Marianske Lazne: Thursday

Punctually at nine, the train pulled away from the allotments and headed south through the forest on a track raised between streams. Thick patches of snow lay all about like white-sand golf bunkers, and spruce firs grew between railway sleepers on abandoned lines. We stopped every few minutes at a succession of sheds, each no bigger than a bus shelter, that served a few houses and a minor road. There were small towns, too, with red-spired churches and stations the size of a semi-detached house.

We arrived at the grim little station and walked the half hour into town, passing smoke-filled pubs smelling of yesterday's food, pokey shops selling printer ribbons and rock hard bread, and drab panelaks in different shades of grey. It felt as if the air had been slowly let out of the place. Then right in the centre were the big hotels and currency exchange rates, and German tourists sitting outside cafes drinking expensive cups of coffee. We walked through the colonnade, trying the foul smelling, eggy water and then through fallen trees to the top of the hill behind the Nove Lazne, where we climbed 100 steps up a look-out tower and saw almost as far as the border.

We came back down through the Ski Area, walking on the grass a few metres from people practising their slaloms on what was left of the snow. It seemed an apt metaphor for the three times traumatised spa: try as they might, things just aren't what they used to be.

Karlovy Vary: Wednesday Afternoon

Karlovy Vary reminded me a lot of Taormina: cities with the same relationship to tourism as a plant to sunlight. The posh city centre, split straight down the middle by the River Tepla, throngs with coach parties, spa groupies and daytrippers, all sucking tepid, salty water through the spout of ridiculous looking Becher cups; the locals make do with service jobs or the suburbs.

I wondered where all the visitors came from, and found the answer on the window of the Becherovka factory, which advertises three tours a day in German, two in Russian, and just one for both English and Czech. We got back from Loket just too late for the English guide, so headed instead for the hills above the Grand Hotel Pupp. I realised later we'd retraced exactly the route I'd taken three years before, twisting right and left up the yellow-marked path to the Peter the Great Memorial, then down and along to the blue and white, onion-domed Russian church.

The pub emptied as soon as the early evening news finished, then filled slowly like a bowl placed under a leaky tap. We stayed to watch Liverpool beat Barcelona. A group of men with southern English accents were singing Flower of Scotland by the toilets.

Loket: Wednesday

An early start for Loket, a picture postcard one-street town huddled on a hill avove a bend in the River Ohre. A fourteenth century castle perched precipitously on the rocks above, resembling Edinburgh in minutiae.

A concrete bridge took us over the river from the graffitied bus stop. For the longest time it seemed as if we were the only two people in town. There was a yellow Skoda Favorit parked up empty in front of the castle, two women talking in low voices outside the post office on the main square, a small group of men waiting - for what? - at the start of the alley running up the steps to the left of the Hotel Goethe, a truck delivering beer and a Vietnamese shop advertising Textil, Cigarety, Alkohol, Napoje. I swapped Dobry dens with a man walking his dog by the riverbank; two middle-aged couples were going the other way along a narrow street. We wandered up and down in circles, looping round the centre like a ball of string, until we passed the U Svejku pub for the fifth time and went inside for lunch.

Karlovy Vary: Tuesday

We left Liberec for Prague on the 10 o'clock bus, then swung back west through Florenc bus station for Karlovy Vary: spa town, James Bond set, and where German tourists go to pretend they speak an international language. We tried four bars in the evening but there were almost as many waiters as customers, and everywhere closed at ten. Back at the hotel, we watched the end of the football and had an early night.

Liberec: Blue Monday

The clouds hung low and damp, so that only the snow-streaked lower slopes of Jested were visible, and the main square was wet and grey with a salt covered, dirty white mound in one corner. We took pictures of the town hall; passers by walked English-style against the weather, in silent forebearance with heads slanted forwards to the ground. As usual there was nowhere to buy breakfast except for the hotels, so we had a quick sandwich in the car park by Tesco, surrounded by orange walls and Chinese snack stands, and then took the up and down, round and round tram to Jablonec, where we'd arranged to meet Milan and his family for lunch. We visited all the old haunts: Ex Club for beers, Paolo's Pizzeria for food, the streets where I used to dodge between lessons in glass factory offices.

Later, after potato soup in Husa, we met Henry, Rob, Colin and Dave in the Irish pub. They came and left one by one, going home early to children and pregnant wives. Then there was just the two of us, kicked out of Le Coque Noir at twenty past twelve.

Waking

I woke early to deceptive light and the sound of heavy rain splattering concrete, gurgling insistently out of drainpipes, and soaking the few yellow crocuses that had come up through the border while I was away. Getting up, I ditched my plans to go for a run.

Back There: Sunday

It was not quite a feeling, more like the cumulative effect of several conflicting memories interlocking subconsciously, so that I was constantly, in fact, sensing the presence of one set of experiences while thinking of something completely different. It started as soon as I saw the tower on top of Jested, lit bright against the uncommonly clear night sky. My stomach tightened walking up the cobbled street where I used to work, and my mind fogged like a man who returns to a childhood home and recalls that he was not always happy there. Things were only very slightly different: a new block of flats and a Lidl where I used to take the short cut to the bus station, an oversized branch of C & A at the bottom of Moskevska, and a just opened Interspar right by the swimming pool. Supermarkets, not religion, now the opium of the people.

We met Stevie in Plzenka, around the corner from the town hall. His wife had had a baby boy two nights before and he was drunk and tired and happy, but mostly tired. He took us to his old flat and then went home while we wandered around looking for a late-opening pub, finally ending up in the kebab shop. Gersende, a French teacher at a now bankrupt private school, and her boyfriend were at the next table, disguised by low lights and cigarette smoke. I talked to her for a while, skirting certain issues, then left.

Home Newcastle

It's dark and cold outside and the pavement is covered in puddles. I'm too tired to open my bags, there's hardly anything in to eat, Sunderland got a last minute winner to go fourth in the league and I'm back at work in just over 36 hours. Still, much as I enjoyed the six days away, I can say without any sense of irony that it is really good to be home.

The Claim

There are precious few absolute truths left in the modern world, but the Inland Revenue is proof that organisations which demand the quickest payment of money owed to them are always and without exception the slowest to act when the process is reversed. So far it has taken four months and as many letters for me to get a simple £100 refund, and I doubt I'm any closer to receiving the cheque than I was when I started. I've filled in two sets of forms for two different tax offices, provided copies of payslips from Japan to prove that I'd already paid tax on my earnings there, and then converted everything from yen into pounds because the witless fools couldn't manage it themselves.

This morning I sent off another letter. God only knows what I'll get back this time.

Up and Down

A day for wrapping things up. In the morning, my last class with the Entry 3 group. In the afternoon, two hours filling in new registers and exam entry forms until my head and hands ached. It was also, potentially, a day for new directions. When I arrived at work I was asked if I wanted to take two classes with the local council, starting a fortnight tomorrow. I'll decide when I get back from holiday.