PADDLE!
Trip Start
Dec 26, 2009
1
91
137
Trip End
Nov 08, 2010
Český Krumlov, Jihočeský Kraj, Czech Republic
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Cesky Krumlov is a gorgeous little town, crowding around a lazily winding river. The train station perches above everything on a nearby hill so steep we're taking a taxi back up there after our stay, even though the distance isn't that long. Luggage + wheels + steep downhill = easy. Luggage + uphill = taxi. We didn't have great directions or a map but found our hostel easily nonetheless. Win!
Cesky Krumlov is quite a sleepy town - it has a castle and a lovely centre for strolling and lots of tourist shopping, but that's about it. The chief activity is river rafting, and at any given time there will be tons of rafts and canoes being paddled by - often with the family dog included. I've never met a place more dog-friendly than the Czech Republic. Although we arrived late in the afternoon we went for a stroll while it was still light and saw quite a few people still paddling away. We walked the length of the centre of town, crossing the river several times and eventually making it to the main square. It was pretty and quaint in a touristy country way, but nothing like the grandeur of Prague. Not that anything is quite like Prague. But we did find something we didn't see in Prague - absinthe filled truffles! It still burns even wrapped in chocolate. There were a considerable number of tourists about, which surprised us as it was a bit annoying to get to by train and isn't connected to much on the rail network, but we learned it was on the Busabout route.
We made a sincere attempt to cook dinner, but the girl angrily blocked the door when we tried to go in the supermarket for supplies. Small town closing times, how we don't miss you! So that idea fizzled and we ended up at the hostel's restaurant, which was quite tasty. Mmmm, salmon. The hostel was a bit mixed. The staff were exceptionally friendly, the facilities were good but it really needed a large common room. Ben and I are divided over our dorm - I think it has character and he doesn't like it. But that's probably because he keeps hitting his head. Our 9-bed dorm is split into three levels - one lower than the door, with 5 beds, one at door level with 2 beds and 2 more beds tucked into the roof up a staircase that doesn't deserve that name - it was a ladder. Unfortunately there were only 2 beds left when we got in the room - one on the bottom level and one in the roof. Although we were technically in the same room, it's the furthest apart we've slept for... I was going to say seven months, but I can't remember the last time we slept apart while living together at home, so let's just say a really long time.
The whole room was 'in the roof' - low beams everywhere, sloping sides, etc. None of the beds were bunks since bunks wouldn't fit under the slanted roof, and the two top ones were just pallets. I though they were adorable and tried to convince Ben to move up there when the other guy moved out the following morning. He refused, on the grounds of not being tall enough to even stand up in there, not wanting to lift luggage and climb the ladder, and not having a powerpoint up there. Spoilsport. It was practically a private room in the dorm! So I moved down next to him instead - and it was nice to charge things and not hit my head, but sssssh, don't tell Ben.
We were lazily curled up in the TV room that night when an explosion of noise and movement rocked the hostel to its foundation. We gaped at the number of noisy, drunk and chatty people that suddenly swamped the common areas. Pubcrawl had returned! The very clever hostel has figured out a way to combine the two favourite activities of backpackers in Cesky Krumov - drinking and river rafting. They drop you up the river in the afternoon and let you paddle back to the hostel's port over the course of the afternoon, tying up the raft for a few drinks at whatever riverside pub takes your fancy. It's an inspired idea, but those guys carried it to excess. They were ridiculous. Every two days, the hostel gets an influx of Busabout travellers and they all do the pubcrawl together.
Usually, the travellers we meet are good-natured. Some drink to excess, and hey, we have too occasionally but we don't do it too much as we have a long way to go still! Don't give me that look, I know I've done two pubcrawls in the last week (and Cesky Krumlov makes three), but we're not like them. They were soaking - from falling out and pushing each other in the river. Two of the rafts had missed the port and beached further down, meaning the poor hostel guy had to scramble through the nettles to retrieve them. And they were noisy. One Kiwi in particular couldn't grasp the concept of anything quieter than a jet engine and was an absolute ass to boot. We gave up on common areas and went to bed, and luckily they didn't stay up too late. After meeting those people, we're not planning to do Busabout. Ever.
The next day, it was our turn! Since the Busabout crew goes every two days there were only five of us going on the pubcrawl, but we were still sure it would be fun. And it was! We were duly dropped off upriver and paddled neatly along, eventually finding our first pub. We managed to tie up among the millions of other rafts nearby and settle down outside for some drinks, but the too-friendly bees drove us away. Ben screams and swats like a girl - but he's allergic to bees, so maybe it's justified. We did manage to trap one bee under an empty beer cup, and Ben spent ages going taunting the poor thing. After the bee saga, we sat on the river's edge for a while, since the first chute was outside the pub and we wanted to see how to do it. It didn't look too bad. Every now and again, the river drops a bit over a tiny waterfall, but they've built chutes into the sides so the canoes and rafts can go down. There's some minor rapids where the chute hits the river level again, but it looked quite fun.
Eventually we untied our raft and set off again. Going down the chute proved to be quite easy and fun, but hitting the river at the bottom was much harder! Lorna fell off her seat (but luckily into the raft) and we lost control of the raft, which spun and crashed into some canoes tied up at the side. Oops! But the canoes helped us bounce back and complete a 360 turn, so we were heading the right way again, if slightly wetter than before. We had to pause and kill all witnesses to our disastrous rafting skills but were soon on our way again.
The second chute was handled much more professionally. I took a video but had to paddle at the same time, so if you watch it that's why the camera is making paddling motions. Lorna fell off again into the raft but we managed to hit the river at the right angle and not spin wildly. Yay! We still got wet but since Ben and I were sitting in the back it wasn't too bad.
The third chute was a disaster. We'd spotted a pub and tied up near a ledge but the ledge didn't lead anywhere except fenced off private houses, and we couldn't get to the pub without going through waist-deep water we decided to just have more drinks at the next one. The problem was, the river level dropped right after our ledge and we were on the opposite side of the river from the chute. It was going to require a Herculean paddling effort to combat the current and get across. (Also, Stephanie misjudged the ledge while pushing the raft off and got a mighty dunking.)
In our defence, we almost made it! Ben and I were in the front this time and we only needed a few more strokes to stretch out and catch the side of the chute.. but we didn't paddle hard enough. And Ben paddled on the wrong side. And Lorna and Liam, although lovely people, do not know how to use paddles as a rudder. Not that we were brilliant at it either, but we were much better than them. So that was the only time they were in the back seat - they'd sat there because they were sick of getting the brunt of the wave when we went down chutes. Well, in this case we missed the chute altogether and went down the waterfall backwards, so they still got the worst of it. Nothing bad happened... we'd been warned off the mini-waterfalls since there are often rocks after them that can pop the raft, but nothing happened to ours, nobody lost their paddles and we didn't capsize. Hooray!
We spotted a riverside stall set up next to a homemade pontoon and stopped to salve our wounded pride with beer and mojitos - a very effective remedy, as it turns out. We stayed quite a while but I was desperate for a toilet so eventually we moved on. We'd only just set off when we spotted a restaurant on the other side of the river, so Ben got to hold the raft in place while everyone else got to convince the hotel staff that 'really really desperate' trumps 'hotel guests only'. Which it did, but it earned us an exceptionally dirty look from the guy we were pleading with.
There was a another chute directly after our pit stop, but we were on the right side this time and handled it like pros. Which was lucky, since we were back in town now and quite a crowd had gathered on the sides of the river, on the bridge and even up on the castle walls to watch! We found a pub almost immediately after the chute - one with a toilet, so we hadn't even needed to harass that hotel. Oh well. Both that pub and the next one made excellent cocktails and we meandered down to the other end of town, managed not to miss the tiny port and returned our raft intact!
Ben pleaded exhaustion, but the rest of us went out to dinner together. The hostel had caught the table-carving, corkscrew-trap-setting culprit of the previous night and his wife had paid for the damage, so they were slightly happier, but he'd also lost his wedding ring while absolutely sloshed from the pubcrawl so I imagine his wife wasn't pleased. This meant the noisy Kiwi and his friend were still there, since they'd been kicked out for that crime and because a policeman had thought they'd vandalised a sign. They hadn't, but they had pulled up two completely different signs and tried to raft down the river on them so my sympathy was limited. And by limited I mean non-existent. Our pubcrawl may have been small, but everyone except Stephanie stayed more or less dry, no signs were stolen, no pub owners refused to let us in (for the others, a true story) and nobody set up corkscrews through the table to stab other people with.
Stephanie and I went out the next morning to see the castle and grounds, the most fun part of which turned out to be watching from the battlements as several canoes capsized while going down the chute in town. Suckers! The bears were hiding under the bridge from the downpour, the grounds were pleasant, the lost ducklings and the poor harassed mother duck amused us for ages and the rain cleared up in the afternoon. And I finally figured out where Czech vegetables go - they feed them to the bears! There were piles of them sitting in the bear pits, but they weren't enough to tempt the bears out from their dry bridge hidey-hole and when we tried again later, the piles were gone but the bears were still hiding. So no bears for me.
Ben and I had an afternoon train back to Prague and an overnight train from there to Krakow, in a compartment shared with four Irish guys. Why do so many more guys than girls travel??? Ben would appreciate some equality - I don't mind the company of guys but girls definitely have better standards of hygiene. And they snore less!
Peace, love and paddles,
Amanda and Ben
