Prague

We all felt pretty rough in the morning and once on the train Julie’s hangover didn’t combine very well with the motion sickness she usually gets on train rides. Julie made it to the bathroom on the train only to find that it was occupied and she ended up puking on the train floor. Thankfully we were switching trains the next stop. The train ride to Prague was a quiet two hour ride and luckily for us we got our own compartment on the train. One of Michael’s friends Jonas, has a friend that lives in Plzeň and he offered to give us a hand getting on the bus to Prague. However, our train was delayed along the way and when we arrived he wasn’t there. We decided to ask for directions to the bus station. The young lady behind the counter was extremely nice and helpful (though, Anna reminded Michael and I to pay attention to the map and not the girls that were poking out of her V-cut top). We found out that it would be about a 30 minute walk. Michael then decided to call Jonas to see if we could get in touch with his friend Roman. Five minutes later we were on our way to the bus stop in Roman’s car. It all happened fairly quickly, we showed up, bought the tickets and were on the bus to Prague that left in a few minutes. An hour later we were dropped off somewhere in Prague, but nowhere near the centre. After we got some money and a bite to eat at the nearby mall we took the subway to the Mustek stop which was the centre of town. Before we jumped on though, two ladies approached us realizing we spoke English, but when they learnt Julie spoke French, it was only Julie they wanted to speak with. We (Julie) tried to help give them directions to their hotel and we think we managed to do so. This was sort of funny though, because we weren’t 100% sure of what we were doing only moments before boarding the subway. It was also funny, because you wouldn’t think that speaking French would come in handy in the Czech Republic. Once we surfaced, I used the GPS to help guide us to our hostel. It was a short walk, but it took us down some back streets and other major ones and eventually into the Old town square – we already liked the city. We had to wait 30 minutes for the receptionist to return to the hostel but once she was back it went rather quickly. Upon entering our room we all had to laugh. Of course we weren’t expecting anything great but we all felt like we just walked into a hospital room. The beds were small and covered with crisp white sheets like the ones on hospital beds. The high ceilings and walls were also painted white. We had some tea and coffee (as it was free) before we stepped out for the night. I decided not to bring the camera only to kick myself for the remainder of the night, thankfully Michael had his with him. We wandered around a bit before finally coming to a restaurant that all of us agreed on. Julie had a steak, I had chicken, Michael had Schnitzel, and Anna had a club sandwich. Some of the meals came with soup, fries and beer for around 200 Kč. We wanted to head to a bar afterwards for some light drinking and entertainment. The bar we finally decided on was an Irish pub, we saw a bunch of advertisements for it and weren’t too keen on a few pubs we saw along the way. It was an easy night and we headed off around 11.

We learnt of a free tour the previous day and decided to attend it hoping to save some time and learn more then we could on our own. The tour started at 10am in the old town square, so we bought our breakfast at a huge bakery and picked up some coffee from Good Fellows (we learnt from their coffee cup that they donate their old beans to charity). Our guide arrived more or less on time, though he wasn’t one of the guides on the brochure. It was a large group of around 30 people, from what I could tell, some were from England, some from America and a few Canadians too. The walk was long but interesting and he brought us to a few places we surely would have missed. We learnt a lot about Prague during the 2 ½ hour tour. We were supposed to head towards the bridge and castle, but we never even ventured within sight of it. We went for lunch afterwards at Friday’s as Anna was craving ribs and we all wanted to show Michael what a restaurant chain is like (France is the only place that has 1 chain so far) and he got to experience “North American” food. Unfortunately we had run out of time and needed to head back to the hostel to gather our bags before making our way back to the bus stop. This is where our trip fell apart. We arrived in time to meet the 5’oclock bus, but learnt that all the tickets where sold on that one and the other one leaving at 5:30. This was not good. We had already purchased our tickets for the train ride from Plzeň to Wieden and it left Plzeň at 7. The bus ride takes 1 hour from Prague to Plzeň. We ran through the list of options we had, first of which was seeing if we could take another train or bus, which we couldn’t. Then we talked about renting a car. In the end though we took the 6oclock train and Jonas drove from Wieden to Plzeň to come pick us up. Since he was in the area though, we all went down to the club Roman worked at and hung out until around 11 at night. Despite it messing up our plans, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend the remainder of our time in the Czech Republic. Some shady things happen in this country. While we were waiting for Jonas, we witnessed a pimp picking up his girls (we think it was a pimp or the guy was loaded) but prostitution is legal here so I guess we shouldn’t dwell on it. When we came out of the club, Jonas’ car was “tagged” with something that wiped off easily enough. When you walk around Prague there are many men standing around, some we think were there to sell stuff, but we couldn’t be sure as they had nothing on them and they didn’t approach us. The following morning Anna dropped Julie and I off at the train station to head back to Regensburg. We got word that morning that our van was ready to be picked up. We had a great time in Prague and of course we had more great times with our German friends. Thanks for everything guys.

Our van is fixed and Tobias offered to drive us to Pasburg. We loaded the car up with everything and were there in no time. One of the brakes was seized, so that was replaced and the light issue was more problematic but it turned out to be the switch that was faulty. After we paid the 170 euros we stood around and talked for a bit. The mechanic invited us all in for a coffee which later turned into dinner, we had goulash and it was great. We moved on afterwards but we did manage to help provide the couple with some locations in Italy to visit when they go with their rig next month.