Well, the first days on the river went pretty good, actually. My slight nagging fear was that I would be just unforgivably bad at it, but this didn’t seem to be the case for anyone, which was nice. There’s not too much more to say about it than that, except that were was plenty getting drunk and falling in the river, and quite a lot of this fried cheese thing that they seem to eat a lot of here. The options for veggies were of course a bit limited, but if it came to it I could live on this sort of thing if nothing else. Day 3 was quite short, and we arrived early-ish in Čheský Krumlov, the main town on our route. It’s a bonny wee place, with little cobbled streets and a large castle of the type that the word “picturesque” is likely designed for. The Vltava snakes through it in a double-S pattern.
After some food at a wee random restaurant and some wandering around we had a few drinks at a place selling the most enormous cocktails imaginable (see pictures).
Apparently there were some dancing bears on show but I was feeling a bit paranoid at the time and so didn’t go out of fear that it would send me over the edge slightly, although I wished later I had gone for a look. It’s not really the sort of thing you come across in western Europe, so you gotta see them really.
Later on a gypsy band (with real, live gypsies, I think) were playing in a hostel in the centre of town. They reminded me of the band I saw in Amsterdam a few weeks ago, and produced about the same sort of reaction – everyone was jumping around like mad pieces and having a great time of it. Magic stuff.
From then on things were a little bit downhill, though. By the next morning a few people had already begun to develop the runs, and to make matters worse it had decided to start pissing it down no end. There wasn’t much to do though except give it laldy anyway and motor down the river shouting maniacally at the heavens all the time, which is what we did.
By about lunchtime we were all pretty much soaked through, especially dipshit me who had not thought to bring any waterproofs or a jacket (they’re all back in Scotland, anyway), and so it was obviously with quite a sign of relief that we saw a small collection of huts by the riverside with a barbeque going and a counter selling strong spirits.
We huddled together like penguins at feeding time underneath a small tarpaulin roof, and it was by total luck that they had a CD of the cheesiest 50’s/60’s-style rock ‘n roll hits on; perfect for this sort of weather. Even Cliff Richard sounded good.
It was decided that a large bottle of rum should be bought and passed round, which it was, but since this did seem to be having the correct effect of warming folk up a bit it was then decided to buy another one for the road. Of course the consequences of this don’t need explaining.
About an hour or so after this myself and Roddy were paddling along, pissed out of our nuts, and I stupidly pointed out that we were about the only ones who hadnae capsized yet. Of course about 2 minutes later we were in the water, and it looked for a wee minute like my bag had got lost. In the last half an hour or so after this ’til we reached the campsite we had to help fish out another canoe from the murky deep, and capsized ourselves again going over a wier (or as Roddy had taken to calling them, a “yes!!!”). Canoe sunk to the bottom and almost getting carried away halfway to Germany, Roddy’s tent and my watertight barrel already almost out of sight in the distance.
By some miracle both were picked up by some folks on a raft up ahead, and we all managed it to the campsite pretty much in one piece. Unfortunately my barrel was not so watertight as we had been lead to believe, and so I did not have a single dry piece of clothing on me, which meant quite a lot of scabbing off of people so as to avoid hypothermia.
The general agreement at this point was “fuck camping”, and Martin arranged instead for us to sleep in an old school hall in the town. This seemed like a good idea, but because I hadn’t brought a rollmat and the floor was timber, it made for about the most uncomfortable night’s sleep I can ever remember. At about 5 in the morning I went wandering round the depths of the old Soviet-era building and eventually found a cushion just big enough to crawl on top of in a foetal position, which in the end was better than nothing. I suppose it was a bit like the TV pictures you see of people camping in gymnasiums after hurricanes or whatever.
