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.

Liberec is really a very attractive town. There are some beautiful old buildings, much bigger and grander than I expected, and the main square in the centre of the town is dominated by a very impressive town hall. I may add some pictures at a later date if I find the stamina to try to shrink them to a size suitable for the blog. It’s a rather hilly sort of place, so it sometimes takes longer to get to places than it should because you’re going up and down, but it was mostly nice to have some exercise and the surrounding countryside was quite breathtaking; it was unbelievable how many trees there were! It was quite a large, modern town too. There was a McDonalds where we ate one day, and a Tesco where we stocked up on doughnuts for days when we didn’t like the meals at the university, and it general it gave the impressive of being a reasonably prosperous and happy sort of place

Proceeding at a painfully slow place, the excursion eventually made it’s way to a tram stop where we were supposed to be purchasing tickets to travel to the outskirts of the town. This wasn’t terribly well explained so we were all a bit confused about what we were supposed to be doing, and the fact that there must have been about 100 people on this excursion made it a sheer impossibility for us all to manage to buy a ticket before the necessary tram arrived. There was a fair bit of pushing and shoving, and the usual Esperantist trait of continuing to stand in front of a desk even after you’ve been successfully processed was demonstrated on multiple occasions.

Eventually in possession of a ticket, Babel and I squeezed ourselves on to the second tram and prepared ourselves for what was a somewhat hair-raising journey. Trams in Liberec travel very fast; they race down hills and swing round corners at a simply alarming rate, and I for one found it rather difficult not to fall over. During all the time we had been dawdling about in the town the weather had been really quite bright and pleasant, but by the time we disembarked from the tram it was starting to look quite threatening, and as soon as we started walking up towards the lower station of the cable car which we were supposed to be travelling on, the heavens opened and one of Liberec’s special torrential downpours began. It was the sort of weather in which one most definitely did not want to go up a mountain, so Babel and I turned on our heel and raced back down to the tram station, where we managed to jump on a tram and were back in the (sunny!) town centre in no time at all

After a brief stop at the supermarket, it was time to walk back up the the student accommodation if we wanted to be on time for lunch. We had come prepared, armed with a folding map of Liberec, and according to what we had been told by the organisers, we believed that the congress was being held in the Technical University. Good, good. Babel is a bit better at map-reading than I am, so he took control and navigated us back up the hill to the uni. Having arrived there, we were a little confused because we couldn’t see the faintest sign of our accommodation. The accommodation was really quite distinctive, being a series of of large tower blocks, but there was nothing of that size and shape in the vicinity of the uni. We walked around in a perplexed manner for a considerable amount of time, both starting to become a little bit irate, and I can’t even remember how we realised it in the end, but eventually it clicked with us that we were staying in the halls of residence of the technical university, which were in a slightly different place to the technical university itself!

We found our way back there in the end, and were just about on time to get some food, but this still remains as one of the things which deeply irritated me about the congress – it wouldn’t have taken much effort for the organisers to include this information in the antauxkongresilo, for example

Having spent so long consulting the map, we realised that there was quite a large lake not very far away from the university. Once again Babel navigated us there and we had what would have been a very pleasant walk around the perimeter, were it not for the fact that it started raining again. We returned to the uni because we were both keen to participate in a Czech language course which was running at 5pm. We arrived suitably on time, to join a whole horde of other Esperantists who were standing outside a locked classroom. In a typical feat of Esperantist organisation, the teacher arrived late and without the necessary key. Great. She disappeared off to look for it but by this point it was already quarter past five and the ever-impatient Babel had had enough, storming off in the direction of the trinkejo

The rest of us blessed with a little more patience were soon rewarded when the teacher reappeared with key and proceeded to teach what was actually a very good lesson, albeit a little shorter than anticipated. I learnt a couple of useful things which hadn’t been covered in my Teach Yourself book, like how to ask for two tickets, and overall it was a shame that Babel had missed it. I didn’t see him again until some time past eight when I met him after dinner, already slightly inebriated I had quite a bit of catching up to do in terms of drinking, but between then and 3am when I ultimately went to bed, there was plenty of opportunity to drink wine and I had an absolutely horrifying six glasses (!), eventually stopping halfway through my seventh, secure in the knowledge that if I drank the rest of it I would most *definitely* be hung over the next morning. I can’t remember whether there was karaoke that evening… there must have been I suppose… on account of six glasses of wine I can’t actually remember anything about that evening at all… but there was certainly karaoke one evening at the start of the week, and the British contingent put up a very good show indeed Babel certainly did a couple of songs – the ever popular classic “Big Balls” as well as some metal type things which I didn’t necessarily recognise and can’t remember – and most other English people (apart from me who refuses ever to be involved in karaoke) sang very well too

What time Babel got to bed that night I don’t want to know, but let’s just say that when my alarm went off at 8am for breakfast, he was still somewhat drunk. He looked like death (scarcely warmed up), had hardly any voice left at all, and was incapable of walking in a straight line or having a conversation which made coherent sense. I tried quite hard to convince him that he didn’t really want to go to breakfast and should go back to sleep instead, but he was adamant that he want to come along and so he did. Luckily there weren’t very many other people there, and so I don’t think anyone noticed that he was rather the worse for wear As for me, I was relieved that I didn’t feel sick or have a headache, but I did feel hungover in an unspecified sort of way, and resolved not to drink quite so much any of the other nights

Babel being incapacitated, I decided to brave an excursion to the Botanical Gardens on my own. Once again I set off in a band of Esperantists at snails pace, but the botanical gardens were mercifully close to the kongresejo, so it didn’t take too long to get there. It was cheap to get in, and once inside it was really very pretty. Unfortunately, most of the people who were in the group were way more interested in flowers than I was (that is to say, they were interested in quoting the Latin names) and whereas I was in favour of a swift walk around, everyone else seemed in favour of dwelling five minutes by each specimen and taking photos. I put up with this for a while, but once we got to the reptile house staring at the exhibits for so long was starting to make me feel ill, so when everyone was distracted by a turtle I managed to give them the slip and took a leisurely walk back up to the university myself

It was just as well, because one of our friends Mikeo arrived around lunchtime and a now sober Babel and I went down to the bus stop to collect him. Of course, it was too much to ask for him to be able to have his room key as soon as he arrived, and so he had to camp out in our room for half the day until such time as the organisers condescended to process his arrival. After lunch all of us went to a Polish lesson, which was one of the items in the programme which I had been looking forward to the most. Knowing that we were embarking on complicated journeys through Poland the following week, and knowing that we were completely incapable of speaking Polish, learning at least a few words seemed like a very good idea indeed. Unfortunately it failed to live up to expectations as I found the teacher rather confusing and difficult to understand After half an hour, Babel and I both walked out; Babel because he had a meeting to go to, and me because I was just plain bored!

Whilst Babel headed off to prepare for a quiz he was taking part in that evening, I went back to the room to catch up on a bit of reading. I genuinely didn’t intend to fall asleep because I knew that after the Polish lesson, Mikeo would need to come back to our room to collect his stuff. Reading made me feel a bit sleepy though so I decided to lie down and before I knew it I had drifted off and didn’t wake up until an hour or so later when Babel came back from the quiz meeting

The quiz Babel was involved in was really quite elaborate and involved a significant amount of preparation, being based as it was on a mixture of BBC game shows. Whilst Babel beavered away at it, I slept some more and then ventured out for a rather disappointing dinner of potatoes and fish. I took one look at the fish and decided I couldn’t eat it, so that left me with the boiled potatoes I managed to eat one, and felt quite proud.

The evening entertainment was being held in another building a few minute’s walk away, so we all traipsed off in an Esperantist procession, following the flag. The best round of all was the karaoke, where each contestant had to start singing a song (in Esperanto) with background music playing. Partway through the performance, the music was then turned off and the contestant had to keep singing, trying to maintain the correct pace and tune, until the music was turned back on towards the end. I think that in this round at least, Babel emerged as the clear winner, with an almost perfect rendition of Jomo’s ‘Al la barikadoj’, which ended with him triumphantly jumping on the table

The quiz went on for such a long time that I can’t actually remember who won, but it wasn’t the sort of quiz where winning was terribly important, and a good time was had by all From what I remember, Babel and I decided to be good on Monday night to make up for the excesses of the night before, popping into the bar only for a glass of fruit juice before we headed off to bed!

Tuesday dawned bright and sunny which was just as well, because Tuesday was the day of excursions. In a surprise turn of events, Babel and I had decided not to sign up for one of the official excursions in the programme. Well, the most exciting excursion was to Prague but we knew we were going to have enough time to explore there at our leisure during the weekend. Furthermore, we hadn’t 100% enjoyed the excursion we signed up for during the IJK in Szombathely the year before, neither of us being the sort of person who deals well with being herded around like a sheep. In the end, we concluded that we were capable of organising our own private excursion, and would probably have more fun that way

Refreshed after a night with no alcohol, we met Mikeo outside the university at 10am.What we hadn’t realised when we sent him a text telling him to meet us at 10 was that he had been up drinking until 6 and possibly wasn’t feeling quite in the right frame of mind for an excursion. Nevertheless, he didn’t actually look hungover, and however he felt he gamely came along regardless

Our plan for the morning was to successfully complete the failed excursion of Sunday morning. Now that we knew which tram we needed and even the word for “ticket” in Czech, it was a piece of cake to reach the outskirts of the town. A short walk uphill took us to the base of the cable car station, where somehow Babel managed to convince me that it would be a good idea to stop and let him have a beer. We duly did so, but the local wasp population seemed quite keen on the idea too, and the amount of beasties pestering us was a bit unpleasant.

Before long we were airborne, travelling up to the top of a mountain whose name I forget, but it began with J, and if I remember correctly, it was about as high as Snowdon. The views from the top were magnificent, stretching out across the countryside for miles and miles. We soaked them up for as long as possible, but were soon compelled to queue for the cable car back down if we wanted to stand a chance of being back at the uni on time for dinner.

By the time we got back to the town centre, we’d actually decided to forfeit a meal of meat and rice in order to go to McDonalds. There was a reasonably sized McDonalds in the main square in Liberec, which lots of nice tables outside where you could sit. The only difficulty as ever was ordering. Whilst this is normally a fairly simple process in McDonalds due to the fact that ‘cheeseburger’ appears to mean ‘cheeseburger’ in even the most exotic of languages, there was a slight complication due to the fact that I normally insist on McDonalds making me up a fresh burger with no what I term ‘gunk’ inside (lettuce, mayonnaise, relish) before I deign to eat it. Our Czech was nowhere near advanced enough to make this a realistic possibility, and Babel and I came the closest we got all holiday to having a falling out when I requested he bring back large quantities of serviettes so that I could wipe the gunk out of my burger.

The serviettes worked remarkably well, although I was left with a slight taste of mustard, and it was nice to have a proper filling meal We walked back uphill to the accommodation where Mikeo headed off for some much needed rest, whilst Babel and I decided to head out again for our second excursion of the day, this time to the zoo in Liberec.

I was very surprised in a pleasant sort of way when I heard that Liberec had a zoo, because I didn’t imagine it would be a big enough sort of place. I was even more pleasantly surprised when we arrived at the zoo and realised quite how many exciting animals they possessed. There were zebras and giraffes, elephants and camels, penguins and flamingos… everything that you would expect to find in a proper zoo The star of the show was undoubtedly the big white tiger, who paced up and down in his cage in a very menacing sort of way, and the lions were pretty impressive too. I was slightly less enamoured with the collection of birds of prey, especially the massive one which had been fed half a fluffy white rabbit for its dinner :cry: But that aside, it was a thoroughly enjoyable excursion, and my only criticism of the place was that they were selling sweetcorn where they should have been selling ice-cream

Whatever the evening entertainment was on Tuesday, I think we skived it. That is to say, I can remember having a drink when we got back to the kongresejo, and I suspect that must have led to more drinks throughout the rest of the evening. This may have been the evening that Babel disappeared for vast quantities of time to smoke, leaving me unprotected and entirely at the mercies of a really weird guy from Austria who tried to chat me up. Yuk.

Wednesday dawned bright and sunny, and was the day which we had arranged to spend with Gavan In the morning we all walked down into the town on a quest to buy stamps and postcards. This was actually quite easy; we located the tourist information office after only one wrong turn, and not only did they stock an ample selection of postcards, they were also able to sell us stamps – excellent We retired to a very pleasant café in the town square where I had an absolutely delicious iced coffee, and settled down to write our postcards. It had been such an action-packed holiday so far that it wasn’t too difficult to find things to write, although matters were complicated by me accidentally forgetting one of my relative’s addresses. Thanks to Babel we even managed to find a post-box on the way home

In the afternoon, the three of us set off on an expedition to the local swimming pool. It seems a little strange that the congress organisers hadn’t proposed a group trip to this location, but seeing as one didn’t seem to be in the offing, we decided to make our own way there with the help of our folding map. I don’t think I would ever have located it, but Babel managed to and it provided a very welcome chance to cool off on what was another hot and sunny day.

Unfortunately there was a small amount of confusion at the start because procedures in swimming pools in the Czech Republic seem to be a little different to procedures in swimming pools at home. We managed to buy tickets without too much hassle, but the difficulties came when entering the changing rooms. I was particularly scared because I had to go to a changing room on my own I walked through the door to see a random bench, and two threatening looking ladies sitting behind a desk. Trying not to catch their eyes, I looked around for clues as to what I was supposed to do and noticed a sign on the wall which had been translated into German requesting that I remove my shoes and put them in a plastic bag before entering the changing rooms. Good good. I sat on the bench, removed my shoes, and entered the changing room.

It turned out that this wasn’t what I was supposed to do at all. That is to say, I was supposed to remove my shoes and put them in the bag, but I was also supposed to give the ladies at the desk 100 Kc as a deposit on a padlock for a locker. Unfortunately the sign telling me to do this must have only been in Czech

In any case, I entered the changing room, found myself a locker and put all my belongings in it. I was slightly concerned about the fact that I had no means of looking at it, but I memorised the number and assumed that the Czech Republic was an honest sort of place with a low crime rate where it was perfectly normal to leave your passport, digital camera, several hundred pounds and your engagement ring in an unlockable locker whilst you went swimming for an hour. Hmmm.

Perhaps I was a little distracted by the joys of being in a foreign changing room The Czech women seemed fairly unreserved about walking around stark naked (despite the presence of a sign which I swear said the lockers were being watched over by CCTV) and some of them were really quite attractive

Meanwhile in the male changing rooms, Gavan and Tim had become embroiled in some sort of dispute about taking their shoes off with the scary ladies, but had done better than me in so far as they had managed to pay for a padlock for their locker, and so all their worldly goods weren’t at risk of being stolen.

When I emerged into the swimming pool area, I was amazed at quite how large the pool was. It turned out that it was a 50m pool, and so I had one of my most difficult challenges of the holiday when I attempted to swim 50m. As someone who is very proud to have a 25m badge, this was a somewhat daunting prospect, but Babel had the good idea that we should swim from the deep end to the shallow end, so that at least when I thought I was going to drown through tiredness towards the end, I was able to console myself that I was getting nearer and nearer safety. In the end I managed it without drowning, and I was really rather pleased with myself Sadly no badges seemed to be on offer!

After a bit of time spent recovering in the main pool, we headed off to the outdoor whirlpool which was another quite scary experience. It didn’t seem as big as the whirlpool in Szombathely last year but there were quite a lot of people in it, making it rather crowded and claustrophobic. Luckily I was able to hold onto Babel for most of the proceedings, but there was one rather dreadful moment at the end when Babel and Gavan were safely exiting the pool but I was in danger of being sucked off for a solo tour of the whirlpool

Anxiously I returned to the changing rooms and was relieved to find that all of my valuables were still where I had left them. Phew When I rejoined the others, Gavan was hungry and suggested we go for a pizza. The establishment attached to the swimming pool didn’t look too promising but we walked up the road for a bit and found a really nice restaurant with a garden where we could sit outside. The pizza was absolutely delicious and the wine was pleasant too, so it was almost a shame that we had to rush back to the uni in order to have a shower and wash our hair before the evening entertainment.

The evening entertainment on Wednesday night was located in the town centre, being a concert from JoMo which aimed to break the world record for the concert with songs in the most number of languages. He managed in excess of 20, but unfortunately due to an organisational bungle, it turned out that this didn’t actually smash the world record Nevertheless, the atmosphere in the square was good, and even a few of the local population turned out to see what was going on. It was a long time to stand listening to music though, and not being the dancing sort, we soon retired to a nearby café where we sat outside and drank alcohol. Soon enough some of the other Brits joined us and we had a very enjoyable conversation until at some point darkness fell, JoMo stopped singing, and we had a long walk back up the hill in a state of some inebriation.

I think Wednesday night must have been a night I got really drunk, on reflection. I think there was karaoke and I stayed up until about 5, listening to people sing and having a very interesting conversation with a friend which involved shouting in each other’s ears whenever the music was in full swing. I had just got comfortable in bed and dropped off into a drunken sleep when Babel barged into the room some time after six and started making vast quantities of noise. He got into bed, turning his MP3 player up to such an obscene level that I was forced to complain, and then he stormed outside again to have a cigarette which I remember thinking was a most peculiar thing to do, but luckily I soon fell back to sleep again and didn’t have long to dwell on it.

Somehow we both made it to breakfast before nine, but Thursday was in effect rather a wasted morning, which we spent lounging sleepily in our beds and reading books. After lunch, which I’m 100% sure would have consisted of meat and rice, we headed down into the town centre to attend the cultural festival. People from those countries who have interesting cultures had volunteered to run stalls in the main square where they were presenting food and other specialities from their homelands to the other Esperantists and the population of Liberec in general. We had a bit of a look around, and then wandered down to the main shopping centre where we managed to buy some new plasters for my feet and sat and had an ice-cream. At some point we came back to the main square for a drink but the sun was so unbearably hot in the café we chose that we couldn’t bear to stay for more than one, so crossed over to McDonalds on the opposite side for a milkshake with Carolin. We had a nice chat, and it was then that I heard for the first time about the curious sleeping arrangements at JES, which make me somewhat unsure about when and where I will be attending my next Esperanto event

We starting walking back up to the uni not a second too soon, because we were just on the outskirts of the complex when the heavens opened and the most almighty storm began. All the Esperantists left in the square were completely drenched, and there was some not inconsiderable damage in the town. The following day we came across a car which had been utterly destroyed by a fallen tree, and the zoo which we had visited only a few days before was completely closed on Friday due to storm damage

Thursday evening… I think it may have been another night we drank juice… Or perhaps that was the night I had one drink, then got bored because Babel was working behind the bar and there was nothing else much happening, and went to bed.

Friday was the final day in Liberec, how sad. In the morning Babel went to some sort of lecture about the Czech Republic and the Euro. It was supposed to be over by 11 but by 11.25 he still wasn’t back and I was starting to get bored being cooped up in the room, so armed with a map I went out for a walk by myself. I managed not to get lost, which I was quite proud of, and even walked round some different parts of the town I hadn’t seen before, coming across a couple of interesting churches

After lunch (meat and rice or meat and potato?!) Babel and I decided that we fancied another spot of swimming so we headed back down to the pool. This time I managed to purchase my locker key and apart from the slight fear that it might slip off my arm in the water and be lost forever, this made the whole experience a lot less stressful. I swam my second 50 metres, although found the experience sufficiently exhausting not to want to swim a third, and all in all we had a lot of fun

Returning to the room we had a shower and proceeded to pack up our things, ready for the voyage back to Prague in the morning. Dinner on Friday night was exceptionally good for the standards of the week, consisting of a rather tasty spaghetti bolognaise. Now anyone who is even vaguely acquainted with Babel will be aware that one of his trademarks is that he is perpetually covered in rather dubious-looking food stains, and so as soon as I saw what was on the menu, I exclaimed that he was going to spill it all over himself. Babel must have protested that he wasn’t, because somehow I got roped into a bet. No sooner had we honourably shaken hands on it then Babel decided to cheat, magicking a napkin out of thin air and tucking it in his shirt. To cut a long story short, he didn’t spill a drop and I ended up in the unenviable position of owing him a book

Friday night was the Internacia Vespero, a sort of talent show which seems to be an obligatory form of torture on the final evening of any Esperanto event. As ever, the acts on display were mixed; some were very very good, some were very very bad, and some were simply given too much time so that very soon Babel and I were incredibly bored. Actually, I was bored before it started, having arrived at the venue at 20.20 (under the impression it was starting at 20.30) but then having to sit until 21.00 when the organisers were finally ready to start. We both had our MP3 players with us to help pass the time, but even so…

The whole palaver was drawn out for so long that by the time we were finally released to the trinkejo, there weren’t many hours of the night left to drink before most people needed to be in bed to get a few hours sleep before their long journeys in the morning. I ended up sitting down at a table where I was roped into playing Uno – a game which I don’t understand terribly well at the best of times – and this was an especially vicious variation on the normal rules. For a start, no one would explain what the rules were and if you were brave enough to ask, you would be greeted with shouts of “stulta demando!” and handed a load more cards. You could also be given cards if you hesitated too long when it was your go, but of course if you asked someone whether or not that was your go that was a stulta demando too… We played about three rounds but I still couldn’t get the hang of it, despite the fact that Tim Morley kept helpfully kneeing me whenever he thought it was my turn!

Somehow we stayed up longer into the early hours of the morning than we intended to, but it wasn’t too much of a problem because we were all packed and our coach wasn’t departing Liberec until 11am

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