Cesky Krumlov

24/09/03

Cesky Krum­lov has been this amaz­ing inter­lude of peace­ful camaraderie. I met up with four guys, Scott from Sydney, Miles from Wel­ling­ton, Caibhan from Canada now living in London and Sam from Hamp­shire. They’re all really smart and into film and music and his­tory and the con­ver­sa­tions have been superb (this is pretty unusual for hostel folk in my exper­i­ence). Scott works as an envir­on­mental eco­nom­ist, Miles is a lawyer, Caibhan is a choral singer and com­poser and Sam has just fin­ished an art and film degree. We’ve spent the last three nights drink­ing and talk­ing together. Tues­day night star­ted at 4pm and didn’t end till 2am. I’m not a beer drinker, but to give you an indic­a­tion of prices: there are 18 crowns to an aussie dollar and a half litre of beer costs between 22 and 25 crowns. A shot of absinth is 50 crowns, mugs of warm spiced mead are 45.

Tues­day was also Autumn equi­nox here (happy spring equi­nox to all of you on the other side of the world). I found out that there is a Celtic set­tle­ment near here by a town called Trisov and went down by bus. In the woods near the offi­cial signs about the set­tle­ment I found a stone circle, which was pretty amaz­ing. Lots of think­ing about bal­ance and harmony.

Then yes­ter­day I went to the museum here and found out that the north­ern part of the set­tle­ment (ie: where I was) was indeed the part used for reli­gious pur­poses between 500BC and the turn of the millennium.

I’ve been trying to get to go canoe­ing on the river. Sam and Miles and I tried yes­ter­day but the place said we were too late in the after­noon. The guys are all leav­ing today, so I’ll try to get a kayak or some­thing on my own before I too head up to Tabor, as recom­men­ded by Naomi.

I really feel like I’m on hol­i­days this week. I’ll do more work in Prague but that’s a few days away.