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

The result was that I got up at 6.30am the next morning in order to wash my hair and mess about with my tickets. I’d just got everything sorted to my satisfaction, left the house and was sitting on the bus to the city centre, when I realised I had a missed call on my mobile. I looked at it in horror, thinking it might be Babel ringing to tell me he’d eaten his passport or some such, but it turned out to be from a withheld number. I listened to the voicemail I’d been left, and discovered to my surprise that it was a journalist from the local paper who wanted to write an article about me and Esperanto

When I say surprise, I hasten to say that it wasn’t a complete surprise, because I’d agreed for someone to write a press release about me and send it to my local press, but it was a surprise in so far as I didn’t actually expect anyone to be interest in the news that… erm… I was going on holiday. I called the guy back, answered a few questions and having got to town early, stopped off at an internet cafe to send him a few pictures of Babel and I for use in the article. Phew! It eventually appeared in the local paper the following week, and if you haven’t seen it already you can read it here.

The demands of the Esperanto publicity campaign sorted, I met Babel in New Street Station, where he was keen to show off his rather snazzy new backpack, which is significantly nicer than mine and has lots of useful pockets. We arrived at the airport in plenty of time and treated ourselves to a meal in Wetherspoons where the holiday nearly came to an abrupt end when I accidentally left our passports on the table under Babel’s newspaper. Whoops

Boarding the flight was a little traumatic for me and my phobia of dogs, because we had to be sniffed by a rather aggressive looking specimen before we were allowed onto the plane. The flight itself was full of Brits going to Prague for drinking weekends, one of whom made the amusing comment that the Czech Republic looked pretty flat and it must be because we’d bombed it

I was a little nervous about arriving in Prague as the internet made all the necessary catching of buses and metros sound rather confusing. In reality it turned out that nothing could have been simpler though, and it took relatively little time and effort before we were standing outside our hotel, the Pension Hermannova. It was situated in a pleasant enough street and indicated by a flag and a sign saying “Pension”. Babel helpfully rang the buzzer on the door and we stood and waited. No answer. Babel rang the buzzer again. Still no answer. This went on for some time. Babel banged on the door in a rather aggressive manner. No answer. Babel banged on the door in a highly aggressive manner. Nothing. Oh. Help.

I didn’t have the faintest idea what to do next, but Babel made me check the travel documentation and we uncovered a sentence which said that if you were checking in after 19.00, you needed to collect your room key from a nearby hotel. It was only about 17.30 at this point, but we decided to try to find the hotel in the hope that they might be able to help us. My heart was in my mouth at this point because I had booked the room through Lastminute.com as opposed to directly with the hotel itself and so I was worried that they hadn’t been informed and there wouldn’t actually be a room for us.

The woman in the hotel round the corner mericifully spoke fluent English and was very helpful She tried phoning the pension for us, couldn’t get through to anyone, but eventually uncovered a mobile number and spoke to the proprietor. She assured us that there was someone on site, they just hadn’t heard the bell, and sent us back again. This time when we buzzed the door opened immediately. Thank goodness

The room was basic, but perfectly adequate. Before too long we’d set out again in search of some food. By a stroke of good fortune, we discovered the most lovely pub just around the corner and went in to get a meal. The menu was delicious, containing high quantities of Schnitzel-based dishes, and Babel and I both had a delicious variation on the theme which involved cheese and pineapple. It was a very nice piece of Schnitzel which came complete with thin, crispy chips, just the way I like them so I was terribly impressed, and what made it even better was the prices – about £3 each The wine was rather nice too and I made the mistake of drinking a glass for every beer that Babel had, with the result that by 9pm I was rather drunk indeed

We woke early the next morning and found our breakfast left outside the room as promised. I was highly excited when I caught sight of the first chocolate yoghurt I’d seen in ten years, but otherwise the breakfast wasn’t anything to write home about. There was a bread roll, which at the time I thought was kind of stale, but having since tasted Polish bread I would revise my opinion to say that it was reasonably fresh. There was also slice of rather sour brown bread, some sweeter bread with raisins in, and a tub of meat paste. Meat paste leaves me cold.

Anyhow it was sufficient and suitably nourished, we headed out to see the sights of Prague. Unfortunately for once the weather forecasters had been telling the truth and it was a very rainy day in Prague. We took a metro into the main train station and dumped our suitcases in the luggage lockers before heading out to explore. We were in possession of not just one but two maps of Prague, but we decided to predominantly ignore them in favour of wandering relatively aimlessly. Even in the pouring rain it was a beautiful city and I liked it immediately Before too long we were joined by our friend Chris who had flown in from England that morning, and we all headed off to see the river before looking for a place to get something to eat. We found a rather good pizza restaurant where we all had a thoroughly enjoyable meal, apart from Chris, who the waitress decided to throw beer at as soon as she brought it to the table

Heading out into the rain once more, our aim was to get to Cerny Most, a metro station on the outskirts of Prague from where we were due to catch our bus to Liberec. We arrived a little too early so sat in another bar, and Chris, whose lucky day it was not, ending up paying for one more beer than he actually wanted to drink owing to a misunderstanding with the waiter. There were a few other Esperantists at the bus station, confusedly trying to purchase the appropriate tickets, so we were all able to feel rather smug by virtue of having already purchased them online.

The bus when we boarded it was like no bus I have ever experienced in this country. It was space-age! Not only were the seats incredibly comfortable, as soon as the bus started moving numerous tv screens dropped down from the ceiling and began showing a mixture of advertisements and Czech pop music. There was the option of headphones to plug in if you wanted to listen to this, as well as a free paper or magazine if you had the good fortune to be able to read Czech, and a complimentary hot drink. Our minds warped by flying with Ryanair, we actually declined the hot drink assuming that we’d have to pay for it, but someone explained later that it had been free. Wow. This was a bus like flying used to be! And the curious thing was, the journey between Prague and Liberec was a mere hour and five minutes.

All too soon we had arrived and were thrown out into a torrential downpour. Happily the organisers were very well organised indeed and had a helper on duty at the bus station to direct us onto the correct trams and buses necessary to reach the kongresejo. Within the hour we had arrived at the university halls of residence where the congress was taking place, resembling a bunch of drowned rats more than a bunch of Esperantists, after a ten minute walk uphill in the pouring rain.

It was upon arrival that the good organisation evaporated and there began a process so crazy and tedious that I am not sure I can describe to you without swearing We walked into the hall of the university which had been designated as the akceptejo, the place where everybody had to check in, pay what they owed and receive the keys to their room. You would think this would be a relatively straightforward process. You would be wrong.

The first person to greet you as you walked through the door required you to collect a piece of paper on which were written all your personal details and the amount of outstanding money you needed to pay for your accommodation. You were requested to check this information and make sure that it was correct. Only an imbecile could arrive and find their information was incorrect, seeing as this same document had been emailed to us no fewer than twice within the weeks immediately preceeding the congress, so there was ample time to email the organisers and have any mistakes corrected. Unfortunately, a lot of imbeciles appeared to have arrived ahead of us. On every piece of paper was written a number which indicated your place in the queue for being dealt with. If I remember correctly, my number was 116. At the point at which I arrived, they were still trying to process number 55. Cue first desire to say a swear word.

Now the akceptejo was a fairly small space with a lot of tables in it. There were also a lot of people who had just arrived, understandably with large amounts of baggage, who were standing around mournfully wondering if there was any chance of them managing to check in within the next seven days. What was not needed was those 54 people who had evidently arrived at the crack of dawn and thus already been processed standing around with their luggage and blocking all thoroughfares through the room so that no one else had space to breathe, never mind move. I mean for Christ’s sake, if you’re lucky enough to have been given your room key you ought to take yourself and your flipping luggage to your room and sit in it, instead of cluttering up an already chaotic akceptejo. Grrr!

We stood around for a while but it became clear that there was no chance of us being processed this side of Christmas, so someone said we could go and sit in a room on the fourth floor where it would be a bit quieter. We duly did so, but we were wet and tired and hungry and it wasn’t much fun. It was some time around half five when we arrived. By half seven we still hadn’t been dealt with and there was an increased commotion because it was now time for the evening meal. Obviously the evening meal was something you were supposed to have paid for and so you weren’t entitled to eat it unless you had been through the checking in process and received your food coupons. Luckily the organisers at least had the good sense to realise that this meant the majority of people who had paid for a meal were not going to receive one, and so started handing out the meal coupons regardless. We abandoned the akceptejo and went to get some food, which turned out to be schnitzel and was actually rather nice, returning to the akceptejo half an hour later. There were slightly less people standing around this time, most people still being at dinner, and so we randomly stood in a queue. After a while, someone deigned to explain to us that the queue we were under the impression we needed to be waiting in all afternoon was only for people who needed to pay in Euros, and that people who were prepared to pay in Czech Koruna could join another (shorter) queue.

Within 15 minutes Babel had succeeded in paying – yippee I was next in line and unfortunately it took rather longer, the girl behind the desk informing me that I’d signed up self catering and saying I was a student. I informed her that I most certainly had not, but she maintained that this was what it said on the database, never mind the fact that the piece of paper which they had printed off the database for me to check had my correct details on it. She called the database administrator over to solve the problem and they sat laboriously changing all my details one by one… until the database guy noticed that actually they were looking at the wrong person’s file, there being another girl with a similar name to mine. Crikey
Eventually having paid, I was allowed to queue to collect my meal coupons, then queue to collect my name badge. There was one final queue on the other side of the hall to receive the keys for your bedroom, and this seemed to be taking people forever. With trepidation, Babel and I joined the queue. I have to say that I was incredibly hacked off by this point and barely capable of being civil to anyone who spoke to me. I believe I may in fact have glared quite nastily at two people who had the misfortune to walk into me with their suitcases. It turned out that the hold up was because people had to show their passports or ID cards, but this wasn’t a problem for Tim and I and finally, finally, finally we received a key and were able to go up to our room. Whoooh! It was only, like, nine o clock at night

Despite being on the sixth floor, the room when we got there completely surpassed my expectations. The beds were reasonably comfortable, there was more shelf space than we could possibly fill and best of all we had a bathroom and kitchenette which we were sharing with just one other room To cap it all off, there was a beautiful view out of the window with lots of trees and hills. Babel and I were so pleased to have arrived at our room that we decided not to leave it, settling down for the night with a book. At the time I was vaguely pleased that Babel hadn’t expressed a strong desire to go to the trinkejo, although I did think it slightly strange. Later I think it emerged that he deliberately pretended he didn’t want to go because of my track record of bursting into tears on the first night of Esperanto meetings.

Hmm. In any case, there we were in Liberec, ready to start the holiday proper

Tags: Esperanto, IJK 2009, Liberec

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Esperanto, Holidays and outings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.