My last night in Prague I had a rather fortuitous meeting with Lotta, the receptionist at my hostel, who happened to be from my next destination: Sweden. The following day the sun made its first appearance in Prague since summer, so we went to Riegrovy Sady for a few beers. The large beer garden wasn’t opening until the following day, but the smaller one was open. A few pictures:

Zizkov, TV tower in the background

Riegrovy Sady, overlooking Old Town.

Praguer, taking an indiscreet bong toke in the middle of the park.

Lotta

Dog chasing bubbles. Click for larger version, you can see the bubbles more clearly.

My first attempt at panorama, from Letna. Click to expand.

Lotta told me about her friend Linda living in Stockholm who was jobless and wouldn’t mind hosting me and showing me around town. And so it happened that I met the second Scandinavian woman I would fall in love with in as many weeks.

Note: As I’m prone to doing, I misread my bus departure time and only realized my mistake a couple hours prior. In my haste, recklesness, and lack of phone credit, I had to deposit my luggage and a bit of mess infront of Kristin’s door with no explanation. Here is my public apology: I’m sorry. I will make it up to you (and everything else), I promise.

After a grueling sequence of flights and layovers I arrived in Praha in the evening, greeted by Kristin and almost immediately whisked away to the pub to resume my love/hate relationship with Czech beer. Ondra joined us later, convinced (read: suggested) me to take a shot of malinovice, a true shock to the senses. The night ended shortly after.

The following morning we drove to Solnice (sol meaning salt, and so named due to the town’s origins as a convenient stopping point along an ancient salt trade route), picked up some snow shoes and cross-country skis, and headed to Orlickè hory, a mountain located at the Czech/Poland border. We were actually stradling the border: Ondra’s phone kept receiving text messages from his carrier saying “Welcome to Poland!”  “Welcome to the Czech Republic!”

We strapped into our snow-shoes and skis and headed to Velká Deštná, the mountain’s summit:

and then it got really cold and we went home.