Cesky Krumlov

So we are both scraping the crumbs out of our wallets and rationing the last Czech crowns we have, when Tim the Arts student from Perth reminds us why we booked this hostel "The free keg of beer should be in about 7pm". It doesn't get much better than that! Every other person at the hostel is an aussie and after the reminder about the free Wednesday keg, it all made sense why! The hostel is awesome- its a solid wooden 3-storey inn sitting on top of a rock that has a waterfall flowing around it. From our room's window its a drop straight down about 10m to the waterfall, and the views are sweet. Its also a short 1 minute stagger (and stumble over bloody cobblestones) to town, 50 odd pubs and the main square.

We took a hike around the huge UNESCO protected castle just around the corner that makes up Cesky Krumlov and saw the sights the town had. Its pretty bizarre- it had a moat like most other castles, but this one had a twist in the form of a brown grizzly bear at the bottom- That would make the first still functional moat I have seen this trip. The castle is second in size to the Prague castle and its grounds are massive. It has a pond the size of a city block, a revolving grandstand for an outdoor theater, a 1km long enclosed sky walk from Castle to Cathedral and of course the grizzly out front with the "do not feed the bear your limbs" sign. After the castle we went on the hunt for the supermarket to cook up a feast for dinner. I was stoked- it was only the second kitchen we have come across since we started on the trip and I was hanging to cook something up. We couldn't find the supermarket for ages, but after running into the couple we did the shocking Prague ghost tour with, we were pointed in the right direction and had a win. I spotted the bloke on the street and said g'day- he didnt recognise me without the beard haha.

After a bit of debate on what to cook- green curry, steaks, pizzas... We settled for a local favourite - Enter the stuffed capsicums. It felt kind of cruel seeing all these backpackers making mayonnaise sandwiches for dinner while Im stinking the place out with garlic waiting for my stock to reduce, so we offered some of our sausage spewing dracula meat paste, but not surprisingly it was turned down. As dinner was finishing up on the stove we got the tick of approval that the keg was chilled and it was on! While sampling my 10 pints I met most of the crew staying in the hostel and we pretty much turned a couple of outdoors tables into an aussie keg party for a while. Come 10pm the keg was drained and we got moved on to the pub next door. The pub was pretty quiet, so a few of us decided to head out into town for a blokes night- from the sounds none of us had managed to do that for a damn long time so it was well overdue, and I had to blow the last of my 130 crowns ($10) too...

Feeling kind of shady the next day, me and Lyn did a tour of the local Cesky Krumlov brewery, Eggenberg. Its a small brewery that has been producing for over 100 years, but has this year declared bankruptcy and been bailed out by a Finnish company. Its built in a wing of the castle and spans a few buildings with its brew rooms, cellars and bottling room. The workers are homeless and work in exchange for beer and board. Its a funny arrangement- a few were fired a couple of years ago and the town went into protest because it meant the bums were now drunk and passed out in city the streets and damaging tourism so the brewery was coerced to let the blokes back to work and have been there since! The whole place is built on the cheap, and needs some serious maintenance. The pride of the company is the sticker machine that labels beer bottles because its the only thing that was purchased new. After the tour we got stuck into one of the locally brewed ales and had a chat to the others in the group- one from Denmark that headed out on the town with us last night and the other 3 people from Cali that are on their way to Vienna tomorrow. We had a good chat and exchanged emails to hopefully meet them for a bender tomorrow night. They put us onto a sweet service- couchsurfer.com Its a free accommodation service! definitely checking into that after the Egypt tour.

Its like they have a law here against fat people- which I'm stunned about given that the average beer consumption is 160 litres per head of the population! All the girls here are stunning and dressed to the nines as well- even the kids that hang around at the train station have leather jackets, Gucci sunnies and look like they are off to a club... even though its 4pm. There are still the regular bums scattered around passed out amongst their collections of empties, but they have hidden wealth. See, the beer bottles here require a 3 crown deposit - about 20c and a dollar on the crates, so thought they may seem like homeless bums to the uneducated, they actually have a wealth of liquid assets, so after they pass out they are pretty much left in peace to sleep it off and cash in their refunds.

Shenanigans. The ticket inspector came around 15 minutes ago, said something about autobus and then left. About 2 people seem to get off each time the train stops at a country town or random concrete bench in a forest, but this station we noticed about 20 got off and then we found our train was now empty. We grabbed our stuff and raced off to follow the crowd onto a bus which then hurtled around back streets of country towns and wound up in a train station some place... Its now after the time we were meant to catch our connecting train from "Gmund No" to Vienna, we have no idea where we are, where we are heading or if we will even get to Vienna and no one on the train speaks english. hahaa awww crap.

Oh wait... the buildings out the window are kinda different to Czech ones now, and the one sign I have just seen didn't have an accent over every second letter- I think we might be in Austria! Now I wonder where this train goes...