We had originally planned to spend three nights in Cesky Krumov but extended another night on the basis that the town was pretty, we unexpectedly had a room to ourselves and the people we’d met there were really nice.

And thank goodness we did. We ended up having a really great last evening. We sat outside in the sun talking to Brennan, the manager (from the US), his friend Sacha (from Brazil) and his girlfriend, another friend of theirs from the Czech Republic and two travelers who were also staying at the hostel – Judy from Sydney and another guy from Taiwan.

I love hearing people’s stories and Sacha particularly was full of them. In a quite typically flamboyant Brazilian manner he told us about how he’d ended up in Krumlov and what he loved about the place. Brennan told us some hilarious stories about crazy, and in one case axe-wielding, guests at the hostel and also impressed us with his Christopher Walken impressions.

After several hours in the sun we had dinner then moved to a bar belonging to a friend of their from Honduras. He decided to make it a lock in and nailed a ‘closed’ sign to the door and then poured some absinthe shots and we sat around til nearly 2am. Everyone else disappeared then Brennan, Luke and I walked back to the hostel.

The next morning I did not feel fabulous (to put it mildly) but fortunately our shuttle wasn’t picking us up until lunch time. We had booked a shuttle rather than using public transport as the cost was fairly similar and the service is door to door. We shared the car with an American couple and chatted most of the way. Our driver told us about the countryside we went through and was much better than the taciturn fellow we’d had from Munich.

Vienna was cold and grey on our arrival and didn’t have the same impact on me as Munich had. I’ve been wondering about why, because really, they are quite similar cities. I think the weather had a bit to do with it, plus we’ve spent part of our time here dealing with Ryanair and tearing our hair out. I went to print out our Bratislava-London boarding passes and the booking is somehow in the name of ‘Ms (my name) and Mr (my name). Now, I’m happy to believe I could have foolishly entered my own name twice, but to put myself down as ‘Mr’? Ryanair charges 110 euros to change the name on a booking. Which is more than the flights are worth by a significant margin. The woman we eventually managed to get hold of on the phone (and that was a mission in itself) flat out refused to help me or put me through to a superior. We ended up buying a new flight for Luke at nearly 100 euros… the whole thing has left me swearing never to use Ryanair again.