Plzen: Friday

We sat for an hour and three quarters on the bus from Karlovy Vary to Plzen. The seats were cramped and thinly-padded, and we had to wedge the backpacks upright between our feet. I tried to concentrate on a book, then fell asleep and woke up, gratefully, on the outskirts of the city.

The hotel was just off the main square, in a cobbled side street that opened out into a park. We dumped our bags in the Ernest Hemmingway themed room - an African mask behind the TV, ostrich feather patterned wallpaper in the bathroom and a framed print overlooking a writing desk - and headed straight back out to the brewery, where we had two half-litres of Pilsner Urquell and goulash soup for less than the price of a pint in Newcastle.

The rest of the day was spent wandering between pubs: a Gambrinus at the football stadium; standing in a corner with a thin glass of Svijany in a crowded Mexican place on Americka; two visits to Na Parkane at the brewery museum for unfiltered Plzensky Prazdroj; dinner and a Czech lesson at U Salzmannu, the city's oldest bar; other places I can no longer recollect, where my brother pilfered beer mats and plastic holders and a square tablecloth with Original Pilsner Urquell Restaurant written across one side. We ended up downstairs in the hotel bar, sitting by a wall covered in pictures of stars of the Harlem Renaissance. A German was chatting up the barmaid: Where are you from? Where are you work? She got bored and lifted her top for someone else. We decided it was time for bed.