Hospoda at campsite Santa Barbara, Kutna Hora June 17, 2006

I am a lazy person. Well, maybe not ‘lazy’, that has such negative connotations and I have yet to be convinced that my natural tendencies are wholly bad. But in life I do just the minimal amount it takes to get by and I prefer lifestyles and occupations that allow for a maximum amount of leisure time. When I don’t get it, I am very unhappy and life ceases to have meaning. When I do get it, I am happy, rejuvenated, relaxed, and fulfilled. For me, leisure time is simply unplanned time time when I am not obligated to do anything or accomplish anything. Too much planned-out time starts to literally drive me crazy. Sometimes I will use free time to go walking, go for a drive, a park, go shopping, cook something, surf the internet, write letters. The key thing is that how I am spending my time is my choice and that there are no goals save those I set for myself and that are always fluid. My free time is always, always used for reflection, contemplation. I like having time to think, to analyse, to let my brain drift. I like being able to people-watch, to see the dynamics between strangers, family, friends, lovers as demonstrated in public. This is why I feel so good out here. There are no timelines, no deadlines, no goals. I choose when I sleep, when I eat, what I do, where I am. My days are slow. I can sit in a park or square for hours. And I don’t feel badly about doing it because there is no one here to judge me and there is nothing else I ’should’ be doing.

So, my next stop now is to find a way to live my whole life like this. Incidentally, I see these thoughts as flowing in the same vein as my reasons for liking volunteer work better than paid work. As a volunteer, I still do things on my own terms. As an employee, I am selling my time, my talents, my allegience, my temper, my appearance.

So, while everyone else in the pub is watching Ghana beat the Czech Republic, I’ll try and catch up on my journal. I spent the rest of Thursday sitting in a little park just off the church of Petr a Pavel. I walked into the courtyard of the Zamek (castle or manor house). The next morning I packed up and took the bus back to Prague, took the metro 2 stops to get to Florenc (the main bus station), then bought a ticket for Kutna Hora. I had to wait 1 1/2 hours at the bus station, but that was kind of nice, really. The bus was packed and I’m glad I bought ahead of time because people were standing up and down the aisles and it was an hour and a half ride, but having bought ahead I had a reserved seat. Got to Kutna Hora and took a staggeringly wrong turn. I need to get a compass. So, I finally found my way to town after about a five kilometre detour. Exhausted, but not as badly as before. I went to the TI, got a map, set my pack down and sat for a bit, then strapped up again and went into the square, found a drink machine, bought mineral water, and sat on a bench. An American couple sat next to me. They were from Iowa, their son had come to Pardubice to teach English, had fallen in love, and now they were over for the wedding, which was to happen today.

Eventually I walked on out to Santa Barbara, a sort of suburb of Kutna Hora, and set up camp. The camping is a little odd to an American. It’s basically a house in a neighbourhood with a yard about three times bigger than the neighbouring houses. You go to this pub/registration building to pay for a night and then set up camp just about anywhere you can find green space in the yard. There was a nice German couple in a caravan right near my spot. They were eating dinner and watching me as I set up. The lady came over and started speaking German to me. She was disappointed that I only spoke English; she obviously really wanted to communicate something to me. She gestured a bit, but I couldn’t figure out what she wanted. Then she lifted up her shirt. She was about sixty, her husband was reading a newspaper in his lawn chair not five feet away, and she was only wearing a tank top, nothing underneath. I think my mouth must have dropped a bit. I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Why was this German woman showing me her breasts? Then she flashed me again and pointed to me. Then she started tugging on my shirt. Now I was really, really, super confused. The husband seemed completely nonplussed, so I figured it wasn’t anything sexual, but still I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was going on. The entire time she had been speaking to me in German and I tried my best to pick out words, but I couldn’t get anything. So she gave up for the moment and went into her caravan. She came back with a bottle of aloe vera and again lifted up her shirt. Oh! So I took my shirt off (thankfully I was wearing a good bra) and she spread the aloe vera over my broken and blistered skin. Remember how I said I got really bad heat exhaustion on my first day? Well, I also got a really awful sunburn. So bad that I have blisters all over my chest and neck and feet and calves. Basically anything that was exposed to sun that first day was now covered in blisters. Even after 18 years of living in Florida, this was by far the worst sunburn I had ever experienced. This woman had noticed how badly I was burnt and had come over as soon as I was finished setting up to try and help me. And boy! did that aloe feel good. They left early the next morning, but when I woke up I found a tube of 45 spf sunscreen that she had left behind for me. I must have been sleeping pretty soundly because she slipped it under the rain fly of my tent.

I went back into town that evening and had a huge dinner at a pizza place right on the main square. I sat at a table in the middle of the square and with a good view of a huge tv set playing the Cote D’voire / Netherlands game. I had a whole pizza with prosciutto and mushrooms, a peach tea, and a glass of red wine. Delicious. It was lots of fun to sit at a table and be served. Things so far have been so hard. Finding water, finding food, finding campsites, trying to understand any of the signs. Everything is complicated. How wonderful to sit at a table and point to items on a menu and have them brought to you.

I came back and lay down around 9 / 9:30, but had trouble sleeping, maybe because of the noise from the bar, probably because of the teach tea at dinner. This morning I had a lovely shower and wore my 3/4 sleeve shirt and suncream in an effort to give my skin a break. I saw the St. Barbara Church. Walked around town a lot including a trip to the grocery store for bread and cheese and ham (?) and also got a sweet I later found out to be blueberries and custard in pastry. What good luck! When I go to the grocery store, I don’t recognise the words on most of the packages, so I just kind of guess and figure that it can’t be inedible. Today I just got lucky. I’ll try and remember the words for blueberries and custard.

Back at the campground, I had some water and an ice cream. Well deserved after all that walking today. Now I’m sitting in the hospoda (tavern) drinking Pilsner Urquell and watching the aftermatch coverage of the Czech Republic’s 2 – 0 loss to Ghana. People here are pretty upset about losing to Ghana. But the US play Italy tonight, so I’m going to wait around for that match. Nothing like watching World Cup Football in a country that actually cares about football.

Chram sv. Petra a Paula, Melnik June 15, 2006

Things are much better today.  Yesterday was a haze of sleepiness and heat exhaustion.  One’d think that growing up in Florida I’d remember what the heat feels like.  But I’d completely forgotten.  I still managed to accomplish tons, thanks in main part to the kindness (and English!) of others.  I got the local bus from the airport to the centre and then caught the metro to the main train station and left my bag at left luggage.  I found my way to Na Prikope and Wenceslaus square.  I found a Vodafone, bought a SIM card (only 500 Kc = 13 pounds, and that includes that amount of credit; not too bad for my own number for mom to reach me on and a way to call ahead of myself), got back to the train station, managed to buy a ticket for the train to Melnik (which involved me taking phrases from my phrasebook and writing them down so that I could just hand the piece of paper to the woman at the counter.  I think it read something like: “I would like to buy one-way ticket this afternoon Praha -> Vsetaty -> Melnik, please.”), find the right platform (which I confirmed by going up to a guy in a uniform on the platform, holding out my ticket, pointing to the train and asking “Ano?”), get off at Vsetaty (I did that all by myself!), find the next train to Melnik (that didn’t go so smoothly.  Uniformed guy – who I later found out was the ticket puncher – said a bunch of things to me when we got off the train.  He said ‘Melnik’ and pointed through the station.  I followed his finger and loked through but didn’t see another platform – it was a very small station – so I sat down on the bench.  At this point I was really thirsty so I went up to a sink with a large picture sign over it depicting a cup being filled by the faucet and I started to fill my water bottle.  A guy came running up shaking his finger at me and saying “Ne, Ne, Ne!” – one of the few words I understand – and pointed repeatedly to a very small sign in Czech.  I can only assume it said “Plague water: drink in case you need to commit suicide.”  I had already changed to my sandals from my trainers on the train, so there was no further relief from the heat forthcoming at the moment.  So, an announcement came on saying something, and I continued to sit and the ticket puncher guy came up to me saying “Melnik? Melnik?”  I nodded and he looked exasperated.  His ticket friend came up to me and said “English?” Train to Melnik, this platform.”  I asked ‘which train? what number?”  He replied “only one train on tracks.”  So, in a minute, a train pulled up, I got on, and not ten minutes later I was at Melnik), found the city centre and tourist information (this did not go well.  I had no map and took many wrong turns.  Eventually I found a shop with water – finally! – and chugged it.  The TI lady gave me a map and marked the camping for me), got out to the camping, paid for a night, set up my tent, and went to the restaurant.  Their menu was al hot dishes and the water was bubbly and in very expensive and very small bottles.  The waitress was very annoyed with me for not speaking any Czech, but what could I do at that point?  After ‘dinner’ (green beans with garlic and bacon, actually quite good, and potato croquets, basically fried mashed potato ball, probably from the freezer), I went up to the supermarket just up the street and got water, peach iced tea, and apple pastries for the next mornings’ breakfast.  I got back “home” (my tent that has actually already started to feel a little like home) and swallowed a bunch of water.  I put on my shorts, laid back to read and promptly feel asleep for an hour (this was about 7).  I woke up, actually read for a bit, thought about getting up, decided it was too much work, and feel asleep around 9:30.  Woke up at 8:30, had some pastries and tea for breakfast, and then went back to sleep for an hour long nap after paying for another night.  Carrying that pack in this heat is really hard work and I think I’m going to try and spend at least 2 nights every place I stop.  Going much more than that and the Czech Republic is going to be a blur of tiredness, naps, and heat stroke.  So, after my nap, I took the shortish walk back into town.  It seems like a completely different place this morning than it did yesterday.  The buildings and streets are really interesting.  Yesterday they were a washed out mess of confusing, today they have detail and colour and meaning.

Camp Melnik June 14, 2006

I am exhausted.  Dehydrated, heat exhausted, over-tired.  These are the things you forget about when you’re making travel plans.  Well, I anticipated them to some extent, but you never remember how hard and how bad it’s going to be.  I don’t think I anticipated how hot it was going to be and what that would actually mean, in terms of the actual effect on my actual body.  I’ve been softened by the cool climates I’ve been living in lately.

I was very nervous before coming over here.  I’m still worried, but at least I have a clearer picture of what I’m worrying about.  I had this picture in my head of the types of person that goes backpacking by herself for 2 months.  I knew I wasn’t that girl, so I was worried what would happen when I all at once became her.  Who would I be?  Now I realise that I haven’t changed at all; I’m still exactly the same person I was last week, I’m just currently backpacking for two months by myself.  I’m still not athletic, I’m still a perfectionist, I’m still monolingual, I still get heat stroke.