Horní Cerekev

During my four years of high school attendance I commuted daily so I spent countless hours sitting at bus or train stations. However, those hours spent in the waiting hall at the train station in Tábor brainwashed me. I clearly remember the voice in the loudspeakers announcing arrival of the train with its last stop in Horní Cerekev. I remember my friend and I trying to picture the mysterious place with so many trains having it as their destination. We promised ourselves we would one day go there and see it.

We finished our high school, managed to get even higher education and this year, after what seems like an eternity of not mentioning our goal, we finally set a date to get there.

I intentionally did not make any research prior to going there. I only googled where it was on the map and when I saw only 1700 residents occupied that locality I shut the computer down not trying to disappoint myself sooner than necessary.

Upon our embarking the very small local train an older man with apparent hangover got on asking us if this train went to a certain town. Since we only knew the final destination we were not sure and looked puzzled. He couldn’t understand our lack of knowledge saying he fell asleep in a candy shop (since when do candy shops have booze in stock?!) and now he was not sure he was on the right train. So weren’t we.

When the ticket collector took a look at our tickets, he asked us if we really went to Cerekev. We had to assure him that was our intention. The journey was long and after some while, when we were near our destination, I thought it would be better if I relieved my bladder since I was unsure of having the opportunity to do so elsewhere. This was my first time in this type of train so I was a little bit confused by all those buttons I had to push before entering the toilet area (where are the old school doorknobs when you need them?!) which got me to even more tricky situation (not unlike the situation from a dream every now and then I have when I’m sleeping with a full bladder) because as I turned around to close the door there was absolutely no button! I was futilely trying to find it to close the damned door so that the other passengers would stop looking at me! Oh, I was so close yet so far away from reaching my goal. Fortunately the conductor saw my struggle and told me to turn around and look for it near the mirror. I mean there, really? Not by the door but on the wall opposite to it? In a crooked universe it makes sense – as you enter you don’t have to turn around but still...

When we hopped off the train we did not know where to go since the station seemed to be positioned in the middle of nowhere. So as anyone who doesn’t have a clue we pretended to be absolutely certain and followed discreetly some random people hoping they would lead us toward the centre and not deeper in the forest.

I do not have to mention how everyone was turning their heads as we were passing by. Strange girls in a strange town, what a sensation! As we passed the post office, an urge to send postcards to our homes arose. Yup, but our window of opportunity to do so was only for four hours (before we had to catch a train home) and when do they have a lunch break there? Yup, you guessed right. So we headed into ice-cream shop/newsagents where they provided us with both stamps and postcards. The dude selling it to us was casting suspicious glances toward us not knowing why we chose this town for our trip.

We walked around the square and then reached one end of the town, so we turned back and looked at the other end. Still time to kill. So we decided to take a lunch break. So, the one pub near the square held deer hearts, pig liver and other gross stuff as their specialties so we decided to go to a 5 star hotel (what is such a big luxurious thing with beach volleyball and mini golf areas doing in the middle of nowhere?) and pay a decadent price for our lunches. The food was decadent as well. But in a really baaaaaad way. My friend’s vegetable couscous was tasteless, my pasta with salmon included cheap hard pasta (yup, al dente and cheap stuff don’t go together), very dry pieces of a once-frozen salmon with skin still attached (was it too daring from me to expect in a 5 star hotel surrounded by lakes to actually get a fresh yummy fish?!) and on the top of it all, there was some kind of sauce which reeked of raw potatoes. I mean, seriously?

Still time to kill. So, we decided to go to the town hall/museum/library/info center. The guy in the info centre, which is situated by the desk in the library, stared at us in wonder when we said we wanted to see the museum – the paper and plastic models of various stuff. He said women usually didn’t come there to see it, and then, after the first wave of shock disappeared, he willingly talked about the models (about one third was his doing anyway). When we were walking away, he asked us to take a pin and drive it into the map to pinpoint our hometown – he was curious how many pins and how far he would get with this. Another wave of shock came as he stared at my friend’s pin. She really lives that far away?! Omg, omg, omg, how is that possible? How did she get in this godforsaken place? We really had a blast.

To make a full circle, we went back to the place where the guy sold us the postcards. He couldn’t believe we were still there. So he sold us ice-creams and told us that we could have gone to the castle (it was locked for the public when we were wandering around) but the owner, a really old artist, usually let people in if they asked since he did not mind having company for a moment. Heck, he just couldn’t have said this piece of info before, could he?! I mean, a tour of the castle and a possible art exhibition? It could have been fun. But our time was running out and we walked to the station marveling at our weird unforgettable trip.

So, what to do next time? Take a dart and throw it at a map? We shall see...