We headed to the bus stop 20mins early so we had enough time to find the bus. We where not going to miss another bus! We read all the signs and made sure we where definitely at the right stop. We even asked the people at the stop next door and some guy cleaning a coach. They all pointed us to the same place.
And so we waited.
And waited.
And we asked again. And everyone said we where in the right place.
Maybe the bus was 10 mins late?
As 5.45 approached, someone pointed out that maybe the 5.20 bus was in the morning. Duh! Theres no such thing as am and pm bus times. Anywhere.
But it was ok, because there was a bus at 18.00.
And so we waited.
And waited.
And triple checked. And ran at every bus that appeared at any stop.
At 6.30pm I realised there was a teeny weeny number next to the time. After some searching I worked out that that kittle number meant the bus only ran in the summer time.
Great.
By now there was nobody else at the station.
We contemplated getting a bus to Tábor and trying to work out a train or something. At least we would be slightly closer to home… But there where no more buses at all.
We called Tom, who was very understanding. Again. We would have to stay in a hostel and get a bus back in the morning.
By now our camera had run out of battery so we don’t have any photos :( not that our camera can take a half decent photo at night anyway. Richard has some, once I get them I’ll put them on here :)
We headed back to the bar with the grumpy bar man because it was the only one we knew had wifi for sure. David got a nice pint of flat beer (unheard of in the Czech Republic) so he must have had some real issues with us… He complained and got a slightly better one. We all had mulled wine :) although it wasn’t the best.
While Tania and I looked for hostels online the boys took turns in going for cigarets and haggling posh hotels. The lowest they got was 1000kč per room. Thats about £33.
Eventually we found a hostel that was reasonably priced, close to the station with reception past 6pm. It was edging on 8pm by now.
And what a lovely hostel it was (once we found it). Its called Hostel 99. The receptionist was really friendly and spoke perfect english (or was american) and we got a shared room for 250kč each. It was called snow white and the seven dwarfs because it had 8 beds! The one next to us was the three muskateers! How cute is that?
David asked the receptionist what was special about Česky Krumlov. He told us a story about how centuries ago there was a woman quite high in nobility who had an illness which meant she couldn’t spend much time in the sunlight. Afraid of her life she spent all her time indoors, naturally she became extremely pale. When she died, having rarely seen her, the locals didn’t believe it. Shortly after her death they dug her up to prove that she no longer walked the earth. As it hadn’t been long since her death she was yet to have begun decompossing, her skin had stretched, nails and hair had continued growing and there was a trickle of blood from her lips (due to the nature of her death). This apparently was the beginning of vampire legends, among other similar situations in other countries.
The building we where in was over 600 years old, and our room had once been a chapel and later a hospital! In the morning Tania said she thought she had seen a ghost, creeped out by the stories, but it was just a shadow or something…
We had dinner next door, in a pub thats part of the hostel I think. Which was delicious, huge portions! The barman was really friendly which seems to be unusual here. Good customer service isn’t a big thing from what I’ve heard. Anyway we all had a few drinks and enjoyed ourselves. David and Richard had shots of bakherofka (I have no idea how to spell that, but its kind of how it sounds), its a spirt made from a load of herbs which began as medicine. It took a little while for the barman to understand what he wanted, when he brought them over, he gave us the bottle too. We presumed it was so we could remember the name, but he never came back for it. There was a good three shots in it which they enjoyed for no charge. Luckily the hostel was next door!
The next morning we got up early and had homemade waffles in the 99 deli cafe which where amazing and arrived nice and early ( and already semi panicking something would go wrong) at the bus stop. Everything went smoothly though and we arrived in Votice at about 11am where Mia picked us up. We where only 12 hours late!
Traveling Bugs and other Animals 