Belgium to Czech Republic

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On July 16, my friend Anne and me left Belgium to go to the "Colours of Ostrava" festival in Czech republic.

As always, our trip started as a mess : instead of leaving at 10 AM as planed, we left at 11 AM because Anne didn't have her passport and I did. Actually, first we agreed we wouldn't take it, but then we I decided it was better to take it and I hadn't told her, so she didn't bring hers and we had to go back and get it... This first day wasn't so good anyway. We wanted to get to Jena and spend our first night there, but we got into a lot of traffic jams and so we arrived pretty late at our hostel, then we couldn't find a nice restaurant and when we finally did, their menu was yellow and attracted so many flies it was disgusting to open it. Still, we had a nice evening with good food and a lot of good wine (much more then we had planed in the first place ^^). We both had heard that Jena is a beautiful city, but in our eyes it wasn't that nice and we probably wouldn't return. It was ok for one evening, but nothing for a longer holiday.

The second day, we went to Kraków to see my friend Marta. First we had planned to leave early, around 9 AM, but then Marta told me she couldn't be home before 6 PM, so we decided to first go buy a route map for Eastern Europe - since we never prepare any of our travels well, we didn't have any map ... - and we bought some other things we might need during our trip. So, in the end, it was 10 AM when we left Jena. Since we had a lot of time, we had a long lunch break just before the border, enjoying the sun, but in the following hours we had so many traffic jams that we regretted our long lunch break. As soon as we arrived to the border to Poland, we were really happy that we had bought a route map for Poland, because we discovered that the GPS in my car has no maps of any country in Eastern Europe (but it has a map for Morocco and for French Guinea!?). In the end, we arrived at Marta's place only at 7 PM instead of the planned 6 PM but well, not the end of the world. ;-)

After a good shower and a first beer in Marta's tiny apartment and after setting up our tent in her garden, we went to Kazimierz, the jewish quarter in Kraków. There we ate some delicious Zapiekanka (kind of a huge pizza-baguette with lots of toppings) and we had a beer in a nice pub with a garden. On our way home, we stopped at Marta's favorite bar where we had some shots, but after the long journey, I was pretty tired and I was happy when we arrived home.

The next day, we spent the morning visiting Kraków since Anne had never been there before and I had never been there before in summer. It was a beautiful and hot day and we enjoyed it a lot. For lunch we met Marta and spent some time with here before leaving again to get to Ostrava in Czech Republic. I was happy it was only a 3 hours drive and so we arrived there around 5 PM.

It was good that we arrived so early, one day before the festival, because almost all good camping spots were already taken and we got one of the last one's. Fortunately there was no queue at the entrance of the camping yet, because from the evening on until 2 days later there would always be a 2 hours queue to get in. The organization was a mess, because this year they did not only give bracelets, but bracelets with a chip that had to be activated first for the camping and then for the festival. Later we discovered that they had actually managed to deactivate all the chips at the camping instead of activating them and so we had to activate them on the festival the next day.

The first evening, we walked to the city center, had a beer and some good Mexican food. That night we didn't sleep well because some people put up a tent just next to ours and they were very noisy until I told them to please shut up.

The next day, we spent the morning relaxing after discovering that all showers were freezing cold. The camping was really badly organized, only 24 showers for about 5000 people, only cold water, only 2 small entrances where from 10 AM there were 2 hours of queue to get in and then the chips in our bracelets didn't work and it was very difficult or even impossible for them to check who had a valid chip/bracelet and who didn't.
First, we walked to the festival around midday and we met Czech Marta, listened to some music and had lunch. Before entering though, we had to get to another office to activate the chips in our bracelets. That was enjoying, most of all because we were many people having the same problem and because we had to download our e-ticket again so they could see we bad actually bought a ticket....
Finally, around 4 PM Polish Marta arrived and we met her at the camping but we went back to the festival earlier than her, since she had to wait a long time in the queue and we didn't want to miss Birdy. In the end, she made it in time and around 9 PM Zdeny joined us before Imagine Dragons started.

All in all, the festival was amazing, the music was great, people were nice and beer was good. We saw Birdy, Imagine Dragons, LP, Nora Jones and we discovered groups like Alt-J. We had such a good time and it was wonderful spending time with Marta, Marta and Zdeny. Unfortunately we couldn't spent much time with Czech Marta, because she had to work as a volunteer at the festival, but I was happy to see her. The second night, we all spent some time together smoking Shisha and talking. :-)

On the other hand, it was almost too hot, up to 35°C or maybe more, and my feet started hurting again very badly. I guess it was because we were standing for a long time on the same spot and it was so hot that my shoes were uncomfortable. However, after buying new shoes (that were a bit too big but very comfortable) it was better.
Another great thing about Colours was that I got to see my old friend Thomas from Czech Republic again whom I hadn't seen since our Erasmus in Slovenia, 6 years ago.

On Saturday, the last day of the festival, we spent all morning relaxing at our tent and (finally!) planing our trip South. That's when we realized that we don't have much time for the rest of our trip and we kind of started panicking! We still lingered at the camping for 2 hours and we were on our way to the city center to buy some water and food for the next days when we finally decided not to go to the festival this last day ( there were no groups that interested us anyway) and to leave the same day. So we went back in a hurry, packed our stuff running around like crazy chickens and left half an hour later. It was very stressful and we didn't get to say goodbye to Marta, Marta and Zdeny, but we called them and they understood.
So, we were on our way South with a first stop in Graz.

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