Chesky Krumlov

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Yesterday at 9 am, we met by a nearby theater to be picked up in a van. No, not that kind of van. We were on a school trip to Chesky Krumlov, a little touristy town about two and a half hours from Prague. We stopped once at a gas station about 20 minutes outside of the town for a short potty break. Unfortunately, the women’s restroom was out of commission and everybody had to share the men’s room. One girl from the program, Ashley, was rather traumatized upon seeing a strange man urinate.

The van dropped us off at a bus stop from which we walked to our bed and breakfast. We checked in, dropped our stuff off, and then went to get some lunch before a tour of the local brewery. A bunch of us ate at hippy-esque vegetarian place. It was a cute little restaurant, but it took forever to get our food. It literally took about 2 hours from the time of ordering to when I actually had the meal in front of me. They claimed it was because they had to make everything fresh. Yeah… freshness is pretty overrated. I’d rather have some not-as-fresh food within 30 minutes of ordering…

After that it was time for our afternoon tour of the Eggenberg brewery. We saw the various rooms and processes through which the beer goes before it is bottled. Then, we went to their pub where we got two complimentary beers as part of the tour package. These beers were enormous, in half-liter mugs, like everywhere else in the Czech Republic. I had one dark beer and ordered some orange tea as my second drink. I really wanted hot chocolate, which the menu advertised, but they had mysteriously run out of that delicacy when I tried to get it in place of my complimentary beer.

Well, I was feeling pretty tipsy from the half liter of beer I drank as we walked to our next tour of a museum that houses the world’s largest ceramic town model. It was not that exciting. Most people just wanted to find the bathroom and leave. After that, we had a short break before dinner, so we went back to the bed and breakfast. My roommate for the trip was Kathryn. Today was her 21st birthday, but she celebrated it last night in Chesky Krumlov. She got all dressed up in a little black sweater dress and black boots, while I stayed in what I had been wearing: jeans, shirt, and coat. Hot, I know.

We went to a restaurant with traditional Czech food. Surprise, surprise, I ate fried cheese. There was even a Gypsy band playing for us. Unfortunately, we got bored of their music after about five songs, but they kept playing for hours. At one point, Deena asked the Gypsy band if they knew any songs by Nelly. So, they started singing some song with the word Nelly in it. It sounded a little bit like an Irish folk song, or like they had just put “Nelly” in the refrain of a Gypsy song, instead of whatever the words used to be. Either way, it was pretty hilarious. People got up and danced. Shortly after that, Kim and Jiri brought out some birthday cakes for Kathryn. We sang happy birthday, then Kathryn did birthday shots with the Gypsy band.

It was getting kind of late, and I was very tired of accordion music, so I tried to go back to the hotel alone. First I couldn’t open the door to get out of the restaurant. The people sitting at a nearby table must have thought I was really drunk because, well, I was struggling to open a door. Hey, it was a complicated door, okay? Once I made it out of the door, however… I got lost. I found my way back to the restaurant just as Ashley and another girl (maybe Alex?) were going back to the hotel. While walking back with them, Ashley told me to “have fun holding Kathryn’s hair back tonight.” Crap. I needed a plan.

So, I decided to shower before the bathroom was defiled with vomit. Then, I basically drunk-proofed the room. I left toilet lid up for easy barf access, put a trash can near my roommate’s bed, filled up a water bottle and put it next to her bed, moved her bed away from the heater so she wouldn’t accidentally fall against the heater while drunk-walking in heels, etc.

After all that prep, Kathryn never made it up to the room for that night. She fell asleep in Flip’s bed around midnight, then Katiri came in to tell me that Flip would be sleeping in Kathryn’s bed, which was literally an inch away from mine. (The beds had been joined when we first got to the room, and there really wasn’t any other possible furniture configuration that would work in this tiny space.)

I had been sleeping pretty soundly, but then I woke up suddenly during the night. I look over and there is Flip wearing nothing but boxers. Then at 7 am, Kathryn came back to our room, kicked Flip out of her bed, and proceeded to sleep until 8. At breakfast I found out that I talked in my sleep. Apparently, I told Flip to “back away from me.”

After breakfast, we went on a tour of the Rosenberg castle. It was freezing, but we saw their enormous private theater, which was pretty cool. We also saw where bears live, except there were no bears because they were hibernating.

After the tour we had way too much free time before we were supposed to meet again at the bus stop. Some people hiked up a mountain. I went to lunch at a café and got a sandwich on what looked like a loaf of challah. Then I went to another restaurant with Ashley and Michael and got desert. After that, we walked around looking for things to amuse ourselves. We went to a paper shop and bought coloring books. We also saw a poster of a transgendered underwear model. At least that’s what we think it was. Eventually the clock struck 3:00, and we boarded the vans again to go back to Prague.

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