Back in time to Cesky Krumlov
We ended up coming to Cesky Krumlov more or less by accident. A very fortunate accident as it's beautiful and we had a great time here. As we keep mentioning the whole of Europe is on holiday for Mayday and rooms are sparse and expensive. Looking around at where we could hide for the weekend we stumbled on Cesky Krumlov by accident. We had a very long and slow journey from Vienna by train our efforts at taking buses are continually frustrated by lack of services or availability. The train journey was quite quick for the first half and there was a very interesting and noticeable change in both the countryside and the use of it as we crossed from Austria to the Czech Republic. The agriculture and towns were significantly less modern and affluent.
We had to change trains at a town called Ceske Budejovice and the local service we connected with was the most ramshackle train you can imagine. It chugged along at a snails pace and was packed with many people standing for the whole hour and a half it took to get to Cesky Krumlov. There were quite a few people boozing on the train as well as lots of extremely old folk and the train had a lovely smell of stale booze mixed with stale sweat and decay. Still better than India and no cockroaches!!!
We stayed at the Penzion Onyx and were warmly greeted by Peter a hugely likeable English guy who owns and runs the pension with his Czech wife Daniella (sorry if the spelling is wrong).
The weather our first afternoon was much cooler and cloudier than the past week and by the time we had walked into the incredible medieval centre of town it was threatening to rain. We wandered around for a bit and had a very unfriendly experience at the tourist information centre where we booked our onward ticket with the bus company Peter had recommended called Student Agency which has fantastically modern and luxurious buses for a nice cheap price. We decided that with three nights we'd got plenty of time so we settled into a bar and had a couple of fantastic beers by a roaring woodburner while it started to chuck it down outside.
Some might say we were a little worse for wear when we left and headed towards a local Tesco supermarket. We cut up through a bypass where pedestrians were banned and on the way back we got stopped by the police and had to play the dumb ignorant tourist card. Works every time.
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