Nearly 10 percent of Czechs take their summer holidays in Croatia, and most of them fill their cars with groceries from home before they cross the border. So when Croatia banned the import of meat and dairy products last week, self-catering Czech travelers were incensed. But, says Guardian blogger Kevin Rushby, tourists who travel with BYO groceries are missing half the fun. 

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The subject of our latest nearly up-to-the-minute interview with a traveler somewhere in the world: Justin Glow, the lead blogger at Gadling. His response landed in our inbox this morning.

Where in the world are you?

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Is Eastern Europe under siege by badly behaving Brits? We’ve heard about kilt-wearing, buttocks-baring Scots in Poland and sex tourists in Latvia. Now Prague is attracting attention for out-of-control “stag and hen parties” thrown by UK weekenders. A report released last week by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office says the Czech Republic sees a higher proportion of traveling Brits requiring consular assistance than any other country, citing stag night revellers for much of the mischief.

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Prague’s landmark Charles Bridge, one of Europe’s most arresting sights, turned 650 years old this week. The Prague Post covered the city’s elaborate festivities and recounted a little bridge history: “According to legend, King Charles IV, later to become Holy Roman Emperor, laid the foundation at 5:31 a.m. July 9, 1357, after consulting astrologers to come up with the palindromic time and date sequence of 1357-9-7-531.” A Charles Bridge webcam shows plenty of people out enjoying the bridge today. I dialed up World Hum contributor David Farley, who lived in Prague for three years and edited Travelers’ Tales Prague and ask him about his memories of the bridge.

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Coordinates: 49 50N 12 44E
Annual beer production: 2,378,000 gallons (90,000 hectoliters)
Clever advertisers may have come up with the slogan “Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach” for the Dutch brewer, but it took Czech ingenuity to turn a tagline into reality. Perhaps in an effort to cater to a local population that leads the world in per capita beer consumption, the Chodovar Family Brewery in Western Bohemia recently began offering a unique type of therapy in the form of real beer baths. Bizarre as the notion of soaking in a hot tub of yeast and herbs may sound to some, the owners certainly chose their location well—the geothermal activity beneath this forested region of the country has drawn people to its salubrious spas and mineral springs for centuries.

-- is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.