The surprisingly challenging Czech Republic
Ups and downs and downs and ups from Vienna to Prague
So I’m writing now, feeling every inch the 20th century bohemian writer, in the “cubist” Grand Orient Café in the historic architectural wonderland that is Prague.
Iain and I have recovered from our various lower digestive tract ailments and have enjoyed a relaxing few days ambling around the city with Iain’s brother Ryan. But the Czech Republic has been something of an unexpected challenge and it’s been far from an easy bit of cycling.
Bratislava — the wildest party we never went to
Our hostel, ‘Wild Elephants’, was in the heart of the old the town. It has a bright, airy and comfortable with a homely feel. This homely feeling was evidently welcoming enough for several volunteers (Iain reckoned it was about nine) to have made the place a semi-permanent home.
The friendly relaxed attitude of the group made it difficult to work who out of the many twenty-somethings bumming around the hostel was a transient guest, or who worked there.
The “staff”, despite being a tight knit group, were more than happy to include the guests in their plans. But they were, as Iain put it, “borderline alcoholics”. They apparently go out and reach some stage of inebriation on six out of seven days of the week, the seventh day being when one of them had to be on duty for the night shift and couldn’t join in on the fun. Aside from the boozing there also seemed to be a regular afternoon weed session, which might have helped ease the hangovers.
Though despite all this, I don’t think I’d exactly call the place a “party hostel”. Despite the relaxed attitude of the volunteer staff, it was tight ship, was generally kept clean and guests were well looked after. In one case they even helped out a passed out Asian man they found on the town square, and took him into the hostel to help him recover… admittedly this is because they confused him for an Asian hostel guest (I’ll leave it to you decide whether this makes a drunken Slovakian man a racist or not). I’d recommend a stay to anyone.
Sadly, I missed out almost entirely on the fun as, without getting into too much detail (as much as I know you love it), I was shitting my guts out on a more or less hourly interval. Adding a dangerous cocktail of Slavic inspired alcohol into the system seemed a recipe to increase either the volume, frequency or unpleasantness of these trips.
Iain did manage to go out on a “low key” pub crawl (low key means staying out to 2am in Slovakia), and witnessed the aggressive low-stakes gambling that the hostel staff did amongst themselves on table football games, redistributing handfuls of cents and euros between each other on a weekly basis. He said he didn’t expect the violent undercurrent that the games brought out in the chilled out-staff.
However, Iain’s own gut related issues soon hobbled him too and sadly there was nothing too heroic happening from either of us on the socialising front. Though we did get out to explore the city.
Bratislava is a very relaxed small city, with a compact old town nestled by the banks of the Danube. There are some fine baroque buildings and squares around the town centre, but it’s more picturesque and provincial than anything particularly grandiose or imperial. The scale reminded me of our recent stay in Timisoara, or Edinburgh (where I studied), it felt like a city you could get to know very well if you stayed a while.
The calm pace of life, though occasionally disturbed by a grey deluge of Danube river cruise tourists spilling out onto the streets, is a perfect antidote to hectic Budapest or could be an ideal escape from the expense of neighbouring Vienna.
We were taken on a walking tour of the town by probably the best city guide we’ve had on the trip, he was full of interesting anecdotes about the nooks and crannies of the town, spinning stories of Slovakian history and culture and telling us about everything from Roman garrisons, Hapsburg monarchs, through to the dark stories of home-grown Slovakian Nazi-Priests and communist era oppression.
We stayed a day longer in the city than we had planned, I’d say this was because we were comfortable here, but sadly the truth would be because we were both still men haunted by the dreaded shits.
Unfortunately being in this delicate state meant that we missed out on the massive (even by this hostel’s standards) party that was being thrown that night in honour of a departing volunteer.
We could only look on in sad envy as everyone changed into ridiculous outfits, and the sound of hedonistic madness ricocheted around the winding corridors of the hostel.
We witnessed glimpses of the fun on our way back and forth to the toilet, hearing arguments over the music which vacillated between snippets of reggae, electro, hip-hop and trashy pop music.
At one point, one of our roommates, a chubby bearded Englishman from Daventry (who looked like a fish out of water in a backpacker hostel and confessed himself; “I don’t really know why I’m here”), reappeared with a thousand yard stare, wearing an orange kimono and a purple stamp on his forehead. After sitting down and sighing a bit, he said:
“It’s madness out there, they’re doing shots now [it was half 7]. Well not shots. There’s just a man in shorts held up by braces, but topless, who’s going around pouring some variety of burning alcohol into your mouth as everyone cheers.”
He then left and didn’t reappear until 4am when he stumbled about and collapsed into bed, hugging a two litre bottle of water.
I’d say we missed out, but I also think we were quite relieved.
The ghostly road to Vienna
Having missed out on the night’s shenanigans, we crept out of the hungover hostel early to reach the Eurovelo 6 route to Vienna. This is a work of perfect cycle-lane engineering, the likes of which I have never seen outside of the Netherlands.
The path neatly tucks you away from all traffic and takes you on a direct yet still scenic route to where you actually need to go (often cycle lanes will do one or the other), and navigation was effortless as everything was neatly signposted.
Nonetheless there was still a nervy undercurrent to the day as things had still not really settled down in mine or Iain’s engine rooms, so to speak.
The fact that the cycle lane increasingly took us away from all traces of civilisation through a beautiful yet isolated park hidden between the Danube and Donnau rivers, was not reassuring to men who would need immediate and urgent access to water, food and toilets.
It was eerily devoid of all life and became increasingly foggy, making it feel like some Stoppardesque limbo of repetitive flat path, which offered no escape.
Somewhere, in the middle of this endless misty limbo, Iain pulled to an abrupt stop, and marched off into the damp woods to find somewhere amidst the underbrush and wild garlic to lose his wild-pooping virginity. His comments on this new experience were:
“There’s a reason why god intended your shit to drop into water, even if you are surrounded by the pleasant scent of pine trees and wild garlic. I just didn’t need to see that.”
This momentous event in a young man’s life aside, we eventually reached Vienna without much trouble and immediately headed to the train station to get us back out of the town again.
It did seem a shame to not spend any time in one of the most important centres of western art, culture, music and history, but we needed to get to Prague in less time than we had to meet Ryan so couldn’t afford to linger long. Also, looking at our budget, we literally couldn’t afford to linger long, as Vienna is a pricey city, in the words of Iain:
“I’ve only spent half an hour here and I already think it’s ripping me off”
So we muscled our bikes onto a rush hour train that we probably shouldn’t have been on, there was much tutting at us, as we squeezed our large selves and bulky bikes into the crowded train. Iain mused, “I think it’s how fat American tourists must feel like all the time in Europe. You know, apologising, but basically you know that you’re always a bit too much in the way.”
We pitched up our tent in the beautiful small town of Znojmo (I can’t remember how it’s pronounced, but I’ve decided to give up on cultural sensitivity and go full “Bri’ish” on pronunciation and called it “Zen-Odge-Moe”) on the Czech/Austrian border.
The Czech Republic — “I did not expect to use all my gears, all the time”
On our first morning I took a spanner to tighten my Brooks saddle, which had become a bit squeaky, only to discover that the steel bolt that keeps the leather under tension had sheared in two.
I can only surmise that my considerable bulk (what with me being “the mountain that rides”) gradually pushed the bolt to breaking point over the repeated bumps and pot-holes of the past 1000 odd miles.
Whenever stuff like this happens to me, I always think of the comments of our friend Josh, who said something to effect of: “Tom is a man who has no business being on a bike, he’s not built for them and they’re not really built for him, but he can go surprisingly very fast” I sadly nodded when he said this, adding “Yeah it’s like a putting truck engine on a 125cc moped, really…”
But anyway, a replacement Brooks “tension pin” (or just even a similar bolt we could jimmy on) has proved elusive. So I’ve just bought a cheap saddle for now and have ordered the part to be delivered to hostel in Nuremburg, and it will hopefully arrive there before we do. I’ve been missing my “arse grooves” that I’ve worn into the leather of my Brooks, but fortunately by now we’re mid tour and suffice to say I think everything has got a bit leathery down below anyway.
The Czech countryside was a beautiful as it was punishing to cycle through, as the landscape undulates both dramatically and relentlessly. Also, whoever is in charge of transport planning in the country must think that roads gently following contours is for the weak, as the roads will directly head up and down the steepest part of a hill.
But there is at least succour to be taken in the beauty of the place, with the steep rolling hills gradually climbing ever higher and higher, eventually offering sweeping views at a lofty 700 metres above sea level, with peaks crowned with dark pine forests, that look like they fell out of a Brother’s Grimm tale. Quaint villages dot the well-maintained quiet back roads, that would offer some very pleasant cycling, if you could ignore the maddeningly challenging inclines.
Iain commented: “I did not expect that this is where I would use all my gears all the time” before reflecting “it’s also crap as it’s harder than the mountains, but you can’t really brag about going up and down over a lot of steep hills”.
Exhaustion and a deep sense of fatigue began to set in. Iain was concerned that even though the urgent need to run to alleviate his bowels had dissipated, he still didn’t think he was digesting food. So we elected to stay in a B&B that night.
We reflected that you don’t really appreciate how good it is to be indoors with a clean nearby toilet until you do something like this trip. Iain just kept remarking how much he liked there being carpet underfoot in the bedroom.
As we struggled onwards over the Czech hills and valleys, our stomachs at last began to gradually return to normality and we finally began to feel like we could “fart with confidence again”. Though, we remained deeply fatigued which I think was a much a result of a month of relentless transience and pedalling, as anything else.
But we soldiered on to our destination and camped at the back of a field by a forest. We were alarmed by the animal tracks in the mud, debating for a while whether these were wild boar or deer prints. Eventually us two city boys decided to call it deer and sleep comfortably.
Finally, on Sunday morning we just about managed to limp about thirty odd kilometres in the early morning to reach a suburban train station to take us into the centre of town to finally meet up with Ryan. Where we planned to enjoy the architecture, culture and infamously cheap beer of this beautiful old rambling city.
