The Yosemite of Italy

Right now I'm sitting in the stunning Italian town of San Martino in the Val Masino Alps, occupying one of the few flattish locations in the dramatic valley we drove up to get here. The weather is the most pleasant its been in days, sitting in the low twenties and the sun shining brightly, heating up the plastic-enclosed area I'm sitting in.

We've been here a day and a half, having driven from the northern city of Merano in one push and arriving close to midnight. We woke up the next morning to drizzle beading and collecting on the tents, a consistent feature of much of the morning. I slipped outside, low hanging blankets of moist, patchy cloud shrouding the granite peaks. Within 15m of walking down Val di Mello's cobble-stoned access street a huge, gushing waterfall appears on the right, a six tiered disposal method for spring snow melt. 

Val di Mello  is sometimes referred to as a little Yosemite with its dramatically carved valley and towering granite faces. I could be content simply staring at the landscape for hours here. In any direction. Walking a little further down the road our first boulder problems appeared on the left, made obvious by the large white splodges of chalk. Over 400 boulders litter the valley floor, presumably deposited by the heavy glaciation this steep little valley would have received. 

We walked around, waiting for the rain to clear so we could go for a climb, taking the majesty of the place in. The sound of water was omniscient, rushing from the snowfields above. Despite a large annual tourist turn over locals still keep cattle in the valley. On the walk to check out the Il Mostro section we came across a herd of thirty plus goats and later on witnessed a local family giving their cows a nightly milking. That night I fell asleep to the sound of water being sieved through rocks in the raging creek, broken by the clanging of cow bells on the far side of the road. Locals have by no means been driven out by tourism. Its common to see locals from the village in the valley, out for a morning walk. After what has likely been a lifetime in the area they still appreciate and regularly visit the majestic landscape that surrounds them.

That afternoon we crossed the creek and headed for a boulder in the Proprieta Privata section; “private property”. It seems locals are happily content with climbers using their property as long as they respect the wilderness values of the area. We had no guide so simply strolled around, looking at boulders. I spotted a pyramid shaped block I'd seen in a photo, remembering it had a route in the 5 range on both aretes. This served as our warm up, before Dan spent time working out a 6b stand start.

I liked the look of a problem on a different block, also graded 6b. The moves were strenuous but this was aggravated by the harshness of the granite. It took me around 45mins to work out each move and string them together, quite a satisfying little climb once I finally sent it.

Earlier in the day I had called Francois, a climbing contact from a town on nearby Lake Como and he had suggested we head to the village where we could read the guide in one cafe and get free WiFi in another. The second cafe happened to be shut as its not peak season yet but the owner offered for us to use his undercover area and we've been back numerous times since.

The town felt practically deserted but the people we did meet were extremely hospitable, despite any language barriers. I conversed with two people in Spanish, hoping that the similarities between the two languages would be enough to get the general gist across. I had a good conversation with one older man as it turned out he had spent a little time in Iberia and knew how to express some common words in the language. He even made the distinctive “th” sound where the c's and z's should be that only exists in Castilian Spanish.

I poked my head out of the tent the next morning to be greeted by clear skies and the sun already being quite high in the sky despite it only being 7:30. I practically woke up, called out to Dan and walked 50m down the road, crash pad in hand, for a pre-breakfast climb. We both easily sent a 5c arete first try, a great little climb. Next we had a play on a 6c+ I had scouted the night before but it turned out to be a real struggle and we were unable to even get off the ground.

Its hard not to feel happy and relaxed in Val di Mello. You walk around on cattle-mowed lawns with the constant sound of water as a companion, huge granite peaks towering above you. The climbing is excellent, but even if it wasn't this place would have so much going for it.

This afternoon it did its best to disappoint, the mountains clouding, the temperature dropping and it bucketing down with rain. Still, its charm is always somewhat enticing. As I'm writing this I can feel the space becoming more drafty as the breeze picks up, cleaning the mountains of the tendrils of cloud embracing them.

I could create the perfect lifestyle here. Today, after our morning climb, we cooked breakfast and relaxed on the lawns amongst the boulders in Proprieta Privata sector, did a little more climbing then headed to town where I did some language learning and wrote the blog post that you are reading right now. The towns seem to be in complete harmony with their surroundings, steep and inticrate like the peaks towering over them and hewn from their rock.

A little later that afternoon we headed into Val Masino to do some shopping and were happy to find out prices were generally similar to big supermarkets despite being at a small shop high in the mountains. The owners spoke no English at all and I was delighted to be able to communicate with them and order entirely in Spanish which they seemed to be able to understand perfectly.

If the weather clears up tomorrow I'll probably have two climbing sessions, go for a hike, do a little writing and smash out an hour or so of language learning. I'm becoming more and more driven towards the latter since I've had more opportunities to speak and felt the rush and rewards; I never thought speech would come this naturally.

I don't know when we'll leave, possibly when the road into the valley shuts at the start of summer. The narrow, winding line it carves into the side of the valley can't take the heavy traffic of summer as two cars can't pass each other without stopping in most places. Summer is fast approaching, a mere three days away now, and with it will come the crowds as most of the amenities in these towns open for business.

The Bilingual North

After enjoying Merano's city centre for a couple of hours and using the free WiFi we still had no clue where the slalom course was so we headed up into the hills overlooking the city and camped in a tiny spot next to a turn out lane, jammed between the road and an olive grove on a steep slope.

The morning after I pulled a random local off the street to show us where the course was, trying my best to use my Spanish to bridge the gaps in his English. First he took us to a random shingle-bed spot on the river on shallow water and when we told him it wasn't it he came in the car with us and directed us to the correct place. Second time lucky.

The course is in the city centre at the exit of an impressive, voluminous gorge. We got to camp there with access to facilities for five euro a night which was great given the location. Merano is quite a nice city, surrounded by hills and jagged peaks with a white water river flowing through the centre and a nice old town. We arrived in Merano on a Wednesday night and left the following Monday.

When I look back I did very little. I kick started this blog on a park bench by the river on the cities free WiFi. Studied a little Spanish. Went for walks to see the city and find nice places to relax. And simply chilled out. An impressive historic bridge crossed the steep river ravine just below where we were staying and I traversed this almost every day, heading up the long series of cobble-stoned steps and deviating back to reach the tower.

 The tower is maybe 30m high but feels much higher due to the steepness of the hill its situated on. One afternoon I came up here and simply sat for over two hours, gazing out over the landscape and listening to music. After quite a rough period back in Australia that I don't really care to talk about it felt great to be this content, simply sitting on my own, with no where to be and no obligations or perceived obligations. Merano allowed me to really wind down and by the time we left I felt more relaxed and driven at the same time than I had in a long time.

The city seems to have almost as many Germans as Italians and the vast majority of signs give place names and information in both languages. German language signage is far more common than English. German influence is particularly evident in the supermarkets where the smell of matured permeates the whole place.

We were living very cheaply here, paying for nothing but food, an ice cream a day and camping but it definitely isn't a city for the budget traveler. It reeks of what I can best describe as class. Audi's, BMW's and the like dominate the streets. The old town's alleyways are dotted with boutiques and gourmet delicatessens, selling products that seem to far exceed average prices back home.

Dan enjoying the effects of pre-drinking

However, none of that mattered. Merano was one city where we got everything right, living on very little and enjoying the best of what the city had to offer. We headed out to a club about 20km on a Sunday night which was absolutely pumping for some reason. At first we thought it was a dancing club because the place was filled with couples dancing Salsa to Spanish music but as the night progressed it changed to club music. We quickly lost one of the Scots that came out with us and later found out he decided to walk home, finding a bike and getting in at 6am in the morning. We got a ride home with a random Hungarian who told us about how he's selling BMW and buying a new car next time he's back in Hungary because it doesn't perform well enough when you get it over 2000- 2500 revs. 

He spoke quite the impressive range of languages; Hungarian, notoriously one of the hardest languages in the world, as his first language and German, English and Italian to a fluent level. His English was perfect. This however is quite modest compared to Marte, who I met in Slovenia's language repertoire; his native language is Slovenian and he speaks English, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Spanish and Italian fluently as well as having several others, for example Russian, that he is "only competent" in. Being in Europe has given me greater inspiration to drive forward my own language goals but has also made me realise how much easier it is on this continent or in any big city for that matter.

On the Monday night we made our way to Val di Mello, unfortunately being hindered by a closed past, recently cleared but still shut for the Gyro d'Italia, the Tour de France of Italy so to speak. We were told after the recent clearing the road goes through sections with 3m high walls of snow on each side and signs indicated some forty-eight switch backs. We were disappointed to have to deviate through Switzerland to say the least. We turned around at a small, picturesque town just as the sun was setting.

Il Dolomiti

The despair Slovenia's police force bestowed on us slowly began to wear off. We drove for a while after dark, aiming to drive to our next destination via the Great Dolomites Road which links Lienz, Austria and the small town of Moena, Italy. We camped somewhere on the Italian side of the border, well above the snow line, having no idea of our surroundings.

I woke up soon after dawn to find a perfectly clear day and the faces of considerable sized peaks imposing themselves over the landscape on two sides of the road. I found a sign a short distance away, notifying me that the closest peak was Cristallo which is over 3000m. I was keen to get up a peak so once we were packed we got in the car and drove up the now barren ski fields to cook breakfast, gaining maybe 200m elevation in what seemed to be a very short time. There was a fair bit of wheel spin on the ascent which was halted prematurely by the option of crossing an extremely sketchy looking bridge or taking the way around it. We attempted the way around it but the car simply couldnt make it up, it was steeper than anything we had encountered so far and involved two difficult corners.

Closed in the interim between ski season and summer

We stopped here and made breakfast before continuing on foot. The sheer scale of the mountains was daunting, particularly the insignificance of climbing 100m of vertical. We veered off the road and experimented with a “short cut” that turned out to be a nightmarish slide of loose rock. A few ordeals and about an hour an half later and we were back on solid ground, still gravel but held together loosely by small alpine plants. Rounding a knolled ridge we were relieved to see stairs up the steep gully beneath us. This section looked far more dangerous than anything we'd crossed so far.

The stair case was pretty precarious in itself. It was hard to see how it was attached to the landscape as the rock was so loose and it even had cables to clip yourself in using a via ferrata kit. At the top of this we found ski lifts and a rifugio/ restaurant at 2200m. The snow was extensive, the icy remnants of winter dumps still covering all the slopes in sight. We pushed on uphill, trying to see just how far up we could get. We found some ski poles lower down which were useful for cutting steps in the steep parts. After 100m of elevation gain or so we decided it would be futile to try and push higher so we headed to the rock-line and scrambled up a sometimes very loose ridge to reach a pinnacle and get a bit of a view.

We could see a snow-plow with huge tread carving out the road below in an attempt to clear it of ice for summer and a group of birds continually dove, soared and played in the air around us. It would have had a real wilderness feel if it wasn't for the intrusive ski lift making its way steeply up the ampitheatre like valley below us.

After taking a few pictures we begun descending carefully, doing our best not to dislodge any rocks that would cause us serious problems. We got back to the car via a completely different way, much faster than we came up.

The scenery on the road only improved from here, the tree line breaking to reveal towns fringed by graving pastures, overshadowed in every direction by the sheer size of the Dolomites. We crossed two 2200m passes, stopping for some bouldering in the snow at one of them. At the second one I think we found a bouldering area I had read about online but the day was getting on and they were surrounded by deep snow so we didn't stop to investigate.

The volume of switchbacks in this area is simply huge, inevitable when building roads through such steep country. This route was much longer because of this but well worth it and after a 6am start we still arrived in the northern Italian city of Merano well before dark with time to walk around and find our bearings.

The Best and Worst of Slovenian Hospitality

After another day of great weather a low pressure system came in and lasted at least three days, bringing with it strong wind and plenty of rain.

The day before the trough hit our car broke down. On a highway. We pushed it 20m to a safe-ish corner, putting on the fluro vest and setting up a cone like Michael had instructed us to do in the Czech Republic. We were stressing. Majorly. We had no idea what to do in the event of something like this in quite a different country to our own like Slovenia.

Luckily a tow truck happened to be driving past who helped us out, taking us to a car yard. The people at the car yard offered no information, saying they'd have a look at it and it'd likely be fixed tomorrow. So with a deep sinking feeling in our stomachs we packed a pretty minimal amount of gear and headed back to the course in the complimentary taxi the car dealership set us up with. This would likely put a major dent in the budget.

The next day the man called, saying it wouldn't be ready today and it was a broken axle of all things! It would be ready on Tuesday. And it was only Thursday today. The following days were pretty hard with the uncertainty of what was likely a large car bill hanging over our heads and the aggravating effect of the adverse weather. I guess we had done some light four wheel driving in it to camp on top of a very steep hill near a tunnel outlet the night before, gotten it stuck in a weird exposed grate in Maribor and driven in on train tracks all in its first week in our possession...

On one of the days we stayed here I spotted some clifflines on a hill on the opposite side of the river and suggested we go check them out. After 40mins of walking we found them, revealing numerous sport climbs but no bouldering. I talked to a few local kids who spoke very little English, only saying one thing other than exchanging basic greetings; “ferrata”, accompanied by him gesturing towards a direction.

We walked around the crag the kids were climbing on to find a steep, protected gully. The iron cables and rungs making up the via ferrata were suspended 2m off the ground, indicating the extent of winter snow falls. This was comfortably ascended unprotected. Next the route assaulted a vertical headwall with a ladder, followed by a 10-15m traverse on rungs suspended 70m above the ground. After this was over it simply became a walk, although a very steep one. After maybe an hour from the bottom we popped out on a hill over looking Ljubljana, close to 700m high. We could see parts of the city as well as small but prominent snow capped ranges a short distance away.

On one day we bussed into the city and discovered that buses are always free when you're an uncultured westerner that doesn't speak any Slavic languages. I asked each driver how much it costs and not understanding anything I said they simply gave us the benefit of the doubt and waved us through every one of the six times we caught public transport.

The old city is built around a canal with a large car free urban area, dominated by a castle-capped hill covered in park land. We popped into another outdoor store for a chat and once again I got talking for close to an hour and was given the numbers of a couple of Slovenian climbers that might be able to help with a few things. He also generously offered to set me up with people to head to the Julian Alps with when I return to Slovenia. Almost everyone in Slovenia speaks English, except for bus drivers maybe, out of recognition of the number of speakers of their language and hence the importance to learn others. The language barrier is no barrier here.

The old town has a great feel to it with its soft pastel-toned buildings and live street performers, sweeping in a general arc, following the canal around the base of the hill. It seems far further from the tourist track than Prague, Budapest and Munich, the major cities we'd visited already. Prices were similar to those in the suburbs, designed for locals living and working in the city rather than the deep pockets of tourists, like in Budapest.

After the race finished on Sunday we headed out for a few beers with the Kiwis. We met them at the iconic three bridges and headed for a bar, where we met a Slovenian, Marte, that they had been staying with. Marte constantly bought rounds of drinks; pints and three 50ml shots of “blueberry brandy” as he described it, a kind of fortified wine, just for starters. Two or three rounds of blueberry brandy, with actual blueberries in the bottom was followed by more beer and a some tequila.

In the morning the full extent of the damage was discovered; one of the Kiwis got arrested and had his passport confiscated to compel him to pay a two-hundred euro fine and Dan... well no one had heard anything from Dan since like 2am in the morning!

We picked up the car the next day and the bill was a touch of four-hundred euros. It certainly hurt, but we were grateful it wasn't worse. It was just great to have the car back!

That afternoon we packed everything up and began the journey north out of the city, destined for perhaps Slovenia's most iconic destination; Bled. A church rises steeply out of its crystal clear waters, occupying most of the lake's sole island. On the opposite shore a castle adorns the top of a large cliff, juxtaposed against the backdrop of snow capped peaks. All the elements come together in some kind of perfect fusion, as if they were aligned to create an aesthetically pleasing composition.

We stayed by the lake shore for close to an hour before pushing on. A short time after we got stopped by the police who were running a check point on the highway. We showed them our licenses, passports and the technician paper. Next thing we know we were being slapped with a fine. For not having a vignette. Little did we know, vignettes, or highway tickets are not universal in the EU. We bought a month long highway pass in the Czech Republic, being told it was for all of Europe. This is not the case.

The female cop said that we were supposed to pay three-hundred euros, but this came down to one-fifty, supposedly because we were tourists. On top of this we had to pay another fifteen euro for a Slovenian vignette. Shocked and feeling gutted we drove on, having paid the fine on the spot out of fear that they would have confiscated our passports. Not long after we crossed the Austrian border, thankfully onto non-toll roads, Slovenia leaving a very sour taste in our mouths despite all the warmth this country had given us.

In Search of Southern Weather

The weather in Liptovsky rivaled some of the darkest days I'd ever experienced in Hobart. The temperature hit the negatives overnight and made a respectful effort to stay as close as possible to that during the day.

On the plus side, after the race finished we found a spacious shelter with plenty of space for two tents and our camp kitchen which was in range of WiFi and a short walk from power points, a great place to dry out all our dew-soaked gear from the night before. The following day Dan put in a few training sessions on the water while I made a contrived effort to start this blog, only getting around 500 words on paper.

Early that evening we began heading south, initially threading our way through a rich, green pass in the Tatra en route to the Hungarian border. The country was quite low but consisted of lots of low, but quite steep hills and knolls. We camped on top of one overlooking a town about 30km south of the border crossing.

The following morning we found ourselves in Budapest's outer limits within about an hour of driving. The city is logically set out and easy to navigate, leaving only the usual parking difficulties when you don't have any local currency yet. Dan sat in the car to avoid a fine while I went for a walk to draw out a little money and see if I could see our accommodation that we had previously booked online. In comparison to many cities in Czech Budapest seemed somewhat dilapidated, though as a visitor I did not take this at all as a bad thing.

The city centre where most tourists visit still teems with locals; shopping, on their daily commute to work or simply enjoying the city. Prices are nowhere near as heavily inflated as Prague. We found one shopping mall exclusively dedicated to food; it had no supermarkets, but rather many small venders. The quality, price and range of food was amazing. It wouldn't be difficult at all to visit Budapest on thirty Australian dollars a day, even with daily visits to the city's omnipresent thermal baths.

In this mall I picked up on no other languages other than Hungarian, despite being right in the city centre, with the exception of one small group of Americans. They were walking past and heard us speaking English so came over for a chat. The Texans seemed incredible friendly and warm hearted but I think I began looking at them in an entirely different light when they revealed they were in Hungary to spread the word of god. They were Jehovah's Witnesses!

It felt great to feel like we were escaping all the negative effects that come with peak season in Europe. Prices were low, fewer tourists meant greater immersion in the local cultures and interactions with locals and things just generally seemed slower. After having a huge lunch with goods we bought from various venders we headed back towards Octogon Square, near which our accommodation was supposedly situated.

We weren't walking around with the sole intention of finding it but I'd have to say, even including trying to ask a few people, it took two hours to find the hostel. We expected a large, obvious streetside reception but instead we finally found ourselves standing in front of a door marked by a modest plaque. We pressed the call button to be greeted in rapid Hungarian. I replied with a single word; booking. The door opened, letting us up three flights of what would have once been quite ornate stairs. The hostel occupies the top floor of the building which is hollow in the centre with wrap-around balconies. Each room had four beds, feeling very empty in the vast, high-ceiling spaces.

We stashed our stuff and headed out shortly after, wanting to relax in the baths that makes the city so famous. Back on the street we followed the Danube for a while until we reached a bridge. Crossing half the span we descended some steps to the distinctive island in the Danube which the Americans said houses several baths. We were surprised by the sheer size of it. I was expecting it to be hundreds of metres long, not for it to be measured in kilometres of open parkland. After a bit of hunting we found a bath which was unfortunately shut in the off season.

The baths would have to wait until morning; supposedly Buda, the part of the city on the southern bank of the Danube, had numerous choices. Budapest was historically two cities, Buda and Pest, divided by the sheer width and volume of the river. Not having much other choice we began to walk back on what was a rather long journey in dull, slightly drizzly spring weather.

The next morning we headed out of the city, driving towards the southern town of Hivez. We arrived in Hivez without problems to find a cold, blustery day but it didn't matter. This town boasts a large thermal lake. After paying around fifteen Australian dollars, which we thought was rather steep for Hungary, we had access to the lake and the extensive facilities lining a good portion of its eastern shore.

The water wasn't hot. It would have probably been warmer than the best tropical water I've swum in but it certainly wasn't the kind of warmth the mind tends to conjure up when you think of the word “thermal”. The lake was idyllic. If there was no wind I would have been content floating in it for hours, swimming in between the lillies that grow in its mineral rich waters.

After about an hour and a half it was time to move on, the warm water was no defence against the heartless breeze slightly whipping up the surface water on the lake.

Entering Slovenia we soon exited into the north eastern city of Maribor, renowned for its mountain biking. Seeing we were only passing through we didn't get to try any unfortunately. We soon found an outdoors store after I asked a shop attendent. The staff were extremely hospitable, volunteering the number of a top climber in Slovenia who could help us find second hand bouldering mats and help me find locals to head into the mountains with. After chatting for what would have been close to an hour we left, a freshly purchased Via Ferrata kit in my hand.

We arrived in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana late that evening, just in time to enjoy the last of what seemed to have been a very sunny day. Dan wanted to have a session and find somewhere to leave his boat so we headed to the slalom course, the water glowing turquoise in the evening light. 

The next day the weather would crack up entirely, delivering three straight days of wind and rain where the temperature wouldn't peak over 15 degrees. So much for that southern sun that enticed us to come to Ljubljana so quickly...

The Road

So on the first day we had the car we did a skid and broke down as well as somehow managed to drive on train tracks. Yep.

We met Michael at around eleven in the morning and made the final exchanges, finally physically getting the car into our hands. We drove to a supermarket to buy a little food before crossing Prague to buy a bouldering mat from the gym we visited a few days before. Its not exactly obvious or easy to stop and we drove past it the first time, swinging a u-turn on cobble stones to go back, losing traction quite considerably. We pulled into a small alleyway temporarily to look for parking spots, then Dan, who was driving at the time stalled. And the car wouldn't restart.

Luckily the alley was the entrance to an auto shop. We popped the bonnet and brought someone out from inside who began to have a bit of a look around. Fortunately it turned out the connection cable to the battery had simply popped off, the result of frequent driving on Prague's rough cobble-stone, tram track laden road ways.

Not long after we were in the gym and the attendant told us we couldn't purchase anything today because the shop was closed for a competition that was taking place that afternoon. We didn't think this was an overly big deal at the time but it would turn out later that pads are substantially more expensive and less common in Slovenia, our next destination with a thriving outdoor culture.

At some point in Prague I drove my first leg on the right hand side of the road. I found it completely confusing and overwhelming, not just the disorientation of everything being on the opposite side, having to check to opposite way, etc. but having to watch for not just cars but trams on suburban streets! A near miss or two later and I managed to deliver us at the slalom course to watch a little of Czech national selection. It seemed it would take longer than I thought to adjust.

After enjoying the sunny weather in Prague for an hour or two more we were on the open road, heading east, at the full mercy of the best of Czech driving. Most people drive at reasonable speeds of 120- 140 but its not at all uncommon to be passed by people that are easily pushing 200.

Most of the drive traversed boreal forests and farm land with few towns, the land occasionally dropping off dramatically as the highway crossed deep, river-gouged valleys. We turned off the highway about 60km from Prague, one of the only exits we had seen in the whole distance, and went 3-4km to find a dirt road between farms just past the town of Humpolec. We were here on the advice of the man I had asked for information in the climbing gym two days before.

Rural Czech felt entirely different to Prague; most people still seem to farm and the way of life seemed farm more laid back. We saw a disproportionate amount of runners and cyclists on the roads for such a small town. As we headed further into the forest we saw several towers, maybe used for hunting, rudimentarily constructed from local timber.

Suddenly, in an area almost devoid of rock, several huge rock outcrops loomed up in the mottled forest light on the right hand side of the road. We'd come to the right place. The forest was a magical place, the ground littered with pine needles and housing many large moss beds. That combined with the inticrate rock outcrops with small passages between them and the dull light made it somewhere I'd simply be content wandering around for hours.

I felt privileged to be here, there'd be few outsiders that would have access to the information to visit a place like this. The climbing was quality, with a great range of styles and grades but unfortunately the granite was quite sharp which made technical climbing painful. After an hour or two or checking out the various problems and doing a few moves we moved on, inspired by the location but struggling to get into the harsh rock type.

Back in the car we headed towards the historic Moravian capital of Brno, in the east of the country. As we hit the outskirts the first thing I noticed was how run down the modern parts of the city seemed to be in comparison to some of the well-off the tourist track neighbourhoods we had visited in in Prague. The location of the historic centre was obvious, a prominent hill right in the centre of town, so we headed towards that and found a park to explore the city on foot.

It was a Saturday night and only about half an hour of sunset but the city was deserted. It was so quite, only broken by the intrusive sound of trams. I could only hear Slavic languages being spoken, perhaps because it's way too early in the year for an out of the way, lesser know city like this to be getting many tourists. The city could probably be best described as quaint. It lacks the grandeur of say Prague, but its architecture probably trumps some of our most iconic historical buildings in Australia. For some reason I didn't take any photos at all in this city.

It was a nice change to be able to feel like you were strolling around like a local, unhindered by the restrictions, information and numbers of a big tourist city. We walked up a curving cobble-stoned alleyway towards the top of the hill, exploring the various small squares and terraces overlooking the city for around an hour before moving on. Dan wanted to catch at least some of the last day of racing in Slovakia and see a Latvian that he had arranged to buy a kayak off.

We got a little lost on the way out and found ourselves driving down an unusually slabby, broken concrete street. There were still houses either side but mysteriously no driveways. After a little while Dan asked, “Are we still on a street?!” before, as if on queue, we dropped 10cm onto gravel and could now see the very defined edges of the train tracks, preventing us from escaping. We tailgated a tram for about 50m before luckily finding a crossing where the cement came up to the level of the tracks allowing us to get back onto the roads.

It was now properly dark and after a little playing around we were back on the road and making progress towards the Slovakian border. The borders aren't overly clear, marked by smallish signs that aren't always placed in prominent places. Sometimes we wouldn't have even know we'd crossed a border, like on the train between Germany and Czech, if it wasn't for a text from both my Czech and Australian phone companies.

That night we camped about 70km past the Slovakian border in an out of the way field with panoramic views. Club music was randomly stopping and starting all night from a nearby house but I still slept reasonable well and that only left a short drive for the morning to reach the Slovakian Tatra town of Liptovsky Mikulas.

Vamos

Twenty-nine days ago today I decided the year was getting on a bit and it was time to do something. So I booked a flight to Munich, Germany, returning in pretty much exactly six months out of Madrid, Spain. This gave me an eight day window in Tasmania to sort out everything I needed; decide exactly what I'd use over six months away, have a couple of check-ups and all those other small, routine things that I had put off. I packed a small amount of casual clothes and pretty much filled the rest of my pack with gear; a pair of climbing shoes, approach shoes, a tent, sleeping bag and an assortment of outdoor clothing with the intention of being suitably prepared for camping out in the Lofoten Islands in the Norwegian Arctic. The week went pretty slowly considering it was my last week at home in six months; most people were absorbed in their usual busy weeks and the typical dull, sporadic Tasmanian weather strictly limited what time I had left to enjoy the outdoors and get a few last climbs in at my favourite spots. 

When Saturday came around the notion of being on the other side of the world in forty-eight odd hours still seemed completely surreal. I think it only really sunk in the next morning when I frantically started looking for an evasive item or two, slightly impaired by the seediness from the night before, realising that if they weren't located I was going to have to find them on another continent or make do without. Actually that's not really true. Even the destination of the plane trip didn't feel real. I remember sitting there thinking, “In 9hrs this plane will deposit me in southern Germany...”, almost as if to doubt the plane's capacity to do so. It felt entirely surreal.

Just because it felt surreal didn't mean I didn't act on its significance. That Saturday night Dan and I organised to head out with a few good mates. We thought we'd have a barbeque which soon evolved into a campfire in a public park; the night was off to a good start!

Anyway, after possibly one of the greatest nights in town ever it was soon time to leave for the airport. I didn't feel the weight of saying goodbye to everyone for six months as much as one might expect at all, it just simply hadn't sunken in. I don't think the length of time I will be away has sunken in now, almost three weeks after landing on this continent.

On the flight out of Melbourne I received two wines and a big Armagnac, courtesy of a very liberal flight attendant on Qatar Airways and followed it up with a sleeping tablet, ensuring I was subdued most of the way to Doha. After landing we soon discovered what happens when three international flights land in quick succession and are funneled through the same four poorly divided security checkpoints.

The flight from Qatar to Munich went by relatively quickly, feeling like a mere domestic leg in comparison to the 14hr flight that preceded it. German customs felt like a joke in comparison to the experiences I'd had before entering America and returning into Australia. After barely 15mins an immigration officer seemed to just glance at our passports before asking if we were here for a holiday or business and ushering us through. We quickly grabbed our bags and stepped outside into Germany proper to be greeted with mild, sunny spring weather.

We had come here with almost no prior planning and soon found out that like in most major cities the airport is well beyond the city limits; we were 40km out! After navigating a very confusing ticket purchasing system we were on a train bound for the city. As it grew closer I noticed a car yard on the right hand side and we got off here and began browsing cars. From quite a contrived conversation with the Algerian owner it soon became apparent that buying a car in Germany would be quite a futile task; although there were plenty of cars within our budget it would be extremely expensive to register any as a foreign national and Germany requires quite a comprehensive mechanic's check and emissions test before any car is allowed on the road. It was going to be extremely unlikely to be able to purchase and register a car in such a tightly regulated country.

So the following morning, after checking out the historic city center and finding somewhere to stay, we made the decision to head east. We popped across the road to the train station and bought two tickets to Prague, leaving in the early afternoon. To be honest, I was glad to leave. Germany, or Munich at least, just had this unusual feel to it, a certain austerity, each person we passed seemed so purposeful in what they were doing and everything simply seemed too clean and orderly.

I remember sitting down at a park about a kilometre out of the city center. The park was completely ringed by tulips and in the middle about five different games of soccer were going on. I saw so many examples of similar things, society seemed to be rather reserved. In Australia those tulips wouldn't even get to flowering stage in an unfenced garden bed, they would be trampled in no time in such a high traffic park.

I found Munich rather frustrating. Entering other European cities with no prior planning has been a welcoming and fulfilling experience, but not there. It seemed to be near impossible to find local places to eat, the city centre's prices and eateries had been adjusted to meet the needs of and exploit the copious throngs of western tourists flowing through the city every year. By no means the kind of travel experience I was looking for.

As we crossed the Czech border things quickly began to change. The towns we passed through teemed with life. Some buildings stood in disrepair, others were immaculately upkept, just like anywhere else. But the areas of Bavaria we traveled through. Graffiti lined the train tracks in places and the train lines themselves were tensioned by rudimentary-looking concrete weights. Children sat on a platform, their feet dangling over the tracks. The architecture also began to change, not dramatically, but its effect was dramatic in contrast to the sterile eveness and consistency of German streets despite the buildings themselves being quite similar. 

Nearing Prague the tracks began following a river-carved valley of growing depth and we saw our first rock of the whole trip, a cause for excitement in itself. In Germany and the western Czech Republic there was literally no rock. Simply fertile growing lands for as far as the eye could see. I felt Czech awakening something within me, that kind of spark I had experienced with travel in the past, the sense of complete freedom coupled with uncertainty induced excitement, something I had been craving for a long time.

Czech to me seemed so much more accessible, a place where I could really to know the nation, its culture and people. We soon began hitting vast areas of houses, so vast that they could be no Czech city but Prague. Before long the train crossed the Vltava on an antiquated iron bridge, making that timeless clickity-clack sound and shortly after pulling into central station, a mere stone's throw from the historic city.

The station had a completely different feel to Germany. Being a western with poor eastern awareness and no grasp at all on any Slavic languages, except for a few phrases of Russian, it took a few goes to find someone that could effectively direct us to information. The hospitality was great from the very start. The attendent helped us find a great, centrally located, ultra-modern hostel for a reasonable 14 euros a night and when I told him I wanted to eat and drink in local places he pulled out a map and marked five or so places on it that he would eat at himself. I already felt much love for this city.

After a quick walk we were at out accommodation, located in a strategic position on a classical Prague street, merely a few minutes walk from the main boulevard with a palace crowning its upper end. Reception happily helped us out with a conversion plug to charge our devices and we were soon up in a second-story corner room. I opened up a window and like in most historic buildings the window sills were wide enough to sit on. I climbed up, swung over and sat with my feet dangling over the cobble-stoned street below. 

It was only seven o'clock and despite it not even being summer yet there was two hours of daylight left this far north. We headed out for a walk around the city which was pleasantly devoid of English speaking tourists like ourselves. I heard other Slavic languages and a considerable amount of German, Spanish and Italian. We wound our way through a inticrate series of small alleyways, linking up squares and larger boulevards, soaking up the sheer grandeur of this classic city. I had been to iconic cities such as Paris, London and Rome before but could never remember being as impressed with the refined style and sheer volume of it I saw in Prague.

The city is simply amazing despite not being the quite eastern capital it once was was. Nowadays the city is drowned by western tourists who have driven prices up, making the city unaffordable for all but wealthier Czechs. The following day I walked into a shop, looking for information on a good, cheap, local place to eat in that part of the city and stumbled onto this Czech economic dilemma. The woman simply replied, “I don't know...”. At first I thought her English might be poor and she didn't understand but she elaborated, saying, “I don't eat in the city. I can't eat in the city.” Prices in Prague are so heavily inflated in relation to the salaries of the majority of Czech people. 

Still, sad as it is, the raised prices are no big deal as a tourist. Local beer sits at around two Australian Dollars a pint in some of the most famous spots in the city and even less if you hunt around! The local generic pilsners put our biggest breweries to complete shame. I'd even go as far to say the quality of a beer from a big brewery like Pilsner Urquell trumps some of our pseudo-craft beers like Squires or Coopers.

Many local youth have adjusted their attitudes to making money to take advantage of the city's huge backpacker turnover. “Coke? Weed? Marijuana? Bud?” and multiple other descriptions of various drugs resonate from the just about everywhere. We also had numerous Nigerians and Ghanians approach us on the street, regurgitating sales pitches and trying to entice us towards various strip joints, advertising solely Russian and Ukrainian girls.

The first morning at our accommodation we went downstairs to ask about breakfast and was told it was on the house. The complimentary breakfast was cooked especially for us and was pretty much gourmet quality. The next morning we found out it was a mistake and should cost ten Euros! It was rather disappointing that the accommodation asked for payment for everything in Euros rather than Koruna, obviously geared towards the convenience of the multitude of Europeans on weekend getaways. The Euro tends to drive prices up and kind of feels like its compromising a part of each nation's individuality.

That morning at breakfast I asked a waiter about where we could look for cheap cars in the city and if he knew anyone that would register a car. He didn't respond, calling, “Michael!”. Another waiter turned and came over. “These boys want to buy a car.”

“Ah! I See!” He began. “Now this very difficult if you do not have Czech residency. I know this because I have import export business.”

It turned out this waiter, an immigrant from Nigeria, actually had a car he could sell us. He took us for a drive, showing us such things as how to take a phone call when driving. Basically you stop no matter where you are for as long as five minutes and put your hazard lights on. He was possibly the most aware driver I have ever seen, getting within metres of cars at 120 odd before quickly merging with absolute precision.

That night we toasted the prospects of securing a car deal with a few pilsners and a cigar each. Neither of us usually have a particular fondness for tobacco but we just thought, “Why not?!” For some strange reason I became a little sick later that night.

He asked for 30,000 Koruna plus 7,000 Koruna for “insurance” that we very well knew was a fee for keeping the car registered in his name and sorting everything out for us. He expressed the fact that whenever you leave the car you have to take the “big technician paper” with you because its the only thing proving ownership if the car is stolen literally tens of times in every way imaginable. He took a similar approach to informing us about fuel, which he pronounced “fwel”, repeatedly drumming into us that you “always get the 95”, as if we'd get sloppy and decide to fill the thing up with diesel.

On our second day we decided to head across town to check out a local bouldering gym. We never suspected there would be two on the same street and mistakenly went to the wrong one at first, walking in through a decrepit and graffiti laden archway and following several small dirty alleys that resembled something out of a generic movie promulgating eastern stereotypes. We got to a heavy metal door and buzzed ourselves in. Rope was sitting on the ground by the climbs, showing you could lead with no induction whatsoever. Dogs ran around inside. People were using ice axes on the campus wall. I was loving the east more and more with each new experience.

I went to talk to the guy at the desk who was very helpful despite me making clear that we had come to the wrong place. He recommended an outdoor bouldering area, writing down notes and gave me the link to Czech websites for both bouldering and climbing in general. After saying our goodbyes after about half an hour we headed to the place we had found on the internet that we wanted to climb at.

For the Koruna equivalent of about five Australian dollars we got all day entry with access to showers and they even provided water, certainly a step up from what you receive in Australia for three times the price. The climbing was great and the local climbers were extremely hospitable, showing us the ins and outs of the local route system and even extending an invitation to go route climbing outdoors if we were staying in Czech. The weird thing was most of these guys would have been twenty odd years our seniors, some of them even had kids. The outdoor sport culture is entirely different in Europe, it transcends age and background, having a much greater acceptance and standing in society. We even saw several parents with toddlers, lifting their kids up the walls and letting them feel the holds. 

After having such a solid session that I tore open my hand we headed over to check out the Slalom Course via a brand new, yet to be open bridge. We sat enjoying the sun for close to two hours before walking back to our accommodation via a rather long route, taking about 2hrs.

Two days later we were sitting in a small coffee shop in a mall with a substantial amount of cash on us. It felt like something out of a movie. We went to the bank that morning and extracted 37,000 Koruna, a huge looking amount of money in 1000 Koruna denominations. We shook on the deal, passing Michael the money in exchange for the very official looking and intricate “big technician paper” and I signed a paper in Czech, entering into the contract.

We would pick it up sometime in the morning the following day, our fourth or fifth in Prague. We had a car!