Klatovy and calamities

There's a word in Czech to describe a type of person, and it's probably more precise a description than we have in English: ,,cholerik".  It means short-tempered.  Someone who gets angry or wound-up about things at the drop of a hat.  The cowboy knows that he's this kind of person.  But I can usually find a way to get him to see things more accurately and therefore not get so irritated.  But getting paint or varnish for the cupboard doors his brother recently made for him has proved a little harder than I'd thought.

We had to drive to Klatovy [It's referred to as 'Klatov' on the town info map, but all the road signs have it in plural as, 'Klatovy' and I STILL don't know which is correct or why there is this confusion...] to get to a big 'Obi' store, which is basically your Czech equivalent of 'Homebase'.  I don't know why he always wants my opinion about what to buy.  It's so funny.  I would know exactly what I wanted to get already and I'd be straight into thinking of what kind of varnish I wanted, not whether I wanted varnish or paint.  As it happens, I wouldn't have bothered getting doors for the cupboards/shelves in the kitchen part of the flat in Sumava anyway because it's so small, that it's better just to have immediate access to the shelves.  But, given no choice on having doors, I definitely wouldn't want to paint the wood.  I'd maybe varnish it, just to protect the wood somehow, but that's all.

And so it was that we drove to Klatovy and then wandered around the square first because the cowboy wanted to make the most of being out for the day.  And there was some kind of town festival going on anyhow.  

Except he remarked that they were playing typical 'old-people-communist-songs' that used to be on TV on Sunday evenings, right before he'd have to go back to school so he always associated it with that pre-Monday morning dread.  Poor boy.

So we went up a tower instead.  It's the Czech thing to do.  And thankfully, as towers and lookouts go, this was one of the more interesting ones.  There was a big bell, a clock mechanism 

and some entertaining graffiti on the wood inside as well as the nice view at the top.  We even added to a bit of the graffiti.  (Well, I didn't, but the cowboy did.)  And we walked around the surroundings, a tiny park and some of the original boundary wall.  

It reminded me a bit of Canterbury in places. Just without the actual bustle and commerce of a proper city, as opposed to a tiny little town.

And then we finally braved 'Obi', got some paint and came home.  And then spent ages deciding if it was right or not.  And in the end, the cowboy hastily tried to 'improve' the colour by mixing it with a bit of leftover paint from IKEA but he recklessly mixed it into the same pot. So there was no going back.  Except for us.  We went back to Klatovy the next day to get more of the original coloured paint.  Only to decide that evening that it wasn't a good match for the rest of the flat anyway.  Back to square one.

In the meantime, the extractor fan for the bathroom has broken, I made a disappointing attempt at a cooked breakfast this morning because I'm just not used to electric cookers (and I don't like them) and I left the lounger mat out on the balcony yesterday and it poured with rain and still hasn't dried.  Oops.  Still, I'm not complaining.  I had a very nice blueberry and nut ice cream [pictured as already half-eaten because it was so hot that it was melting instantly.  Honest.]  in Klatov on the first day 

and I had time to do a bit of reading yesterday while the cowboy did some guitar practice.  So I'm doing ok.  The cowboy is too, but he's too wound-up to know it.