Yanks for the memory

I didn't like Prague. We arrived on Saturday night in our swish hire car and checked into a hotel with our not-so-swish bin bag luggage. We looked like vagrants who had come into some money. We got a taxi into the centre and that's where my disliking for this city kicked in. The cab journey must have lasted no more than 10 minutes but it cost more than our two-course meal (with beers and gins remember) had done in Lipnik the night before. In fact it cost more than a cab in London would have cost going twice as far. A beer in Lipnik had cost us 15ck, in Prague it was 70ck. Even allowing for the fact that this is a capital city, that is a mighty price-hike. I thought this was a stag do destination because of the cheap prices, but those cheap prices are no more. As a result, instead of the gangs of lairy British stag parties that I'd been expecting, we found this otherwise beautiful city is over-run (and that is the most apt description available) with a certain kind of loud, brash, annoying American. The sort that will tell the least interesting story with a disproportionate level of enthusiasm and volume. The sort that has their picture taken in front of a war memorial with their thumbs up. The sort that says, "Gee, that is so great" – at anything.

We knew that Charlie, our fellow British campervan friend who we'd met in Vilnius and Krakow, was in Prague and we managed to meet up with him with relative ease. He'd been in town a few days so had been able to suss out the good bars etc – a sort of advance party doing recon for us! He took us to a terrace bar right on the river by the Charles Bridge which had a spectacular view of the castle and cathedral. There we drank Mojitos and, with the same excitement a zoologist must get upon discovering a species he previously thought extinct, we found a British stag party. They were from Keswick and, despite drunkenly extolling the virtues of Keswick Pencil Museum, were a good bunch. Then a spectacular lightning storm appeared from nowhere so we escaped the rain by going to a basement club with the Keswick boys where we drank and danced until 4am. Refusing to be mugged by another taxi driver, we walked home in the rain.

After Prague we went to visit Konopiste Castle, the former residence of Franz Ferdinand (the Archduke whose assassination started World War I, not the popular Scottish beat combo). Sadly it was closed because, and this makes no sense to me, it was a Monday. Go figure. This meant that the bears they have entrapped in the old moat were also a disappointing no-show. So we headed to Brno, a great town about an hour from where we last saw the van. It's the home to some odd attractions. At the town hall they have a stuffed crocodile hanging in the entrance archway. Now I've checked this and I'm fairly certain crocodiles are not indigenous to the Czech Republic, so why it's there is anybody's guess. Brno is also home to the Capuchin Crypt, an eerie monastery where, due to a freak combination of air pressure, temperature and geology, the bodies entombed here mummified instead of rotting away to skeletons. And now they are on display for your viewing pleasure! Looking at the preserved corpse of a 400-year-old nobleman is odd enough but when they show you a portrait of him (when he was alive obviously) it becomes a bit ghoulish. You find yourself peering in and wondering "Is that a shirt or is that his skin?" or "He doesn't seem as fat as he did in his picture."

Anyway, just in time to cheer us up, we got word that the van had been fixed and was ready to pick up. Yay! We sped off to Slavik's little village and found him with a gang of lads swarming over the van, following his every instruction like he was some sort of modern-day Fagin on wheels. [Note to Lord Webber and Tim Rice: Fagin On Wheels is my idea – I'll want a cut]. He proudly presented us with a box of burnt offerings which he said came from our engine but to be honest he could have handed me some washing machine parts and I'd have been none the wiser. He explained in great detail why the engine had exploded, how he'd mended that problem and how to avoid it happening again in the future. Unfortunately he did all this in a confusing mix of aggressive Czech and German so I just nodded, paid the man and said "danke schon" a lot. As we drove away we were waved off by Fagin On Wheels™ and all his little helpers. Plus some other random villagers who, upon seeing a lot of waving going on, thought they'd join in too.

It feels good to be back in the Chevy (maybe the Americans aren't all bad). It may be held together by gaffer tape, drive like a tractor and have a dodgy engine but it feels like home. A leaky, creaky tin box of a home. We've driven the old prefab across the border into Austria now and we are holed up on the outskirts of Vienna ready for our adventure to get back on track.