Mezimesti, Svinary, Hradec Kralove May 31

Since we had collapsed in a field just a few yards from the border the night before, we had no problem rolling from Poland into Czech. In fact, we even got a wake up call: two border guards came walking down the lane on the other side of trees from our tent.

The border crossing itself was smooth. No questions, and no requests to prove that we had enough money to spend (Slovakia had asked). We rolled right on through and into the town of Mezimesti.

Our first order of business was changing our zloty. Since both our ATM cards had expired in April (when we started this trip, we planned ahead to get replacements for the first time they expired. We didn't expect to still be traveling during the second expiration, so we were caught off guard), we had been relying on American express for cash. (You write them a check on your personal bank account, and they pay out the money to you in Travelers' checks). By the time we left Poland, we still had 160 zloty, or about US$40, plus our last $50 travelers' check. We figured if we were careful we could just make it to Prague (a two-day ride) and get more cash there.

Unfortunately, we forgot to check one thing when we were back in Poland. It turns out zloty is not 'fully convertible.' That means, if you leave Poland with any zloty, you better like the way it looks (it is quite pretty) because all you can use it for outside of Poland is wallpaper! (However, if you do have this problem, and you find yourself in Prague, the Prague train station's hotel booking office will change, zloty, as a courtesy, at a rate that works out to them taking a 50% commission).

The frustrating thing is, Czech will change just about any other currency on the planet. And since we don't speak Czech, all they could say when we mentioned zloty was Nie! Nie! Which sounds a little like a kid going na-na-ny-na-na!.

So instead of having $90 to make it to Prague, we had $50. It turned out to be no problem. Czech is quite cheap, and if you really want to splurge, you can find a place that takes credit cards.

Our first meal showed us how cheap Czech could be. At a nice sit-down restaurant, we got pork steaks, gnocci (they call it gnocci, but it's not like the cheese-stuffed gnocci you expect in Italian restaurants, it's more like a soft chewy curly pasta), sauerkraut and two large great beers for 110 crowns, or about $3. For two!

Later that night, we rolled into our first Czech pub. There were lots of bicycles inside, and inside they had three taps: the same beer, but with 12%, 13% and 14%. We thought that meant the percentage of alcohol, but it turns out it means the percentage of extract--or beer essence, shall we say. We got the 12 because it was cheaper, and also we find lower alcohol beer more refreshing when we're cycling. Back in Spain and Portugal we were putting down six or seven glasses a day of 2% (alcohol percentage) beer, like it was soda. It really was a great thing on a hot day.
 

The Czech people were definitely friendly, but not wildly so, like they were in China, or later, in former East Germany. Soon after we crossed the border, we saw a guy with long, grey hair walking along with his daughters. He looked like a hippie from the Haight in San Francisco. He said a pleasant hello, and then, several kilometers later, we saw him ahead of us, still walking! It turns out he had caught a train and just gotten off. He asked us a bit about our trip. We told him, a propos of nothing except for the fact that we were in Czech, how much we like Milan Kundera. He told us that Kundera was the first Czech to become president of an international literary society.

The countryside was also great. Starting in southwestern Poland, the terrain had turned really hilly, and green, with lots of streams and creeks. It was like this our whole first day in Czech, with the road climbing over lots of hills. It was extremely pretty--not odd, lunar, or breathtaking, but just sort of bucolic. As we do whenever we enter a new country, we wondered why we had wasted our time in the rest of the world instead of just heading straight here.

That night we made it to Svinary, near Hradec Kralove.

The next morning, we headed into the town and found ... two other bike tourists! They were Hermann and Hannah, from the former E. Germany. Hermann was a math professor. I didn't catch what Hannah did, but she was born in Czech, and left for Germany after the Soviets rolled their tanks into Prague, ending the Prague Spring. She still has relatives in Czech, and speaks it fluently. She and Hermann were spending two weeks touring around Bohemia (mostly southern Germany).

The odd thing was their equipment. Eric and I pride ourselves on having very simple, mostly cheap equipment. I mean, we didn't buy special bikes for our tour, we just took the ones we had (Eric didn't even change his old tires, which was a big mistake). And we have simple cloth panniers, instead of those waterproof Ortlieb things that cost more than our bikes. So compared to most other bike tourists, we have budget equipment.

Well Hermann and Hannah had topped us in spades. Hermann was riding a bike he pulled out of the trash 40 years ago (though he has since replaced all the parts except for the frame). They had some rear panniers, but most things were just kind of strapped on top. Their map holder was a very thin plastic bag, rigged to the handlebars with a rubber band and a few clothes clips.

They were having a great time. I say, if you can do it that cheap, more power to you.

Hermann even got a chance to make fun of our biking gloves. I started wearing them in Hungary because my hands are starting to go numb from hours and hours of rattling along on top of my handlebars. Eric started wearing them in Hungary, too, just to keep the sun off the back of his hands. Eric has ridden a total of 30,000 km without gloves, but when Hermann saw him, Eric had gloves on. Hermann asked what we needed them for.

We had a great time hanging out with them in Hradec Kralove, which has a lot of baroque style buildings around a pleasant marketplace square. When we finally parted, we liked the town so much that we decided to linger, so we rode just a few minutes to a restaurant and had lunch. Then we spent hours developing film and running other errands.

We were hoping to make it to Kutna Hora that night, but just before town, we saw a campground that wasn't marked on our map. It turned out to be a lovely lawn with nice landscaping and not a single other camper. It was $5 a night. We collapsed.

Next: Kutna Hora, home of a human skeleton museum and short silver miners

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