Two weeks later the following had occurred: numerous 20p pints of Czech beer were drank and a novel approach to sight seeing invented which involved spotting a pointy spire and then trying to walk to it. We got completely lost in the beautiful fairytale forests up in Jicin where nobody spoke anything but Czech and German and my ordering got us half pints of vodka instead of water. We marvelled and were slightly grossed-out by the bones of 40,000 plague victims that decorate the church at Kutna Hora. We took trains through tiny picture postcard villages with flower boxes of red geraniums, were sung war songs in German by friendly local crazies. We met a bunch of Australians and Americans and ended up drinking absinthe  in Cesky Krumlov and spent evenings talking to snakes under a bar, played giant chess and went on the world’s laziest rafting trip through the countryside.

I started to get the feeling that maybe this was my kind of holiday after all…