hullo!

As many illustrious travelers have done before, I will also keep you, dear reader, updated on the adventures that beset one when traveling to the orient by means of this blog.

I am at the moment in the Czech Republic, chilling with my great friend Chris. As a taste of things to come, heres a little story about an unfortunate king!

Once in a place far far away, although I guess how far exactly depends on your own geographical location, which makes the place discussed for me not really so far far away since I am at said location.. I am drifting off. I shall start over.

Once, in a place possibly far far, or in my case a leisurely stroll, away there was a place called Cesky Krumlov. This sleepy little town was the main town in the area and therefore featured the Count's castle. This story is about one particular count. The count, we shall call him count Jim, was one of a long lineage of counts in his family, and his predecessors all presided over the area of which Cesky Krumlov was the centre. His family long ago had the castle built on the hill dominating the town, so as to create the maximum peasant threatening effect. This was so effective that nothing very criminal ever happened in Krumlov. Sure you had the occasional mischievous vandalisms, apple related thefts or leisurely rainy-sunday-afternoon incestuous rapings but nothing truly out of the ordinary. Therefore the first count in count Jim's family decided they had no need for a big fancy dungeon with state of the art torture devices. Just your run of the mill dungeon would suffice is what his ancestor must have told the contractor. The other counts thought this a bit strange but since the fashion among counts back then was hilltops, motes and steep drop crevasses, not dungeons, nothing much was thought of it. But as surely as the seasons turn and the sun sets off for warmer climates, fashion changes, and the latest fad was dungeons. Big gory dungeons. Dungeons that make your feces shit themselves. With a sigh count Jim put down the latest issue of count quarterly. The cover featured a sample of the centrefold which was an item on the extravagant and illustrious dungeons of count Vlad. Oh the iron maidens were shiny, the spikes pointy, and the painbench oiled to a mirror sheen. Count Jim remembered the latest picnic of the Counts society club. His dungeon was the talk of the day, and he could not enjoy the home baked scones at all. "Is it true that it is so small?" "I heard it doesn't even have any spikes!". But not for long! at the next club vacation to Transylvania he would be able to boast about his dungeon! The next morning the towns interior decorator was summoned to the castle. When shown the dungeon, he chuckled and exclaimed "Oh no, this simply won't do at all! Where are the spikes!? Why is there no leakage!? Where are the obligatory rats and cockroaches!? This will be the job of my career! We will completely have to renovate! Don't worry honey, I will turn this place around!" Count Jim was pleased, but also a bit sad. He would miss the old, shabby make-shift dungeon. Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, he would come down here and pretend to put the thumbscrews to an unfortunate peasant and it would always make him very happy and sleepy. He'd crawl into the hay filled cot and have dreams of winning Jousting tournaments and slaying dragons. And sometimes his servant would dress up as a peasant and he would pretend to hit him with a whip or hack of his head with an axe. It was only pretend play ofcourse, as the axe was made of wood. The more count Jim thought about it, the more he came to realise he didnt want a new dungeon! he wanted his old dungeon, which smelled faintly of decay after he tried to keep pigs and forgot to feed them regularly. Count Jim decided that he wouldn't care any longer what the other Counts thought of his dungeon. He liked it, and that's all there is to it. And that's why, to this day, you pay 35 crowns entry fee to the castle dungeons only to be THOROUGHLY disappointed.