IT WAS pleasant indeed to be rafting down the River Vltava in Bohemia in Czech Republic of a Sunday afternoon, so pleasant that some of us said that, one day, we’d paddle all the way to the Elbe and across Germany to the North Sea, writes Damien Enright

THE sky was so blue and the sun so warm that my son and his pal took off their shirts to enjoy the weather as they drank raspberry beer outside a bar overlooking the River Vltava in the pretty town of Ceské Budejovice in Lower Bohemia in the Czech Republic.

Scores of animals have died at Prague Zoo as keepers struggled to save them from flood waters.