The train pulls up to the next station and everyone gets off. We follow suit, looking around to see what other car we need to change to, when 5 buses come into view just on the other side of the station house. Ahhh, we thought. He really did mean that we would be changing to a bus. Go figure. So we all pile on these buses (there were literally 5 when 1 would have sufficed for the small quantity of passengers) and they pull away from the station. About a half hour later or so, they pull into another train station and deposit us there where we all pile onto another train. The track must of been broken or something for a stretch. That's the only explanation we could come up with.
Everything from that point on went as we had expected to and we arrived at Cesky Krumlov at the appointed hour. Amir had done the research on getting to our hostel and said we could either take a 5 minute bus ride or walk 20 minutes to get to our hostel. He opted for the walk as we hadn't had much exercise that day so I went along for the ride. And what a ride it turned out to be. Cobblestones abounded. Let's just say that by the time we arrived at our hostel, crossed 4 rivers, walked up 2 sets of steep stairs and missed the one shortcut, we had sweat through all our clothes and were ready for some beers. Little did we know that would be our only sunny day in this river town hell hole.
Just kidding. It's a lovely little town situated on a river that twists and bends enough to make it seem like it's 8 rivers. There are a lot of bridges here...and tourists floating down the river in inflatable boats. Our hostel is literally on the riverbank and, if it wasn't raining out, we'd be lying on the grassy bank doing absolutely nothing right now. Since the weather didn't cooperate with our intended one day stay here, we decided to extend, after, of course, checking weather.com to make sure we'd have sun tomorrow. So far, it looks like we will.
Last night, after having a grocery store aperitif of goat labeled beers grasping pints with their cloven hooves (brand name is Velkopopovicky Kozel Svetly-good thing we don't have to order them by name), we went upstairs for dinner. The menu was in Czech but translated in German below which made it much, much easier for us to decide what we wanted to eat. NOT. We recognized the word schnitzel and Amir found something resembling steak and then played roulette with our side dishes. Did you know that they charge you for side dishes in the Czech Republic? They also charge you for ketchup, tartar sauce, peanuts and take away pizza boxes. Commie bastards.
There was a drunk guy, 50's-ish, who was crooning Czech songs to himself at a table near us. It didn't take him long to recognize that we were the ONLY table in the entire restaurant both not smoking and under the age of 48. He joined our table and began speaking to us in something that must have been Czech and smelling like he hadn't ever heard of deodorant. It took two other patrons and a waitress to get him to leave our table. Meanwhile, another guy, sort of corpulent but genial, was smiling his condolences in our direction over our unwanted guest. After the guest left, the genial guy ambled over, leaned into within about 3 inches from my face and became an unwanted guest himself. He told me he was an "arbeid", which we took to mean "worker" from the German and he asked me to feel his hand which was very calloused. He also spoke no English but got a kick out of us telling him we were Americans. No doubt he was wondering, as we were, why we had chosen an all Czech, all smoking, all deep fried, non-English speaking establishment at which to dine.
Dinner ended up being a pork steak with fries and cabbage and a deep fried, breaded pork steak with breaded and friend dough balls and cabbage. We shared the meal over some beers and then went back home in the rain to some Absinthe from Prague and our books. Now we're just kicking back out our hostel after a home cooked lunch of chicken and potatoes waiting for the rain to abate.
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