Lost in Liberec

My brother Nat had embarked on a quest to qualify for the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver. In order to be eligible for selection for the New Zealand cross-country ski team he had come over to Europe from a New Zealand summer to compete in some races, the first of which were part of the 2009 Nordic World Champs being held in the Czech city of Liberec and seeing as the Czech Republic is substantially closer to London than New Zealand, Caroline and I decided to pop over and see him. Liberec is 90 minutes north of Prague – where Caroline and I had booked a hotel for three nights.

Friday 20 February 2009

We departed Gatwick very early in the morning for our Easy Jet flight to Prague. It was a relatively painless operation compared to flights from Heathrow, and everything went pretty smoothly. Certainly the flight crew seemed to think so, after landing the cabin attendant remarked on what a great bunch of passengers we were, though by the sounds of "the last lot" we would have had to have collectively been pretty bad to compete with them.

After disembarking, we found the correct bus to take us to the metro without any problems and found hotel Jasmin, our accommodation after a short walk through the snow from the metro station.

At the hotel we managed to get a some metro tickets for the local bus and metro services we were going to use for the next little while, unpacked and set about getting a coach to Liberec. We arrived at the bus station to find a coach going in the direction that we required, but after waiting anxiously outside the doors as everyone crowded on, we discovered that we needed to purchase a ticket from the office upstairs, so I set off to try and get one. Unfortunately that bus was full, and by the time I got to the ticket office, gone, so I purchased tickets for the next one and we wandered down to a local supermarket to get something to eat while we waited.

The town square at Liberec - all kitted out for the world cup celebrations

We eventually arrived in Liberec and immediately started in the wrong direction, finally asking someone where we needed to go, to find we were about a kilometre away from the place where I'd arranged to meet Nat. After we got there, we settled down for a beer after all the walking we'd been doing and discovered that the meeting point, the Hotel Babylon Centre could quite possibly have been one of two places, and we appeared to be in the wrong one.

We quickly exited the building and found another entrance to the same building further down the street inside which Nat was sitting waiting for us. We had a bit of a chat and then went out for a beer at a pub towards the centre of town. It felt very strange going into pubs where smoking was allowed, and we only stayed for a couple before arranging a bus back and our return trip for the next day.

We left Nat to scuttle back to the bus station catch our bus, and managed to grab a mars bar each there before our trip back. It was quite late and we hadn't eaten yet, so we were quite looking forward to finding something when we got back to our hotel.

When we got back to the Hotel Jasmin, we asked the guy behind the counter at reception if he knew of anywhere we could get some food. At 10:00 on a Friday night? he looked at us incredulously, I asked if perhaps there was a pizza delivery place even? - he didn't know of anywhere, but suggested that we try a place down the road and motioned to the left. We walked for quite a while, and all we found was a very smokey bar playing loud music, we had a look around but noone was eating and it just seemed a bit too hard, so we continued on for a little while. We eventually found a petrol station that had a very limited supply of food even less so for Caroline's vegetarian requirements, so we ended up with a couple of rolls for me and a pack of pringles for Caroline, which we took back to the hotel room and ate at the end of what was quite a long day.

The next morning we had an early start, so missed the breakfast at the hotel, but had no problems getting back to Liberec where we had a look around the town centre, and the little marquee that had been set up for the world champs in the main square before finding a bus to take us to the site of the skiing.

When we got to the venue it was a little earlier than when we'd planned to meet Nat, so stopped for a drink at one of the little cafes set up inside inside big tents along the way where we got a drink and watched some of the biathlon on tv from the night before. There was a very large contingent of Norwegians there, and they were cheering at the appropriate times during the shooting. The atmosphere was building, and the number of people heading towards the arena had increased substantially after we finished.

Nat had managed to secure us some tickets to the women's 10km combined so we found the place he'd arranged to meet and a little later he came down after training to join us.

The Women's 10km combined race

There was a woman racing from the New Zealand team, Katie which gave us someone to cheer on aside from the top competitors who we were seeing for the first time in the flesh rather than the usual situation of sitting on the couch at home. Katie suffered from bad waxing on her skis, as Nat told us that all their team members had been suffering from and was obviously struggling throughout the race.

As we had entered the arena we were given a free hat by a sponsor, which I put on under the hat that I already had on. As time went past, I was more and more thankful that I had it on as it got very cold! Nat had got some food for us from the athlete's village and as he went off to do some more training we ate that before leaving to catch a bus back to Liberec town, where we met up with him again a while later.

We said our goodbyes to Nat and wished him luck for his race the following day then caught our coach back into Prague, where we went past our hotel and into town to get some food and orientate ourselves a little for some sightseeing the next day. After wandering about a bit, we found a restaurant near the river and sat down for a nice meal. It was good to dry out and get warm, although we were continually conscious of the smoking everywhere.

We were pretty tired after a day in the cold, so went home to bed, excited about looking around the city in daylight hours.

Sunday 22 February 2009

We got up and after sampling the hotel breakfast, which was not the best food I've ever eaten but filled a gap, packed our bags and checked out. We caught the metro into the centre of town and started walking around where ever took our fancy. We found the astronomical clock which was easily identified by the huge group of tourists gathered at its base and then continued wandering around the pretty streets absorbing the sights and sounds.

Eventually we walked to the famous Charles Bridge, where the video to the INXS song Never tear us apart was filmed and crossed over it to climb up the steep streets to the castle overlooking Prague.

The views were very impressive, as was the building and we continued through until we realised it was about time for Nat's race to start, so we started looking around for a bar that had a tv. This was a more difficult task than it first seemed with most of the bars either not having tv, or showing music videos. Eventually as we were resigning ourselves to just having a beer and some food, we found a bar were the bar tender was from Liberec and was happy to put the skiing on for us.

Nat had already been lapped by the time we got there, but it was a good race to watch and we saw the Norweigen, Petter Nothug finish ahead of Anders Soedergren by less than a second to take the victory.

After that, we wandered around the last few sights of the city as the sun set, and as the weather cooled, found another smokey bar to finish off the last couple of hours before our flight was due to depart where we reflected on a lovely time away.