Pre-Sumava bivouacking

Smrcna, near Sazava, became our training ground – trusting the truth of the trite phrase that it is hard on the training ground – you know… This first part definitely worked exactly – it was certainly hard for us. In fact, it all started with getting off the train a few stations early and walking to the hut to get our shoes broken in and sort of generally try out the march (only on the flat so far).
At first a small (later a huge) difficulty was that Johny and I could not find any other „boots“ than the parade ones – that is, those intended for promenades and parades. They looked great, but instead of soles for the mountains, they had smooth leather walking soles and, in addition, metal toes and heels, so we were flapping like a couple of grosbeaks on the way! Fortunately, the path led through the beautiful Sazava valley, with natural rapids occasionally drowning out the noise of our boots. Well, even so, occasionally the lufties (and sometimes even the old-timers) ran to the road in the foolish hope of seeing the carriage: „Children, hurry up – the horses are coming!“, we heard several times.
For dinner we had spaghetti with ketchup and roasted cabanos on onions, which later became our tradition and in various mutations this dish has survived until today. But back then, due to our abundance and hunger – caused by adolescence – we ate from a plastic basin (also called a vajlink), in which the whole family and our dog Azor washed in standard times! (we later came to call it the „poo sink“)
Here we also slept for the first time under the open sky, but close to the hut – just in case somebody couldn’t stand it mentally. We chose a small pallet in front of the hut, under a huge spruce tree in the middle, on which a basketball hoop was still hanging at that time, and which we duly used for this purpose even before dinner. Nowadays there is no basket, no tree and even no ownership rights to that hut, but that’s another story and definitely much sadder… It was nice to fall asleep and eventually to sleep. But the fun was in the morning. It was really cold in the morning and we huddled more and more – or rather deeper and deeper – into our sleeping bags. But Johny did it to perfection = he crawled all the way inside, fastened all the zippers and finally tightened the last top cord. At night, however, he kept thrashing and turning until he was all over in the sleeping bag and the fasteners were under his head and back. He was in for an even bigger shock when he woke up in the morning. The rest of us were already awake and full of anticipation for the promised morning show. Johny really did not disappoint! He sat up and lay down again and again and again. He mumbled incomprehensible sentences interspersed with shouts and heckles. For example, he could be understood: „I can’t see!“ It took him a really long time to understand where he was and what was happening to him, and a much longer time to extricate himself from his own prison.
For the rest of the day we were forced to run around in canvas shoes, do push-ups with a backpack on our backs – in short, we were subjected to a complete test of physical fitness, in which we failed, of course… An important part of our training was also an expert explanation – how to survive in nature with minimal loss of energy (of course, there was no mention of dignity). Interesting was also the part when Patrik told us in great detail about what can be thrown into boiling water in a kettle or eschus to achieve a tea of taste close to English. Don’t think, for example, that one could eat whatever one wanted! There were designated eating pairs and not only that – everyone was designated which ewer was for what. For example – one of the pair of diners and one of his pans (there are two in the ewers by default) was for soups only (so it didn’t have to be washed right away), the other for the main meal (but it had to be washed – unfortunately…although to be honest = I experienced several times, actually ingested and only later experienced, goulash with leche flavour etc.) Well – we were trained and tested, Patrik was disappointed….
It was time to plan the trip, but not only that, we were even given a list of things to bring and things not to bring. For example: „extra shoes – not acceptable“, etc. And so Johny and I smiled at the thought of not getting rid of the canad! I have to admit that there were several things on the list whose meaning I did not understand at all and for the first time (slightly and unimportantly, of course) I felt a whiff of a certain lack of freedom and a certain feeling of not understanding how nice it would have been to do things our own way – or rather to leave it to each of us. As an example, I’d like to mention the tank top – I don’t understand this kind of clothing (like the tie, which was fortunately not on the list) – it’s not clear who invented it and why. Personally, I only wear a tank top with extreme reluctance in times of extreme cold – i.e. from minus 20 degrees! Only later I understood that musclemen ala Patrick wear it to show biceps or triceps or whatever the name of the sepsis on their arms is… There were more similar crap (like suspenders, or braces – yes, that’s exactly what the list said in black and white). I obeyed the vast majority of them – although I gradually adjusted the contents of my backpack along the way, and one minor disobedience ended up (immodestly speaking) almost saving our lives. But more on that later, not getting ahead of myself now!