Bike trip to Southern Bohemia

So I haven't written in a little while, but hey. It happens.

Bike trip to Southern Bohemia was a bit of a bust for me and Kate, not being stellar cyclists. There were a whole host of reasons in addition. Not quite as "easy" a bike trip as promised, lots of gravel/big rocks/puddles, program-rented bike so big that I could barely get on the bike, my bike skills extremely rusty, almost everyone else's not, Kate & I got left behind... so we took two turns praying we were going the right way, HUGE rain/thunder/lightning storm hit (the rain here hurts like hell) midst-bike trip so we had to take shelter for 1/2 hour, all of our stuff inside our backpacks were soaked, including some of my medicines -> mush, soggy papers, and my phone completely drenched (not sure if it works anymore), lunch ended up being really shitty at this place we had to wait 2 hours for food and they ran out of most dishes, big leg bruise, millions of mosquitos, beds at the destination hostel had about a 1-inch thick mattress and no discernible pillow, and I got sick the next day.

On a more positive note, this random dude saw us huddled next to a building hiding from the storm, so he let us sit in chairs on his back porch to wait out the storm. Was really nice of him.

So yeah. The next day Kate and I took the train instead while everyone biked more. So we managed to avoid the area where Ty Huynh ate a mosquito because there were so many swarming, the four-bike pile-up, and the other various crashes from the sandy areas (no one crashed on day one). Instead, we had pretty good luck catching the train to Veseli, then Trebon. We saw Vera (program director) there and she managed to help us drop off the bikes (since the bike place was on lunch break, but of course her speaking Czech helped... she got someone else to store the bikes). Then we had a leisurely day in Trebon, which is a beautiful city. Had a delicious lunch, though I forgot the cardinal rule: never order a side of vegetables in the Czech Republic (you would think I would have learned by now). Vegetable side dish = pickled red cabbage, pickled white cabbage, pickled carrots, one tomato wedge and a slice of cucumber. No joke. Was okay though, the crepe dessert was awesome. Hung out at the main square, where they were having an animated film festival (though I saw no screens in sight), which meant an interesting marketplace. Got a few pieces of inexpensive but pretty jewelry, one for Zoe. Had inexpensive, delicious ice cream, and chilled in the park until it was time to meet the group.

So overall the second day was fairly redemptive.

On a bit of a more startling note, I almost forgot to mention that we witnessed a guy leaving a girl (we think) a few days ago. Of course, it was all in Czech, so we could not be sure, but as we were walking home, a window across the street from our apartment complex was open. There was a girl in her underwear standing almost completely out of the huge, open window screaming at the top of her lungs while crying uncontrollably. She kept waving something and yelling at someone, so we looked down to see a car starting with a guy in it. He completely ignored her and drove off. Once he left, she just sat down and kept talking and crying. It was really sad.