I woke up in an all-female dorm and ended up living in a Czech castle

Being a male nanny in a 38-room chateau where a great poet once stayed began my deep dive into Czech culture and customs.

Zamek Loucen, the writer’s (temporary) home in Bohemia.

The fez-wearing behemoth at the hostel’s front desk wanted to make one point very clear. The establishment comprised male and female dorms. There was, he warned sternly, to be no fraternising between the two. This was not Australia, mate. It was Turkey. “Different rules. Different culture.”

The man, an unsmiling, tabouli-scented 1.96m tower of flesh, performed a small gesticulation towards his neck. The movement was vague enough that I might not quite grasp exactly the fate that was to befall me should I flout this rule yet suitably menacing for me to comprehend that whatever it was probably wasn’t covered by my travel insurance.

“Got it?” I had it. Stay in the male dorm.

It was 2004 in Istanbul. I was 24, and I had found myself doing all the usual things young backpackers do: I found a bar, then found another one, imbibed my body weight in local pilsner and made plans with new-found lifelong friends I’d never see again. Then, in the wee hours, I stumbled home down the dimly lit ancient cobbled streets of Sultanahmet. Lumbering into the hostel, I pushed open the door, climbed a wooden ladder to the top bunk and promptly fell asleep.

I woke soon after to a scene straight out of a bawdy 1980s American college comedy. A dozen young women sauntered about the room, all betowelled heads and freshly moisturised skin. Others lolled about in various states of undress, laughing and chatting as they readied themselves for the day.

I pulled the sheets over my head in a panic. How the hell did I get here? In my mind, I retraced the steps from the night before. In a bedraggled stupor, I had, it seemed, barged into the female dorm and, Goldilocks-style, found an empty bed in which to lay my now-thumping bonce. I chastened myself. Perhaps I could explain the situation to these women.

But what about Fezil Fawlty at the front desk? He had been baying for my blood since the moment I checked in. Either way, I was in trouble. A dead man waking.

Survival mode kicked in. So far I had gone unnoticed, and I had no intention of blowing my cover. I would wait it out.

Over the course of an hour or so, each young woman left the dorm in a cloud of Rexona and headed out. When at last I was certain the coast was clear, I leapt from bunk to floor, and bolted for the exit. Freedom, choleric concierge depending, was within reach. As I reached for the brass, however, a figure appeared in the doorway. I froze.

A young woman, returning for her wallet, saw me and jumped. “Can I help you?”

I gave her a forlorn look, like a lost child in a department store: “I can explain,” I began. Over some laughs and a breakfast of kahvalti, both at my expense, we chatted. I was a backpacking hack writing a travel piece for a newspaper in Sydney. She was a nanny to two young girls at a historic castle in the Czech Republic.

In fact, her contract was nearly up, and come to think of it, might I like a career change? Would I consider being a nanny – a manny – in a landlocked Slavic-speaking country I’d never visited and about which I knew as little as it might be possible to know?

I didn’t give it a second thought. I arranged to fly to London, then to Prague to meet the mother of the children who called home Zamek Loucen, a 38-room baroque chateau in central Bohemia.

I called Debs, my pediatric-specialist registered-nurse girlfriend at home in Sydney and encouraged her to join me.

We arrived at Loucen, about 40km northeast of Prague, in the European summer, just in time to see its cherry orchards in bloom.

The baroque building and its rococo chapel may have been in the process of restoration but it was breathtaking nonetheless. All cream and terracotta and romantic design, the chateau, built around a huge courtyard, was a vision of beauty. We stood before it, mouths wide, as the sun bounced off the chateau’s copper cupola: a salient reminder of just how far from home we were.

Our bedroom was downstairs, overlooking the sprawling estate’s orangerie and one of its hedged labyrinths. Upstairs, via an old mahogany staircase, were most of the bedrooms, conservatory (with historic grand piano) and a stocked, laddered library. The family lived in a separate residence, so we stayed alone in the chateau, whiling away the nights joking and not-joking about supernatural visions and ghosts of Loucen past.

We would take the girls on long walks to pick plump cherries; they would show us shortcuts through the forest. I delighted in the downtime, dozing in the long grass, drinking Gambrinus beer and reading in the sun.

For a couple of small-town country kids, the chateau’s history was mind-blowing. Loucen had been the site of a castle and fortress since medieval times. Its earliest known mention is in a deed document from 1223 signed by Archbishop Peregin. Following the tumultuous Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century, the fortress was acquired in the 18th century by the noble von Wallenstein family and transformed into a baroque chateau. In 1809, it was sold to the influential Prince Maximilian von Thurn und Taxis, who hosted some of Europe’s most important figures. In 1813, Austrian Emperor Francis I stayed at Loucen; Russian Tsar Alexander I popped in that same year.

But I was taken by Loucen’s links with poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke, who stayed there on several occasions. When violinist and arts benefactor Alexander von Thurn und Taxis married Rilke’s friend, amateur artist Marie von Hohenlohe, in 1867, Rilke attended the wedding at the chateau. Later, Rilke would dedicate his 1910 Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge to the lady of Loucen.

Had the poet written anything of note in any of the rooms we had snuck around in, I wondered? Listened to music in the conservatory? Gazed out on to the forest and been inspired to pen a verse of note? Hell, had he touched the banister on the stairs? As Debs noted dryly, he likely had not slid down it, a route I had taken to travelling.

The castle suffered through World War II and then communism, when it was looted mercilessly, and its romantic charms dimmed as a government building until the early 2000s when it was purchased and restored. It is now a popular site for daytrippers out of Prague.

Sadly, we did not stay long at Loucen. A family issue saw us rush home to Australia, only to return to Prague a few months later.

The mother of our dear friends Honza and Pavlina offered us her home while she retreated to her spring-summer home in Krasonice, in bucolic Vysocina. Amid small jobs here and there, we explored the city and its underground bars, and took long weekends with our friends to the Slovenian alps, where we would cool plastic vats of homemade wine in streams and hike vertiginous trails to be rewarded with palacinky (pancakes) at peak-bound restaurants.

We chased government cars with Czech journalist pals down to Brno, ending up at our friend’s father’s home, where we were plied with homemade slivovice – fruit brandy – and goulash. We went mushroom foraging in Krasonice, and devoured delectable knedliky (dumplings) and dried cottage cheese at Benesov, last home of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

When Christmas came, we went to our friend Jiri’s home, and celebrated with our Czech family. We ate carp – which, as per tradition, had been kept live in the family’s bath – and were given fish scales to put in our wallets to bring good fortune. We devoured chicken heart soup and goose liver, and watched the favourite Czech Christmas film Pelisky. The snow fell gently outside, and we raced through the front door to stick out our tongues to catch the tiny, dissolving flakes, and cried a little thinking about our own families at home in the sun. But how lucky we were to be here, on the other side of the world, surrounded by love and friendship.

The longer we stayed, the more solace I sought in the Czech Republic’s cultural giants: Rilke, Kundera, Janacek. I delved deeper into Kafka, from The Metamorphosis to The Trial and The Castle and on to his diaries.

And I spent countless evenings on the city’s famous 15th-century Charles Bridge, drinking cheap beer and photographing lovers and smiling to myself about the numerical palindrome that underscored the structure (the superstitious Charles IV ensured building of the bridge began in 1357, the 9th of July at 5.31am, thus reading 1-3-5-7-9-7-5-3-1).

Soon, however, our own numbers started going backwards. We were running out of money. Scotland, and the prospect of full-time work and sadly far more expensive beer, beckoned. A month or so later, we farewelled our friends, the 18 bridges over the Vltava and Prague’s beautiful castle, packed our belongings and fond memories and took a bus to Edinburgh.

We checked into a hostel – agreeably unisex and Fezless – not far from Auld Reekie’s ancient castle. We met our Australian dorm-mates and remarked on how we had all arrived there. I broke out the bottle of slivovice.

“The only journey is the one within. Rilke,” I said, holding up a plastic cup with all the pretentiousness of someone in a dorm room quoting an existentialist poet.

“Who?” someone asked.

“Prague writer,” I said.

“Ah. The guy who turned into a cockroach?”

Close enough. Na zdravi.