I actually returned on Sunday, but I was way too tired to actually post anything.
I spent time watching anime… Not exactly a good way to start a new healthy lifestyle (as I decided to do after the trip), but at the very least I am actually working on improving my diet a great deal.
My stomach is a piece of shit bastard who should be shot at dawn, but since this is not an option, I am forced to submit to it’s evil plans. There is some sort of nutritional item that it does not like, and thus when I ingest this unknown substance, I am severely punished with subtle but extremely annoying discomfort. Sometimes less subtle then others, I might add.
In any case, the quest to find this substance has begun, I am closing in on it, that’s for sure, but the time is not yet come.
Now for the trip itself…
My visit to Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) was pleasant for about 45% of the time. The place is a mineral water spring, and we stayed in one of many health resort hotels that can be found in the area, Richmond. It is actually just a hotel like any other, the main difference being that they actually have doctors and nurses who try to analyse your needs and prescribe different medications, mineral water drinkage and other procedures that you should undertake during your stay.
All this and food is included in the meager price of €65 per day.
The mineral water is drunk at the spring, or sometimes brought to the hotel, but for the REAL thing you should head into town and drink it from the spring. There are a bunch of springs in different locations, all with different water temperatures and in some cases even different compositions. I was to drink from the 72 degrees celsius spring. It was not as hot as you may think, but if you tried to gulp it down, you might have caused some injury. Normally you are to intake 200ml during the course of about 5 minutes.
Other things you did was take funky massage baths, get real massage, breath in vaporized mineral water and other interesting things. However I am pretty sure that none of them are as effective as simply drinking a glass of that mineral water before a meal.
During my stay I was constantly extremely tired, probably the effect of being surrounded by fresh mountain air. Or maybe it was the water.
On the last day, we went to Prague, where we spent many hours wandering around the city and admiring its oldschool architecture. We being me and my mother btw. One of the missions we had was to find the house in which I lived with my grandparents when I was very little. Like between 3 and 6 I believe. Back in the mid 1980s…
Since my grandparents could not remember the name of the street, they gave us a few keywords, such as names of key locations and nearby sites. In the end we prevailed. My memory of that house was extremely limited, and it looked nothing like I remembered it to be. I had some weird memories of the entire house and the area around it which proved to be completely inaccurate in the end, but the key pieces did fit. There was a larger open area in front of the house (ie a crossroads). The windows were the kind that open vertically and not horizontally as in most other european houses. The house was of a light color (I remembered it being white, but it was kinda beige). I also remembered the interesting structure for garbage collection that was next to the house, and this was yet another clue.
It was fun but not really as groundbreaking of universe-shattering as I expected.
The weather was great most of the time, and I got some pills that might help my crappy stomach. If I were speaking Klingon now, I’d say… Qapla’!
Qapla’!