is just at the foot of that bastard hill I was trying to climb (and failed) in my random walks described in the entry "Some horrific history lessons for you". They, Gabi's mum and Jana's nephew took me to this restaurant by this lake next to the river, which was full of boats and presumably during this very hot day, had also been full of people swimming. We drank, talked, watched the sun set over the lake and ate pancakes, which were the best pancakes I'd ever tasted. Yes, better than the ones they have in France.

Friday saw my friend Veronika arrive in Prague to stay for the evening at a friend of ours' house before flying back to London early the next morning, while Saturday saw these friends of ours, including Jana who I was at that gallery with a while back, throw a really great house party (mexican-themed, so with a lot of mojitos and tequila) which Veronika's sister Katka turned up to from Brno. It was a really good night, I spent most of it playing music as they'd got me to bring my stuff along, which more than anything was a good excuse to go on a huge nostalgia trip and play stuff I haven't played for years. Made sense as most of the music you hear in ČR, on the radio and at clubs and wherever, is stuff you haven't heard for about 3-5 years in England in the same setting.

On Sunday I got an invitation from my friend Jürgen (a fellow music producer), who has a Czech girlfriend living in Ústí nad Labem and was visiting her this weekend. So, needing to chill after last night, I spent most of the sweltering day with them exploring the city.. considering I never hear much good about North Bohemia at all, I have to say I quite liked it there. Yes there are some weird weird urban features about that region but the landscape is beautiful, and Ústí wasn't awfully bad. After going for a really freaking good pizza we took a long walk down the river looking at the scary remnants of that flood they had in the whole country in 2002, where you can see the line the water came up to on buildings miles and miles away from the surface now.. imagining how bad that must have been is a bit scary.

I was so incredibly tired when I got back home at like 9pm after having collected all my equipent from Jana's, which is good because now I have a lot of early starts coming up. No rest for me at the moment, Slovenia tomorrow. Croatia day after. Both 5am starts...

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