We had decided to leave at 09.30 to be on the safe side, knowing that we needed to catch a bus and a tram to get to the main coach station, but unfortunately when we stuck our heads outside the door we were greeted by a torrential downpour. We had no choice but to trudge through it to the bus stop, but as we stood there waiting it fortunately eased of slightly. The main problem was that the bus we were waiting for didn’t seem to arrive, and when we eventually figured out how the Saturday timetable worked, it emerged that there wasn’t going to be a bus until 10.25. I was worried that this wouldn’t give us enough time to catch our coach, so we reached the decision that we were going to walk into the town. Initially this went as well as walking a couple of kilometres pulling a suitcase can be expected to go, but no sooner had we arrived in the town centre when the storm broke again and we proceeded to get absolutely drenched.

And when I say drenched, I mean drenched! The rain was coming down in sheets and I was soon soaked to the underwear. We were all thoroughly miserable, but I couldn’t think of any solution to the problem other than us continuing to walk onwards for another 15 minutes, at which point we would hopefully find the coach. It was at this moment when Babel, who I assumed was not speaking to me because I had failed to organise this segment of the journey satisfactorily, piped up with the suggestion, “Why don’t we just take a taxi?!”. (more…)

Much to our relief, Sunday dawned an awful brighter than Saturday Breakfast was at the reasonably civilised hour of 8.30, and I have to say that the breakfasts in Liberec were on the whole really nice, much better than at the IJK in Szombathely last year. Every day we had two normal rolls, plus something else that was more sweet and cake-like, and then either ham or cheese or egg. Having consulted the programme the previous evening, we had noticed that there was an interesting excursion on Sunday morning called “Liberec from the air” and we decided to take part in it. Like so many Esperanto activities which sound like a good idea on paper, in reality it didn’t quite live up to expectations.

I hasten to add that this was not the fault of Liberec, but more the fault of the Esperantists we were with. We set off on a guided tour of the town centre, aiming for the Catholic church where we were meetin up with a group of people more committed than me who had got up early enough to go to Mass. But the people we were with walked sooooo slowly, it was unbelievable. And not only did they walk slowly, the guide stopped for a five minute break approximately every two minutes, talking at great and tedious length about things which weren’t interesting, cracking jokes which were painfully unfunny, and trying to pretend he spoke more languages than he evidently did Within only a few minutes, Babel and I were getting quite frustrated and from the start of the excursion we were at the front of the pack, eventually breaking off into a small group with a couple of others and reaching the town centre way ahead of everyone else. (more…)

Today is my third day back at work after one of the longest holidays I have ever been on. It’s not been a terribly good second day back at work, as I’ve been required to commute to London, and it feels very strange going back to accounting after over two weeks abroad!

Tim and I set off on our travels on Friday 17th July, and I finally returned home to Birmingham on Sunday afternoon, the 2nd August. The holiday got off to a less-than-smooth start for me, due to the fact that it was my sister’s graduation ceremony the day before we were due to leave. Now I don’t know what you’re like the day before you embark on a holiday, but I’m generally a bit frantic. I need to spend a couple of hours packing and repacking my case; desperately trying to fit everything in, making sure I haven’t forgotten anything, swapping things between my suitcase and my hand luggage… Then I like to spend an hour messing about with the tickets and making sure I haven’t accidentally mislaid any of them and that my complicated itinerary is imprinted on my brain. And then I like to wash my hair and have a last minute drive to answer all the email correspondence I’ve been putting off for weeks, but know I don’t want to come back home to.

Unfortunately none of this was possible this time around, which made me decidedly out of sorts. My sister graduated on the Thursday afternoon, and unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the actual ceremony because I was stuck at work desperately trying to finish my audit. I had, however, arranged to meet up with my family in the city centre afterwards and go for an evening meal. I envisaged meeting them at half six and being home again for eight, but just in case something went wrong, I decided to pack my case on Wednesday night instead.

It was just as well, because a complication with taking the departmental photograph meant that they didn’t arrive until quarter past eight. I was a litle fed up and stressed by this stage, having finished work at five. I was also a little bit wet, having had to walk from my office to Pizza Express in the pouring rain, on account of prematurely having packed my umbrella Nevertheless we had a very pleasant meal and it was all a lot of fun but it meant I didn’t get home until round about 11, having had no chance to sort out any of the things I wished to sort (more…)