Random Thoughts in Cesky Krumlov

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“Uh, I cannot find your breakfast, she says she has left out breakfast, but I cannot find it. I am so sorry. So sorry, sorry,” he repeated while pacing back and forth. Lisa and I both tried to interrupt his rapid apology and calm him down. “Let me look again, uh you, um, you um…” he did a three sixty degree turn and held up his hands, looking around again before Lisa and I told him we were more than comfortable sitting where we were. “Juice? Coffee? Tea?” he offered in way of compensation.
“Coffee,” I said.
“Juice,” Lisa replied simultaneously. Poor man, he did not know what to do, get our drinks or find breakfast. He fired up the coffee machine and brought out two juices and two coffees, then with one hand to his forehead ran into the backroom. He emerged later on with a plate of cheese and some bread. As the others filed down one by one, his blood pressure rose to the point he was sweating at the temples. Triumphantly he located some cold cuts and more bread. Then he became a little bit lost with nothing else to do but continued hopping from one leg to the other hoping we were out of his life sooner than later.

Even though we were up early, no one really minded because the train station was opposite the hotel and within five minutes we all went back to sleep on a train carriage. Well, most of us did, I was still flabbergasted at the size of Margo’s bag. It was as big as my daypack but with wheels. The backpackers looked like turtles and the bag wheelers inwardly groaned at stairs. Margo, quite contrary had problems with neither. The physiotherapist in me couldn’t help but analyse all backpacking postures. Apart from Mark, I had to resist the urge to restrap everyone else. Once in the carriage, Lisa curled up by the window and closed her eyes. Caroline kicked off her boots and pulled her cap over her eyes from the sun’s glare. Margo quietly sat in the corner, content. I watched the Austrian city scene slide by into greenery.

Eastern European trains are not smooth rides and one by one the girls in the carriage woke up. Caroline pulls a stack of guide books out from her bag. There was one for every country we were going through and then some.
“You are carrying all that?!” I asked incredulously. The stack was as big as Margo’s bag.
“Yes, I borrowed them from the library you see,” she replied.
“Why didn’t you just photocopy the relevant pages?” Silence from the carriage.
“Hhhmm. I didn’t think of that,” she replied thoughtfully.
“Who cares, I’ll be borrowing that one,” Lisa says holding her hand out for a Rough Guide to Prague. “I didn’t bring my Eastern European one because I only had room for one and took the Western European one, but look, you’ve brought them all. Hooray!” Always the optimist.

Czech border guards, bored, abrupt and do not like to stamp passports. He looked at me defiantly as I made a stamping motion with my hands when he tried to give me back my passport, I didn’t accept it but meekly said ‘stamp please?’ I probably should have checked to see whether or not he was armed before making any demands. The lady next to him wasn’t entirely compassionate either and probably spent more time dying her hair an unnatural shade of maroon then worrying about who was coming into her country. He sighed as he read out my passport number and she punched it into a recorder of some description. With a weary hand, he lent it up against the glass and thumped a stamp into it before walking off in a huff because I had kept him from doing something more important, like nothing. The others held out their passport but he was long gone. The Czech lady shrugged her shoulders and explained to Dan that he was in a bad mood but since he had the stamp, there was nothing she could really do. I looked in my passport and the Czech stamp was a fresh dark green, barely even dry instead of the usual faded ones that you have to insist entitles you to enter the country. Mine was probably the first off his stamper in months.

The main street may as well have dried weed balls rolling by for all the activity that was going on when we disembarked our train. Derelict buildings stood in various states of disrepair and the nearest sandwich stand was outside an auto repair garage. The garage’s rather innovative sign was an actual red car on a car lift. The optimist in me says innovative, the pessimist says car lift is perpetually seized in the up position and someone is minus one car.
“I have to fix your backpack,” I say to Caroline suddenly.
“It is a bit uncomfortable,” she mentions pragmatically.
“Didn’t the guy at the store fit it to you? Or show you how to adjust it?”
“No. He just said it was the best one.”
“It is, but only when fitted properly and you know,” I continue as we strip off the daypack from the front, “if you wear the daypack at the front you are more balanced. Now put on the backpack,” I ordered. Poor girl, barely leaving Austria and already I’m imposing my obsessive tendencies on her. Like the good British person that she is, she does as I say and I yanked all manners of straps, pulling her every which way.
“Ooh, that is better!” she says standing like the well balanced turtle we all should be. She continues to stand.
“Erm, you can take it off now.”
“Oh! Yes,” and she untangles herself from her now ergonomically sound backpack.

“You know what I have in this bag?” Keith booms. We all turned to look at him. “Tim Tams.” Lisa and I ‘ooh’ appreciatively in a way only Australians can. Everyone else just looked a little blank.
“A tam tam?” Caroline repeats.
“Noooo, a Tim Tam. It’s like a penguin bar but on steroids,” I educated.
“Penguin Bar?” Mark asked. That’s right; there are Americans on board who neither know what a Penguin Bar is or a Tim Tam.
“It’s two chocolate biscuits with chocolate cream in between and then covered in chocolate,” I described before turning my attention back to Keith. “What kind do you have?”
“That I can’t tell you. How much are you willing to pay?” Keith negotiated.
“Well, the reason I ask is, in England you can at least get original and chewy caramel. Therefore they are worth nothing. Dark ones, now you’re talking.”
“Can’t tell you that, the price has just gone up.”
“Never mind,” I turned to the other guys, “We’ll have a strategy meeting later tonight, they have to sleep sometime.”
“We also have some Australian mags and Anzac biscuits as well,” Wendy interrupted, “They’re for Briony, half the things in these bags are for her.” Ah well, in that case you can’t steal another Australian’s care package. Keith pulled out a mushy melted individual Tim Tam, obviously a gift from Qantas. My enthusiasm waned after that, if it’s not a Dark Tim Tam, it is hardly worth tackling an army officer for it.

Our rust bucket bus came lurching along and we all piled on for a surprisingly uneventful journey to Cesky Krumlov. I say uneventful because all wheels stayed on, the seats were bolted to the floor and it didn’t come close to careening off a cliff.

I could live in Cesky Krumlov. Although I am fairly sure the market for Paediatric Physiotherapists are nil, it is still a nice dream. The cobblestone streets poses no stress to walk around in but fun to see where you could possibly end up in, means you can make wonderful little discoveries without feeling you are in a hopeless maze. Just that little bit tourist orientated without losing its original charm and without a hotel chain in sight. We arrived at our Pension just that little bit starving but not detracted from the cosiness of it all. Now in the Czech Republic or Eastern Europe in general, I was in dumpling and cabbage heaven. Lunch was perfect if not frighteningly large again. I do like rustic and there is nothing like a few strips of fly paper complete with flies hanging over the table to add that extra bit of atmosphere. The boys quickly moved their beers out from underneath them.
“Apparently there used to be a crazy lady that helped the women of Chesky Krumlov get rid of the men by providing them with the solvent found in fly paper to poison their men. I think she killed over forty or so men before anyone started noticing,” Dan informed. The crazy jilted lady was so innocuous about the whole matter that no one had really figured out something sinister was going on when the men were, excuse the pun, dropping like flies. I guess because it wasn’t in one fell swoop that it hardy seemed worth the Czech Republic Police Force’s time, they had better things to do, like nothing. Until the male population of Chesky Krumlov looked a little lacking or those that remained wondered why they were suddenly swamped with hormonal females. There is still a disproportionate amount of males to females even today. Daniel looked up at the fly paper strip dangling half a metre from the table and cradled his beer a little more protectively.
“Imagine that on your tombstone, ‘Death by Fly Paper’. Not a cool way to go,” I remarked and we all looked again at the sickly dull yellow strip peppered with dead and decaying flies.

Lisa and I wandered in and amongst day trippers from Prague for a bit before meeting back at the Pension for our scenic bike ride through the rolling Czech Republic hills. Half of us hadn’t been on a bike since we were children and been forced to ride one because all kids need to learn how to ride a bike. Tumbling into the van, our bike guide jumped into the boot after loading the bikes on the trailer and laid down out of view of any passing motorist. I couldn’t quite work out if he was lying down because it is against the law to ride in the boot part of a van (or other vehicle for that matter) or he just wanted a nap. About fifteen minutes into the trip our driver directed a question to him in Czech and he sat up bolt upright to answer him much to the surprise of the back row.
“There’s a guy in the back!” Wendy hissed at us.
“Uh yes, he’s been there since we left?” I said hesitantly, wondering how they didn’t notice a six foot three Czech fellow jump into the back.

I couldn’t really reach the pedals of the bike. Well, to be accurate, with the seat on its lowest setting, I can’t actually plant my feet on the ground and when I can’t do that, believe you me, I find it very difficult to balance. Slight dilemma until Keith wrenched the seat down an extra inch for me. Let’s be brutal, I am not built for bike riding and I certainly don’t have the balance and coordination for it either. I have a build for say, being a jockey or if I was a little bit more flexible and a lot more anorexic, then a gymnast. Cycling seems to require a bit of finesse and changing gears seems to be beyond my comprehension at this particular moment in time. The end result looking like I had a mega margarita and then for shits and giggles tried to balance a bike through curvy, swervy, hilly country tracks (bearing in mind they drive on the OTHER side of the road here) with more than gentle sloping embankments through thickets of angular woodlands to my right.

I also kept bearing to the wrong side of the road and acutely aware of my lower limb muscle imbalance (give me a break, I am a Physio) with my right leg much stronger than my left. In which case you would think that meant I kept bearing to the right, right? No, to the right is the embankment, I was steering well away from that which when you think about it, I just zigzagged my way up the hills.

Somehow the much more coordinated bunch crested the hill and was coasting merrily ahead and Dan and Caroline were taking it easy behind, with me somewhere in the middle alone. Despite the uncomfortable wedge I had for a seat, I managed to work out the gears just enough to cruise competently down the hill and take in my surroundings (occasionally checking the road in front of me for pine cones).

By now you would have figured that I like being in the middle of nowhere for the sheer fact that your mind become less cluttered and more thoughtful or at least creative. I’m not talking about answering age old questions like ‘what is the sound of one hand clapping’ (Bart Simpson answered that riddle in one of the episodes so no need to ponder) or ‘if a tree in the woods falls and no one hears it, does it make a sound?’ (Yes, the law of conservation of energy means the mechanical energy is converted into sound energy). I am also not talking about solving that work/personal crisis you may have in your life either. What I am talking about, is that you realise just how much emotional energy you devote unconsciously to the problems and suffering, regardless of their significance to the grand scheme of your or anyone else’s things, when you are in your day to day life. No seriously, you worry if your friends thought your text sounded a bit abrupt and they took it the wrong way, you think how horrible it is that there are paedophiles in the world, you wonder if terrorism will ever go away and we could live happily ever after and then you realise you forgot to buy the butter and that will mean changing completely what you had intended to make for dinner or get frustrated because you are over-qualified, over-worked and of course underpaid and under appreciated or how dare you feel this way while there are starving children in Africa. It’s damn near exhausting but it is there buzzing at the back of your mind all the time when it is in front or to the periphery. I am not saying that once I am in the middle of nowhere, I turn into a vapid gormless twat or that I become a hemp-wearing flower sprinkling hippy loving all things great and small. I am still thinking, but it just doesn’t hurt either emotionally or mentally. Time just suspends and your mind hums in a steady pace, connecting a few dots or creating a new thought.

So what did I think about in between avoiding pine cones and braking frequently to decrease my speed to prevent any impaling with a tree stump?
1) I can give or take bike riding. Not my thing, but won’t complain.
2) Why didn’t I say the reason why I chose this trip at the first group meeting was because I wanted to go to Auschwitz and feel for myself what the atrocities of war is really like?
3) Oh, that’s right; I didn’t want anyone to think I was a morbid psycho dramatic crackpot that needs to feed on pain or some self-righteous know-it-all idealistic campaigner to give myself some meaning, on the very first day. Not that I am any of those things. I’m surprised Lisa didn’t say it either.
4) I bet Lisa bought me the Pete Murray CD for my birthday.
5) What did Dan mean when he said this isn’t Eastern Europe but Central Europe? Since when was there a ‘Central Europe’ and who decided where it should be? Lonely Planet? If West is considered prosperous and East the poor, then that means that distinction is entirely fluid and where exactly does Europe end and Asia start? Is there a ‘West Asia’ and an ‘East Asia’? Or is Asia just considered poor and forever be the East and the West will always be America? Put that on a list of things to discuss/argue with Lisa on next long train journey or café moment.
6) I prefer rollerblading to bike riding any day.
7) Wouldn’t it be great if the road was much smoother? It would be brilliant to rollerblade down with the trees arching over and sunlight streaking through.

Then I noticed our guide pointing to the right at the T-intersection at the bottom of the hill I was coasting rapidly down. I slowed down and took the hairpin turn at a reasonably novice speed and continued to think again, after all, I still hadn’t caught up with anyone.

8) No, scratch the rollerblading idea, I would have gone head first into the thicket, I do not have the skills to take a speed-skater turn like that.
9) I won’t be a locum all my life. I won’t be a physiotherapist all my life. Perhaps 35 should be my official, give up being a physiotherapist age.
10) I am a different person since travelling. Less of a work-a-holic and more of a lifestyle cherub. I can’t believe I am about to turn 26 and am I really on the …

I caught up to the others waiting at the top of a hill, looking down at a clearing. It was our last hill and then onto the roads and back into town. Wooden lookouts stood forlornly in the clearing, they were for hunters. Sniper position, what better advantage? Caroline caught up and dropped her bike and rested with the rest of us. Our guide reminded us again to stay on the right side of the road. The Americans didn’t have a problem; it’s the correct side to them. That’s when the thinking stopped and the stress began again. It crept up much like civilisation growing busier as we continued our way back into Cesky Krumlov. I had to still cycle away from the others because when they swerved or braked, so did I but did a much shoddier job at it. I banged into a few walls and dropped the bike once but eventually everyone sensed to walk around me than expect me to negotiate them. The steady paced hum of thinking truly dissipated.

Talk about saddle bum. Ugh. Dan took us to a Vegetarian restaurant which he swears will convert the staunches of carnivores. Dahl was on the menu so I was completely happy and with beautiful afternoon warmth bathing our outdoor table by the Vlatva, I was content to laugh with the group and watch the rafters paddle by. We were still on for a girl verses boys rafting match on the Vlatva tomorrow afternoon. Keith well and truly marshalling up the boys for battle while I was occasionally reassuring the girls we would be fine even if they hadn’t paddle before in their entire lives.
“Is it a circuit?” Caroline asked as she watched another raft float by.
“Um, Caroline, the Vlatva is a RIVER,” Dan explained.
“Well! It looked like they’re going around… oh never mind,” she conceded her gaff. Dinner was tasty and I had a bit of everything (big fan of the mixed platter, genius) which went down exceptionally well and fast despite my half a duck lunch. Mark didn’t agree.
“Nuh, not satisfied. I need a hotdog.”

No time for a hotdog, it was a guided walk around town. Altreska (NB: not the correct spelling and highly unlikely phonetically correct either, creative licensing here) has lived in Chesky Krumlov all her life apart from her brief stint in Florida, which explains the American like twang to her English. Another group joined us and the leaders happily dumped us into the trusty hands of Altreska while they did some catching (gossiping about their respective groups) up at the bar opposite our Pension. “Feel free to join us later,” Dan called out as he walked off. Altreska was all smiles and wildly frizzy hair with matching strappy dress and over the shoulder pouch. “I just ate half a watermelon so we will begin our tour here and then I will take you around Chesky Krumlov via a toilet. Because of the watermelon I had for dinner,” she grinned. Standing in the main square next to yet another plague column she began pointing out the various scraffetti and style of buildings. I caught Lisa’s eye as she did mine. Yep, we both noticed, she’s not an underarm waxer, shaver or; let’s just say she’s the all-naturale kinda girl.

Altreska was great, I just felt bad that most of us were half asleep at times. We had been up at the crack of dawn, barely rested, and then wobbled our way through the countryside and now walking for two hours through the cobblestone hills of Cesky Krumlov digesting the gruesome history of the Schwarzenburgs, Rosenburgs and Egenburgs. There are family crests depicting crows pecking the eyes out of a severed Turks head, wild stories about haunting blacksmiths, intermarriages leading to insanity and cruel murders and suicides and well, my bum was still sore. Then we had a toilet break and continued our way through the Castle grounds and through Deer Park (which is now a parking lot) where everything started to wind down including the sun. We thanked Altreksa and without a soaking bath to look forward too, a cocktail would suffice to relax the muscles before tomorrow’s rafting.
“Should we go join Dan and his friend?” Caroline asked as I came back down to meet her and Margo for a drink. I looked over and they were in deep conversation. If I was working and then had to come home to all my patients for two weeks, I would go slightly potty. Don’t mistake me here, I am sure Dan doesn’t think of us as a work chore but it is hard work this socialising malarkey, what with having to find some common ground and continuing conversation that everyone can talk about without complete lulls of silence. Thinking about Derick, Leon and Rouette, my South African Guide friends, they always talked about how important it is to take breaks away from their passengers, even if they do get along very well with them. So I bluntly said “Nope, they probably need a night without us, give them some time out. They probably don’t get to see each other often and he’s stuck with us for two weeks. Besides, I saw a bar with a nice cocktail list.”
“But he said we could join him?” Caroline said matter-of-factly. She’s right he did but that’s just the kind of person he is. I walked till I found La Bohemia with its small deck at the front, dusky light inside with a handful of people murmuring in lounges with Robbie Williams issuing out of speakers and semi-helpful bar staff. One girl was nice, the other couldn’t be bothered. Not because we were tourists, she just couldn’t be bothered. No offence taken.

The day trippers had well and truly left and Cesky became a cosy, amber lit bar lounge of locals out for a drink and conversation about anything that came to mind. That beautiful hum of steady paced thinking I had become addicted to came back. My Sex-on-the-Beach was a vivid display of red and yellow and Margo had an education in delectable creamy chocolate cocktails. If only she knew about them before ordering her Sprite. There is always tomorrow for more discoveries even if it is in the bottom of a glass swirled with alcoholic chocolate.

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Photos

Cesky Tower & Surrounds
Beautiful view - reproduced several times as the entire group stopped to take the same shot.

Pub by the Vlatva
A meandering way to pass the afternoon with a coldie.

The Old Water Wheel
You don't see one this very often in suburbia.

Chesky Krumlov Castle
Voted the sternest castle in Eastern Europe.

Cesky Tower
But it has a pretty fresco'd tower.

Arse Up View
Flat on my back, thinking random thoughts, its just very pretty to be in the middle of nowhere.

Lisa & I
At least we had helmets.

Vlatva River
A rafting opportunity tomorrow... the girls prepared mentally to sabotage the boys at any cost.

Cesky Tower at Sunset
Sunset, still my favourite part of the day.

Crucifixtion
Outlined by the foreboding castle, the crucifixtion kept me enthralled while our guide stopped for a toilet break. Shouldn't have had half a watermelon for dinner.

Streets of Krumlov
Full of day tourists, but still has a quaint charm about it.

Weir Vlatva
Anticipation for tomorrow's rafting

In the Shadows
Coolness came slowly much like the pace of this town.

Scrafetti Hunting
Underneath the communist paint job is the colours of individuality.