A story of water.....

Day Two a water story…
On the second day God created water, and thank goodness we found water in Roudnice today.
Yesterday Eric, Tom and Ella went to the supermarket to buy water as we are very wary of drinking the Czech water. They struggled, but came back with 12 litre bottles of some ghastly undrinkable stuff. In the 37 deg heat it was all they could find so we had to persevere and down it.
After training yesterday I ventured to another supermarket- Tesco, and tried a bottle to check that it was the non fizzy variety (big black mark to buy the wrong stuff as everyone hates the bubbles) I loaded the trolley with 36 litre bottles and headed to the car. Loaded it all in and thought “ I’ll quench my thirst and check again I have the right stuff. Yuk it was fizzy so back into the trolley it went and I headed back inside and tried to make someone understand my predicament. Eventually a customer who spoke Anglicky was found and she explained. Alas no water in Tesco, “coming tomorrow she said” She translated a refund for me and I headed back with the bad news to the team.
No problems we will just go back tomorrow and pick up heaps of water as with all the kayakers hitting town we will stock up. After training we drove to Tesco- had the team reinforcements to carry all the water, but alas the pallet was empty and the said water had not arrived. All bought a sticky cake and thought lets head to the other supermarket and bingo a huge stack of water. We loaded up 72 bottles plus some other goodies and queued to pay, feeling pretty smart that we had the lions share of the water in Roudnice.
The checkout operator rang it all up and I handed over the credit card to pay- ‘no credit cards she said ( in Czech )’ ( every other supermarket has taken credit cards)
As I didn’t have enough Czech korunas, and we couldn’t explain, putting the transaction on hold with arm waving and gesticulation, she sent for someone who had a vague knowledge of English.
To wind up this story, I left the team, headed to the money machine at the bank, returned with 2000 Koruna and we at last had our water.. ‘Great water’ was the team’s reaction and we are now tripping over bottles of water….. but at least we won’t be dehydrated.
Everyone could see the funny side and we did all crack up laughing as we returned to the hotel.
Think I’ll appreciate turning on the tap in NZ.

The boys decided to play a mean trick on Ella and hide all her Swiss Chocolate in our room which doubles as the team room for lunch, video etc

It was pretty funny watching her rip the place apart searching for her chocolate. It may have gone a tad too far when they boys ruled that she had 20 minutes to find all 6 bars or they would start eating it. They had the advantage of height ( mainly Erics) so she was unable to reach the top of the cupboard so lost the deal and some of her precious chocolate.

Once the chocolate was recovered and the boys forgiven we drove to Litomerice a small town north of Roudnice. Through small villages and lots of open country. Large plantings of wheat, redcurrants on wires, cabbages, caulis and corn filled every flat space. Litomerice is where some of the teams are staying and is 18km away from the course. It had a large cobbled square, with some amazing old buildings with a variety of gothic and baroque architecture. We went to the museum which was pretty cool for a small town, as it had a variety of things historic including scale models of the town, old maps of Ceske Slovenski, a book of hymns hand written from the 1500’s and human bones from 5000BC. The custodian was pretty excited to have some New Zealanders through- he said we were the first and he wanted NZ coins from us!!!.
After a huge icecream we explored the city and then headed back to Roudnice and the course. It is getting quite exciting as more nations arrive to train. We talked to the Swedish coach who had driven 27 hours to get there. The Italians arrived as we were watching also. There are more than 20 countries listed which is not as many as the Worlds, but as teams can bring six paddlers in each class there may be more people. The Germans and British are bringing their “B” teams and the French are not coming at all. This is all because the European U23 Champs are the following weekend in Kracow, Poland, so their top teams will be going to that instead. Others like the Swiss will leave after racing next Sunday and drive to Kracow for the racing. It is unfortunate that we can’t race in those races as well.
Just had dinner with the Swiss again at our hotel’s Pizzeria and heading to bed as a 6.30am start again tomorrow. Training early to beat the heat and the crowds on the river. The Aussie team arrives tommorrow night and will be in all our organised training slots from Monday with the Swedish team as well .

Great to read of the netball and rugby scores!

Take care

cheers

sue