Still not 100% on Saturday, but managed a wee wander ’round the streets nearby. Wasn’t really in the mood to go visit things, but saw some interesting bits and pieces anyway, including the city’s TV tower, complete with babies crawling all over it.

Martin took us to to a bar later on which involved descending what seemed like a endless series of tunnels under the ground, until we were probably in danger of running into flowing magma or something, but pretty nice nonetheless. You’d be fucked in the event of a fire, though. Best not to think about that.

Not much time to do things on Sunday (and ran out of money, anyway), but we did manage a visit to an excellent little veggie café/restaurant place, with the biggest portions you could ask for, and damn tasty too. Certainly a very nice way to end the trip.

3/4 hours delayed on the flight home (and having ran out of clean clothes I stank like a tramp), but after the disaster of the outward flight I could live with that. Back in the ‘dam, clean clothes and a shower. Perfect.

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.

I will let the pictures speak for themselves…

Not enough meercats for my liking.

Martin’s band were playing a gig later which was no’ too shoddy. It was held outdoors in a sort of Victorian gazebo thing which started to bend and shake like fuck when it had about 30 drunk Czechs and Scots jumping on top of it, which was followed by some further alfresco bevvying ’til the wee hours. Apologies for the quality of the video; my camera doesn’t like the dark very much.

The best option for Sunday was a type of outdoor lido type thing which appeared to have survived the transition to capitalism quite well. It’s the type of architecture that I’m quite into, I suppose, and the kind of thing that probably wouldn’t get built in such a form nowadays, which is a shame.

Then an outdoor showing of “Life of Brian”, which was, I think, a pretty good way to round of the weekend at an early hour before the week’s nonsense…

Dreadful cunt of a journey, though. Firstly, the flight was delayed for about 2 hours (no explanation of course), and when it finally arrived the worst was yet to come. How long is reasonable to wait for you luggage coming off the belt? 10 minutes? 20 minutes? Well, in this instance an hour had gone past without a sign of it. It was then that I began to realise that almost all of the people who had been on the same flight were also waiting, and it seemed reasonable to assume that the whole lot had gone missing. Nice. What made the whole thing worse was that there was no announcement save from a single one stating the obvious fact that “Luggage on flight QS 27 from Amsterdam has been delayed”, and no help whatsoever from any of the airport staff.

I am guessing that the flight was made up roughly half-and-half of Czech and Dutch passengers, and you could tell quite easily which were which by the irate questioning of officials and waving of arms on the part of the Dutch, whilst the Czechs just kind of stood around with a stoical resignation. The Dutch don’t seem to get that angry as a matter of course, but they don’t take kindly to bad service.

Was finally met with a very warm welcome from the troops at Staromĕststá (yes, I had to look that up) metro station, and proceeded via the famous Charles Bridge to a bar for some top class food and delicious, cheap beer. The rest of the night becomes less clear, but certainly involved riding around on a few trams (smaller than the Amsterdam ones and much cuter), before crashing at some unknown time back at the “Hostel Advantage”.