We kicked off Wednesday by packing up and waving goodbye to the serenity of Paradijs. But it soon got all Carry On Camping again - the day ending with us getting shamefully over-excited at the shrieks of Slovakian girls taking cold showers together at Bratislava's version of Butlins. Or Stalins, as we named it. And then a band busted out hours of classic rock.
How do we end up at a place like this? It makes no sense. Coming off a long road trip to wind up there was like the scene in Apocalypse Now where they float out of the Cambodian river darkness into a party full of booze and Playboy bunnies.
Zlate Piesky, a Communist-era relick nestled just off one of the main flyovers leading out of the city, next to a chuffing great lake. Views of the water, nice trees and plenty of perfectly-toned and bronzed locals to subject to the farmer-tan. But it also has this strange fug hanging over it - its grey past leers out at you everywhere, from the derelict concrete BUFET building to the spartan crazy golf course:
'You are permitted one hour of hitting ze ball through ze hole in ze concrete block. Oh what a krazy fun time you will heff. And then you must toil in salt-mine bureaucracy until death.'
We were up for that, but it was shut.
We were sitting at one of the outside bars there into the early morning, having a few beers, utterly agog. The band was absolutely tearing up the rock - ACDC's Highway to Hell, and some local Slovakian metal that involved repeatedly shouting what seemed like the word 'A-hole' in the chorus. Things were more mainstream over at the other bar, where the band was busting out a patchy Slovak rendition of Agadoo: 'push ze pineapple... uhm... tree'.
A crowd of souls clad in vests and small shorts (men and women alike) joined in with the keyboard player's exuberant hair-swinging. Who are these people? Who actually holidays under a motorway? IT MAKES NO SENSE. But holiday they did, and party they will.
I was queueing for a beer when an irate man stormed over and asked the massive barman when the music would stop.
'The music doesn't stop,' he replied.
'But this is a campsite, not a nightclub. How do we stop the music?'
'You can't stop the music.'
Indeed. If those dirty Commies couldn't prevent these crazy east Europeans from partying, it'd take more than a stroppy bloke in a pair of flip-flops to do so. And so the band rocked on.
It's hard to get a grip on the people here. One girl at the bar is breathing helium from a balloon, and her tattooed boyfriend is laughing and smiling over at us. I figure it'd be funny to film her on Steve's phone, whereupon the boyfriend suddenly gets incredibly aggro and shoves me aside with an outstreched palm to the face. Ok, fair enough. I start walking away. But then her and her other two friends say it's ok to film her. Oh, ideal. Oops, there's that hand to the face again. That's perfect.
Later we take a bottle of wine to the side of the lake. A few people are sitting by a table there, under a gazebo thing. 'Do you want to come and drink?' asks one guy in English. Ideal. We walk over and his mate just grunts what we discerned to be a 'no'. Ok, fair enough. About five minutes later, we're down by the water, and he suddenly runs in naked and goes for a swim in front of us. Then he emerges from the depths, Godzilla-like, an absolute beast of perfectly-toned man. 'What does this all mean?' I whisper.
All I know is that him shielding his modesty with his cupped hands is quite ridiculous - he is bound to be brutally built down there, and would only gain more of our respect by striding over and waving the thing in our faces. We've decided it was an apology. But I still don't get it.
And that's the only flaw with the incredibly attractive healthy-looking Slovakian women: they tend to be attached to utterly well-built and healthy-looking Slovakian blokes. We imagined a conversation:
'I see you staring at my girlfriend. Would you like to have try with her?'
'Yes please.'
'Well you can't. She think you're an idiot.'
'Ok.'
'I have big hands and can make fire with my eyes. You are small and pale and clearly have small dick.'
'Oh-keeeey.'
The Brit abroad look is one that's only enhanced by having about 900 mosquito bites. Two nights' camping has provided quite the probiscal feast, and all three of us have taken a decent caning. At least we're in disease-free lands for now. Steve was initially the front-runner - he has a weird reaction whenever insect teeth come near, swelling up like a loaf. But it looks like I'm now the firm favourite among the blood-suckers. My back looks ridiculous.
Other news: we're now very much in the land of the toilet shelf. This is something that I first marvelled over many years ago with Barn and G-Man when we went interrailing. I like the idea that the toilet has a shelf on to which you distribute your effluvia, before a press of the handle sweeps it all away. Could this be another Communist echo? Stern figures from the Politburo inspecting your stool for insubordinate sweetcorn before granting you licence to flush.
I'm aware of this blog's shamelessly base tone, the constant references to toilets, and the total lack of culture, or any interaction with locals beyond grunts and minor acts of hostility. It's pathetic really. But it hasn't been that kind of trip, at least since the antics of Dortmund and the Czech party. Days are spent on the road, perhaps seeing a place, then getting from A to B and setting up for the night. It's the Easy Rider rhythm - long stretches of cruising around to an amazing soundtrack, giving each other long meaningful looks, and then eventually pulling out into a place that has stuff in it that we can eat and drink and put a tent on.
But it has all been a real laugh, especially as we're shifting ourselves without maps or guidebooks. Reliant entirely on chance. Even navigating by the sun half the time. Steve says stuff like 'that's south' a lot. It worked for Paradijs, and if weird campsites that throb to the rhythms of Bratislavan dregs are your thing, as they are for us, it worked again this time.
(As I write this, incredibly weird stuff has just happened again, and an entirely arbitrary pointing at the map has guided us to the perfect campsite on the edge of Budapest, run by a wonderful woman called Marta. But that's tomorrow's update).
So how did we find ourselves at Stalins? After spending the morning at Cesky Krumlov, a stunning Unesco heritage site based on a Medieval citadel on the bend of a river...
... where we took a funny picture of Jeff:
... before the rest of the day built around getting hopelessly lost. Mainly thanks to Czech roadworks and a complete lack of signs. But getting lost is ace, and we ended up driving through an hour's worth of sun-bathed Czech countryside that we'd never have seen if we'd been blessed by the gods of satellite navigation.
We found the Bratislavan Butlins in similarly seat-of-pant fashion. After a long drive and one near-death experience, courtesy of moi when driving around Vienna, we decided we'd need to camp in Bratislava, which is an incredibly tricky feat to pull off in any strange city, especially against the pressure of the setting sun. After cruising round the town a bit, we found a reservoir on the map, and had a hunch we should camp near there. We ended up in a weird little suburb, which we drove around for ages lost like a bunch of rems until we saw a girl cycling towards us and asked her for directions. Her sister was the family's English speaker, so she went to fetch her out of the house, and she told us to head a few kilometers to Dannubia. This we did, and found ourselves asking a load of kayakers for a camping place. They pointed us back to the north side of Bratislava - and to an oh-my-god middle of city waterpark lake Soviet version of Minehead Butlins. All a perfect example of what Douglas Adams described as 'Zen navigation'. Clueless but effortless.
I genuinely love how this stuff works out, especially given the place where we've just arrived. To be honest we're going to need a lot more of such freak luck the further into the trip we get. But I trust that it'll work - it has to - and I look forward to seeing how it pans out.
A quick word from our sponsors. Steve has fallen in love with his Finisterre base layer, despite his initial misgivings about the homosexual overtones of the sky blue colourings. After a week of wearing these things, they still don't smell. Steve says that one day in a regular t-shirt showed how impressive they are - he was humming. That car is starting to get properly warm. 'I fucking love this top,' he said earlier. So to Eric and all the chaps at Finisterre, you have three happy customers. Now you just need to get round to emailing us and we can start earning our keep.
We'll keep you updated on all manner of manly stenches as they develop.
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