Man in a van

Tues 17 th July Yesterday I travelled north of Prague to meet up with my Workaway family, Jan who is called Honsa and Jana, who likes to be called Jani. The journey from Prague was easy going until I reached their town   Mšeno, at least I thought it was their town. Anyway, when I got near to the town which I thought was their town, the road was closed for resurfacing. I turned round and headed another way, hoping Kate would realise my predicament and take me another way, but she didn’t. All she did was take me round an unknown village and back to the road which was closed. I called Jana and she gave me directions another way. I was glad the road was closed because the alternative route was beautiful. The road descended down zig zag roads through rich forest and high sandstone cliffs into a valley with a lake. The forest looked magical, a place of fairies and elves. Along the way one could see old style wooden houses with high pitched roofs. It was a most delightful d...

Sunday 15 th July I am now in Prague. I decided to leave Marianske Lazne in the morning yesterday. Monika had suggested we visit a nice place in the morning and that I leave after lunch but I could not bear any more time with her, hearing her prattle on. We had gone out the previous evening to the singing fountain with her daughter and by the time I went to bed I was worn out with her talking. I had told her about it the previous day and she acknowledged that she does talk too much but it made no difference. The father of her daughter was a compulsive gambler and she is a compulsive talker. The former is surely the worst but both undermine relationships. As I prepared to leave Monika came to my room bearing gifts: a small photo of her, some sun tan lotion and shower gel, some sweets and a small carved wooden ball, probably made in Africa, which she had had since she was ten years old; it certainly looked old. I was thankful and perplexed. Why a photo of her and something s...

Saturday 14 th July When writing a blog, the feeling you get is that you should constantly write something, after all, one is doing and seeing different things but is it really interesting? For instance, yesterday was pretty much the same as the day before, except I didn’t get the blues. I went out walking, took photos, did exercise in the park, sat in the café and drank beer, watched people. The only real difference was Monika took me and her daughter to play mini golf and show me her old haunts. Monika grew up in Marianska Lazne and has lived here for a good part of her life, although she has lived and worked in San Francisco, Ibiza and England doing various jobs. Monika and Elen It’s always good when a local shows you around; you get to know a place much better. Monika showed me the ice hockey stadium where two teams were playing, two local teams and no spectators. How easy they make it seem, hurtling over the ice and rarely falling over, unless someone deliberately k...

Thursday 12 th July I have now travelled to Czech to visit my old friend Monika, we’ve known each other fifteen years. I first met her when I was travelling through Czech with the crazy notion I could start some travel business there. I had first fallen in love with the country some years previous after my son Kevin married a Czech girl and I visited for the wedding. Monika then was a free and easy young girl and she was excited when I told her my plans for a travel business around her country. As a consequence she travelled with me checking out good places to visit and hotels; she was my translator. Monika became close friends but that was all. She also visited me in England. Now she has a six year old daughter but is still single. She fell in love with this guy and got pregnant by him but then found out he was a compulsive gambler with huge debts; the relationship broke up before her child was born. Monika is a very attractive girl but with one problem, she can’t stop ta...

Saturday 7 th July Yesterday afternoon I arrived in Dresden to meet my new CS hosts – Franziska and Marco, and their two young children. Franziska has fiery red hair and Marco hair down to his shoulders; they are a very interesting couple. Franziska speaks excellent English, also Russian and Marco speaks well but often has to think about his choice of words, he also speaks Russian fluently. It always amazes and humbles me how good many people in European countries are at speaking so many other languages. I am embarrassed about what I know of other languages. I met Franziska first and when she told me Marco is a nuclear physicist I felt a little daunted at meeting him but when I met him, he was very down to earth and easy to talk with. Why I call them very interesting, is because for their honeymoon they travelled from Germany across Russia to China via the Trans Siberian railway and then through China to Tibet by train and after Tibet to Nepal and India; it took them three month...

Friday 6 th July Yesterday was lovely day. I spent a few hours in Kradow before driving to the side of a lake where there were few people. The lake is bordered by woodland and in various places there is access to the crystal water. Along a dusty track I passed by small numbers of people enjoying the tranquillity and sunshine. To my surprise there were a few who were bearing all to the sun but then I shouldn’t be surprised because this is Germany. I found a spot, put on my shorts and entered the water; there were a couple nearby and my modesty forbade me from going with shorts. It was easy to enter the water because it was not that cold, unlike the sea where you have enter slowly and allow your body time to adjust to the coldness. When the couple left I took off my shorts and wallowed in the pleasure of being naked in the water. I was cautious of swimming too far out however, the experience of nearly drowning in the river by my home in Zunyi had altered my attitude to the w...

5th July After all the anxiety of losing the phone yesterday and how I would contact friends in China, I found it last night. I have two USB charging points in the van and have a cable plugged in to each: one for my Chinese phone which is white and one for the British one which is black. Anyway, I got into the van in the evening and noticed the white cable hanging down, I pulled on it and there was my phone hanging on the end, somehow it had fallen down and had been hidden by the bed covers. Was I relieved? These past days I’ve been trying to get a Couchsurfing host around Dresden. I’ve discounted the idea of visiting Berlin for a day because it would be all too much in this hot weather; there has been a heat wave and the grass is dry and crisp. All the people I contacted couldn’t host me for one reason or another and so I have contended myself in enjoying Potsdam but there has to come a time to move on, even though I love the city and parks. There are some very interesting p...

I've started writing this one month into my travels and have only just got a chance to create this blog 4 th July In life we all have our ups and downs, our good days and bad days, the days when all seems to go right and then when all seems to go wrong. When travelling however, these feelings are heightened and more pronounced. Take yesterday for example, it was high day. The weather has been hot, almost too hot but that didn’t stop me enjoying the Sanssoci Park in Potsdam.  This was my second visit; it’s so big you could not take it all in on one day unless you hurry around and don’t savour its beauty and splendour, but I will come back to that later. In the evening I headed for a bar, the one I had discovered just the day before – a very unusual bar,   more on this later too. My reason for going to this bar was they were screening the World Cup and England were playing Columbia. What’s more, the bar has a good environment. I ordered a weiß beer and settled to ho...