above or under the water?

Train rides are fun. And I am not aversed to fun so I took a train to Prague. Surprisingly it only takes about 6 hours including a lunch break in Dresden to switch trains. In the afternoon I arrived in Prague where my friend Pavlina picked me up and took me home. There we've spent a very entertaining evening with her mum and sister who don't speak much English. We still managed to communicate though.

The next day we've hooked up with the members of our boat trip and headed to Rozemberg, down south at the Austrian border. Our adventure down the Vltava river was about to start there and to finish in Cesky Krumlov, further north. Let me give you a short summary of how a day looked like as there were all alike anyway.

For some individuals of our group it took a bit longer to get up in the mornings (for various reasons) and so breakfast and taking down our tents dragged on till lunch time. Then a few of the guys left with the cars and all our stuff to set up the tents at the next campsite (12 members in 3 cars...) and took a taxi back to the old campsite where the other group members were waiting. Then we had a few more drinks (we already had quite a few while waiting....) and hit the road. In 6 boats we set off and started paddling, had a toilet/lunch/drink stop half-way and usually arrived at camp at 8pm. The perfect boating weather from day one wouldn't last the whole trip and left us during the first night when it started raining. Unfortunately it didn't stop until the end of our trip. Back in the camp we had dinner and quite a few drinks (to a greater or lesser extent) what led to singing and dancing on the tables. I was told that this is what 'troubled complicated Czech souls' like doing. Yeah, they really enjoyed themselves!

Being on the water was fun. Quite often we paddled in formation, drank vodka we cooled in the river, were overtaken by hundreds of other paddlers, watched hundreds of other drunk paddlers who hardly managed to stay in the boats and tried to stay in the boats ourselves while swimming through rapids. Going through these nasty rapids my boat mate Eva and I lost control over the boat twice and had to hold on to boat, paddles and other personal belongings. We lost water bottles and sunglasses and temporarily were one paddle short but it was found later. From these misfortunes I kept quite a few blotches, abrasions and sore muscles.

As mentioned before we've finished the trip in Cesky Krumlov after 4 days and being in this beautiful old town we took the chance to do some sightseeing - the sunshine had found us again and we enjoyed being dry. Then it was time to say goodbye and everybody went their own ways. Back in Prague in the late afternoon I made my way to the hostel, where my parents were already waiting for me.

New adventures were waiting for me....