Scrapbook of my 2001 Czech escape

20/04/2001 First quest: find parking lot in Bratislava

The capital of Slovakia in 2001 was small town packed with cars. When you driving around morning town on working day silly things happen, like getting to Petrzalka for no reason instead of city centre, or mistake the main square for free parking lot (at first: “wow, finally!” then “ops, some uniformed people are moving toward our car, let's go, go, GO!”) - such things just happened, it's ok, keep calm.

Now, at 11 am we got to the Czech consulate, where we learn that we have a visa all right, but consul did not manage to sign it yet (must be busy: being a Czech consul in Slovakia, so much to learn in foreign parts, so many things could go wrong when you are in different culture on strange alien land, right?). So at the moment Czech consul in Slovakia is stuck in traffic and would be lucky to get to work before 14.00pm. We were recommended to check on him at 14. Judge how much we had to do in the town since we went to Macdonald across the street.... And heard consulate worker roaring to us from the consulate - hej, good news, consul had come through all the traffic, pass the foreign mentality, he did it, he managed, he sat and started visa signing. That's how we got a visa for Cz.

It was a happy occasion, although working day continued without interruption as if nothing happened, and we had to sit in Mac, then sit in a car, waiting for our working friends to get out of their well-paid office slavery. But we got bored and tried to get to the newly opened Polus shopping centre, but got into the good old traffic jam, so we saw the traffic jam again – not impressed.

Even the longest working days have their end and we met our friends, got to their place and yeah - guess what - started drinking. From that point narrative could be only kinda erratic, like this:
- hello old friends, when we saw each other last time - was it diploma day at Uni?
- ha, there are more bottles after all
- hej, remember that time! wow, we were crazy
- ..eh... who are you again?...

Somehow after several bottles we found ourselves marching on Obchodna street, shooting and laughing – black out and - taxi drive home.

Our morning started around 5 (aha!) when some car alarm woke up half of Petrzalka block houses, sleepy people jumped out on their balconies and leaned from windows, trying to see if the alarmed car was theirs. We did the same - we did balcony thing, in our underwear, tried hard to see from 9th floor where  our car is, fighting hangover, physical laws and cold weather. Cold weather won, making us realise: 1. our car does not have an alarm, 2. it was parked on the other side of the building.

Our second wake up was around 10, with normal breakfast, Simpsons on TV, everything to make you feel like a human being - for a while. We were invited for a dinner that day, and had a special

Quest number 2: get Czech crowns in Bratislava

What can I say - it was difficult. We bought entire Slovakian reserve of Czech currency, it might hold us for a couple of days there (it did - for exactly 2 days). 

Awful weather made us enthusiastic about leaving the country for whatever else, but first - there was dinner.
Our dinner friends lived in so called "pavlac" - house with gallery hall, opened to all apartments. Dinner was great – home made food with home brewed alcohol, can you wish for more? One of the rooms at our friends' apartment was called “дача” (summer house): room with tall ceiling (cca 4 m) was divided on 2 parts: inhabitants sleep upstairs and tried to live downstairs. While digesting dinner, we got an idea: to demolish the wall of the living room to Dacha room and put there glass – so inmates could communicate to each other freely. Then we find out there was bathroom in between the rooms – oh, well.. then instead of communication residents would have horrors or erotic scenes – depending on who is in the bathroom…… with that piece of our brilliance we left our friends and in less than an hour we were at the state border.

21/04/2001 Quest number 3: leave Slovakia

At the border – how else – we've got special treatment. Our passports were read and reread as bestsellers, our various visas and airports' stamps closely studied, but brought little sense to the officer. He was brave enough (there are only brave guys at the service) to admit that he doesn’t understand a thing and that makes him suspicious, which requires assistance of his superior, because you cannot be suspicious all by yourself. With that he left us boil for some time between the borders. In those long minutes we observed some German car being searched, including driver and passengers. Do not know what you could possibly find in German car, Slovak customs officer find nothing, I guess it was the main reason they were severely looked at and fined for not having highway stamp – although they had no way to know if Germans come to the border by highway. In addition to the fine, they were forced to buy one – the highway stamp for the country they were leaving, and – I’m guessing – swearing never ever visit again. I wonder how long it took them "not to come back" for a cheap beer and loose morals though.

Anywho, our brave officer returned from his consultations with superiors having incredibly angry face and told us in terminator tone that all our documents are fine and we can go. With that we left Slovakia. 

Breclav town quest

Cheap accommodation was not open yet and for more expensive we had no money. So we went to the mega-super-global-market and bought note-book, where we wrote all these and what will be happening later; we bought a camp map for Czech Republic and some breakfast supplies. Prices over there upset us. In Breclav we saw Druha Trava band’s caravan and we did not go to the concert of Monkey Business – neither fact cheered us up.

The only affordable accommodation we found was in Lednice – which is strange, as Lednice is a small place with a famous castle but no tourists, and Breclav is a bigger town with several industrial manufactures and offices but no hotels. 

22/04/2001 Lednice nightmares

We got a room in cozy little pension. Receptionist there played Heroes of Might&Magic III all the time, gave us keys without even looking. I am curious what he would do if instead of money we would gave him +3 to Attack and 9 sulfurs?

In the room we finished chicken we’ve got from mom 3 days ago, and barely manage to drink our tea – we fall asleep tired and worn out. And no, 3 days old chicken didn't rise any suspicions. We woke up around 5am because of spasms in the guts – we were fighting for the toilet the whole day. The chicken! Ah-jaj – the chicken was 3 days old……

When we overcome the worst, we went out for the fresh air. Lednice castle and especially park must be beautiful indeed since even in our poor condition we admired them both. Weather was feeling about the same as we did: unpleasant little rain non-stop with cold wind – it was getting everywhere, making our misery even more unbearable. I wonder what was the case for weather to be like this – as far as I know, it doesn’t mindlessly consume 3 days old chickens.

Lednice famous minaret is higher when you look down from its top – kinda scary. We were blocked up there by some ugly heavy breathing beast, who - despite snoring and puffing - got to the top faster than his owners, they freed us from him 20min later.

We were looking as well for some stoppers of our plight - like rice porridge or dark chocolate or vodka – nothing was available in the shops and bars, pubs, restaurants and such - all of them were serving czech cuisine, which will do no good to people in our condition. Dreary and exhausted we returned to our pension and as a last hope went to the bar. They had rice as a side dish and we order lots of it without any food to be on side of, and vodka to start, continue and finish the meal. Waiter was mildly surprised but said nothing and brought everything exactly as ordered - my man.

After that we carefully moved to our room and lay on the bed listening to the life in our stomachs. Life got to normal.

Next day we decided to use camp map acquired: it promised us camp near Chlum u Trebone, but as we were driving around, over and under – there were no camps near Chlum. Moving on we saw few camps - all closed: apparently, season did not started yet. Guys at the gas station suggested to check with some guy at the stall on the cross road, he knows what is where, they said. (Remind you, those were the times before internet come to Eastern Europe). And he did – but very vaguely. He sent us to some camp, where we've met nice grandma like 200 years old but up and running. And she had a camp all right, but it was only for tents, no cars. But, her daughter had a camp and nice lady telephoned her on our behalf. The grandma then got a shock of her life when she got the accommodation price from her daughter – we were shocked too and rather went on.

Another camp owner on the way was very friendly too – but his camp was just preparing to be open, with no water or electricity yet, so he couldn’t let us stay. Instead he gave us billions of good advises for camping, travel, partying, driving and any other aspects of life. We took all his advises and shoved them deep, and drove to

23/04/2001 Ceske Budejovice

According to the camp map, there are plenty of all-year-round camps at Ceske Budejovice – which proved to be true, we find one pretty fast and got little bungalow for us and parking place for the car. 

Budejovice is a very nice place to be, even if you do not drink beer. The old town survived its history without scars, and parks are full of big trees and dogs, especially dogs.

We went up on Cerna Vez (Black Tower), looked down on the square and got scared to death on how high it is - as is our custom.

The place was nice but our money were running out – as is their custom, so we decided to move with them – out. Our camp map suggested non-existing or closed camps all over the country, so the nearest available we found in

24/04/2001 Plzen

The weather was fine, sunny and even warm, roads calm, so our car was almost the only one knocking and cuffing on the highway. We had a very old and complicated car. It was complicated because it was completed from several other cars, not all of them were of the same model, brand or even producer, nevertheless, on the back it has the name of Peugeot for some reason, there was no name up front.

The camp met us with dead silence and closed doors although just a few hours before we've got an accommodation confirmed by phone. We called the same number again, and a different person on the other side cheerfully told us that the camp is closed. It aggravated us so much we almost bite our steering wheel off. The person on the other side of the phone got into our mood somehow, he gave us personal mobile of the camp owner and retreated hastily. The owner was the one who knew we were coming but due to some circumstances he was stuck somewhere, and the camp indeed was open – that is, it will be, as soon as the owner will un-stuck himself and get to the camp. We had nothing else to do but wait, it took 2 hours, during which we found several slugs and measured them. The biggest one was as long and as fat as mens wrist watch. 

The camp owner proved to be a nice guy after all – if you leave alone punctuality. He got us heater and cooker too. It was drizzling rain again... Then we got to the town of Plzen. 

Plzen’ St.Bartholomeo cathedral has the highest tower in Czechia, guess what we did. You cannot get out at the top of it though, only window view is allowed, in addition, there was some lady making sure we behave over there. It is not so scary to look from the window I have to tell you. A bit disappointing even.

Apart from Christian churches there are many Jewish synagogues in Plzen, but we are simple folks who likes pictures, gold and weird mummified dogs bones posing as famous saints remains - they don't have such things in synagogues, so we did not visit them much. 

To complete the trip we went underground as well - Plzen is famous by its underground town part, it was used as much as over ground by citizens: not only as storage, but as well as a place to hide from your family and quietly have some beer with friends. For excursion we've got helmets and guide with thundering voice and big bright miners lantern. The guy was fixed on things people lost in the wells for some reason. 

With underground our budget was exhausted for today, so we didn't visit the Pilsner Urquell brewery, instead we were looking for a place indoors, where noone would make us eat or pay for being there. So we were looking at the fish at the pet store as long as it was possible without raising suspicions, got bored, so next one was Tesco store, then couple of other shops, in between we were getting wet and cold from dribbling rain, running from street to street, then we got lost, then found, then lost again, then accidentally we got to our bus stop. The bus stop has no ticket vending machine, so we had to get running again in the rain, looking for one. Discovery of the machine didn't bring us any luck, as it did accept only exact fare of 8 crowns, but there is no such coin of 8 crowns, so you had to put there 1-2 crowns coins, which we did not have, so we had another round of running. Finally, we got change and feed enough coins of the exact amount to the strict machine and were allowed to get to the bus - when we got "home" we literally fall asleep, not even getting angry on our camp owner, who decided that non-stop rain should be enough so shower would not be necessary - and he turned the water off.

27/04/2001 Pils

When we woke up, we found out that Jaroslav has name day today, to celebrate which it was decided to refrain from eating usual canned food, but go to the restaurant. On the way to the town we decided that we would never forgive ourselves  if we would not visit The Brewery - so we did, but! a) there were no beer testing; b) there were really no beer testing;  c) you would not believe it - but there were no beer testing in the Pilsner Urquell brewery! The exposition though was great and educational. You could even get special post stamp on your post card, although the stamp machine was at the entrance, and post cards were sold at the exit, so if you were - as us - postcard-less from the beginning, you got no special stamp.

After brewery we decided to see the Roosevelt bridge (formerly Sasky) - nice one, with sculptures and everything, right after the bridge we saw sign "Zoo", but with no distance info, we tried it anyway, and after half an hour walking we went back since no zoo were still in sight. It was our great luck that first place we enter was atmospheric historic restaurant Stara Sladovna. The food was delicious, beer was perfect, medieval interior with wooden heavy furniture could keep us there the whole evening, but it was time of Majales - student spring celebration, so we got to the main square to see whats up with Plzen students. That day they were choosing Majales' king, performance was fun, "king-candidates" were hilarious and music bands were - to our surprise - quite good, especially Strasliva podivana . If it would stop raining - the day would be really perfect!

28/04/2001 rain

All in all  an awful day. It was still raining, Majales moved from square to the roofed exhibition area, where we were asked 70crowns for tickets, which we refused to pay and left all the fun behind, we headed back to the camp. On the way the rain transformed into shower, then to total downpour so we got back with not a single piece of cloth dry, including our underwear - all was dripping wet. So the rest of the day was dedicated to tea with rum and drying clothes.

29/04/2001 Sunday

Time for Sunday walks and Sunday dinner. We choose Krkavec hill for walking (8km from the camp + 8km back), there supposed to be observation tower according to our maps. And if there is a tower – we just had to get up to test if our acrophobia is still in place (spoiler alert - it always on). The weather finally come to its senses and showed some sun. On the road we acquired big strong tree-mushroom, we had to break it out from the tree and take with us – there wasn't any other choice, such mushroom comes only once in a lifetime.

Well, maybe twice but you never know. The road to the top was more complicated than we expected - otherwise, how difficult it might be to go to the top, always up? No, the roads were going in all directions, some up, some down, some around, they were full of bicycle riders, people with dogs and families with kids and no clear marks or signs. All around the path were big craters from WWII bombing (by the way, later when we left Plzen, we heard on car radio that some tourists found old bomb at one of such craters in the woods - still common thing in Plzen, it was so heavily bombed). At the top of the hill we found the tower closed. It was guarded by 5 fat cats. I guess tourists lived not so healthy after all, if their food fattened these cats so much.

After that we left Plzen and moved closer to Prague. 

30/04/2001 Veltrusy 

It got warmer, people started to live in tents and more camps were opening. We stopped at camp Obora in Veltrusy, next to the castle. The castle looked more like a farmstead or little palace, with huge park on the riverbank. We got a little hut, it looked more like a tent made of wood with holes in the walls, through which you could see surrounding world, or you can use window for this purpose too. 
To ours and other camp dwellers unfortune, some drunks company stayed at the camp - they manage to drink all the beer at the camp restaurant, all the beer at the nearest bars and shops, and ate all the food around. We were hungry, sober and angry so much we were even thinking about sacrificing our great strong tree-mushroom by using it as a murder instrument, but then we fall asleep again and morning brought different thoughts, as where to get some food after all? In nearest villages everything was empty, we could buy only 2 small bread-rolls. One village confused us enormously with a big sign "V obci umisteny retardy", which we translated as "there are retarded people placed in this village" - it was quite scary driving around there, we felt as in some horror movie... then it come down to us: the sign was not about people, but road retarders, god knows why they placed such a confusing sign at the entrance! Anywho - it serve its purpose: we were driving very carefully and slowly through that village.

01/05/2001 and some couple of days after

The drunks were still at the camp - running around, shooting each other from water pistols, roaring and singing. So other camp' inhabitants went to the castle park. It was getting warmer and warmer, we found out we are not actually prepared for this, so we had to cut our jeans to make shorts. We had only manicure scissors therefore our jeans-shorts looked quite cool and instantly become subject of jealousy among aborigines. It had a minus though: there were more space for insects to annoy. The castle owners definitely were moving in their park on horses: from pavilion to pavilion you had to walk for like half a day or so, but it was nice anyway. After walking whole day, we decided to see the castle too, but discovered that visit to the castle is on excursion only, and excursion includes visit to all the park pavilions first, for us repeating pavilions' visits again was far above our walking abilities so we passed the opportunity. But being curios anyway we looked through the castle windows - well, we understood why excursion was mainly around the park: the interiors were  poorly furnished and as decoration were used only some old portraits of ugly people... most probably former owners. Or maybe the only painter available at the time was not very talented. There were 2 peacocks at the castle: one lived mainly upstairs, on the windowsills, and the other was making selfies with tourists in the park. We saw as well lizards fight in the park - not sure if it was in the program though, probably it was just some spring thing. Could be not even fight, we never saw lizards sex before, so who knows what it was and who won.

We spent the rest of the day on the river bank, sunbathing and watching jolly dog swimming, splashing, jumping in the water and right next to it some guy fishing. I wonder what he could possibly fish out - every river resident must get away from the energetic dog, but the fisherman sit there whole day with his fishing-rod in kind of fishing trans.
Some day later there came Serbs family to the camp - oh, boy we hate them even more than drunks: they brought couple of whole sheep carcasses, which they were barbecuing the whole time they were there, that fresh juicy BBQ meat aroma was getting everywhere, even in the castle park, there were no escape from their feast - for our limited budget stomachs it was plain torture. Serbs spent couple of days in the camp, mostly eating and cooking, cooking and eating - we were suffering in our hut. So we escaped to Prague.

May in Prague

If you ever want to go to Prague - May will not be the the best month to visit, unless you are very, extremely, extraordinary fond of Russians, then May in Prague is for you. There is big Russian community in Prague at any time of the year, but in May they are reinforced by hordes of tourists. Restaurants, museums, shops and streets are full of them and all the hotels are overbooked. Some noisy Spanish or Italian tourists are drowned in loud Russian groups, families, couples or even individuals, who rarely learn any language in confidence, that if they repeat their words slowly and loudly, they would get understood. Amazingly, it works. Mostly because shopkeepers/waiters/hoteliers learn some basic words in advance, but it doesn't matter, loud and clear and repeat is their way to communicate.

Anyways, Prague is the most beautiful place in the world - how many times you've heard that? That's 'cos it is true.

We were looking for accommodation of reasonable price, which brought us to Prague' outskirts. We found nice place in small village of Jenec, at hotel Kora in former castle or an old farmstead built as one. The walls there were at least three metres thick, with narrow corridors and small windows—built so you could hold the place indefinitely under the siege. We spent there almost a week, never guessing that in a few years we will move to Jenec and live there happily for 19 years.