Prague my friends, Prague!!
This city is so beautiful it’s unbelievable. But before I get there, let me catch you up to speed on getting here.
This morning Holly and I jumped on a 10:46 train headed to Prague. We shared a six seat compartment with two Parisian guys who were 23 and 20, a 19 year old from Mexico and an old German man who understood absolutely no English. Talk about funny!
This old man sat there slouched the whole time with a blue plaid shirt and a gray wind breaker. His lower lip just hung down low as he looked around in his bifocals confused. Lets not forget the hair coming out of his ears.
Anyways the train ride from Berlin to Prague was absolutely beautiful. It was 4 hours of green mountains with trees and fields of grass, weeds or sunflowers. It was a lovely ride that I would recommend to anyone. We were all quiet most of the ride, all people watching and laughing. Holly and I played cards, the two guys and holly were at one point all playing candy crush.
At one point I noticed one of the Parisian boys had marks on his elbows.
Matching like the end of a healing scab. So in light to make conversation, thinking it is gonna be a great story cause these scabs looked gnarly, I asked what happened. Him and his friend exchanged words in French trying to determine the English words and next thing I know he decides on “genetic skin.” Which we all could tell meant he had a genetic skin disease. Oh my god it got so awkward so fast, I just tried to look at Holly which didnt work at all. I couldn’t handle the awkwardness I had tried so hard to avoid that I looked at Holly like “oh my god this is so bad what do I do I want to laugh” and Holly looked at me like “I have no idea cause I want to laugh.” And we kinda chuckled cause we couldn’t do anything and the French guys started laughing and everyone involved was laughing at the awkward vibe that I had single handedly created.
We carried on and the rest of the train ride was quiet and filled with small talk. Once the old man got off at Dresden, everyone just got comfy.
We get to Prague, exchange money and begin following the directions our hostel gave us to the hostel. It said we could take bus 12, 20, or 22 just as long as we got off at a specific spot. So Holly and I see 22 and hop on.
We are talking, standing holding on to the rails and straps in the aisle with our backpacks weighing us down as the tram drives through Prague. We notice when we get on that we don’t see the name of our stop, but after we stop at each stop a new one would appear at the bottom of the list. So we chatted on, admiring the scenery, excited about the hot air balloons we see, watching the stops change after every stop.
Now, I can’t read Czech by any means but I can understand that the Czech word boxed in green with a long arrow pointing to another Czech word boxed in red with a bunch of light up words along the line that were a list constantly changing is probably the name of where this bus starts, ends, and every stop along the way.
We are watching the stops change and next thing I know the word boxed in red and the last word on this stop list are the same word. I mention it to Holly and we decide to see if one more comes up. We arrive to the next stop, all the stops move up in the list, we look at the last one and it’s blank.
Hm. Now we are pretty sure something’s not right and begin to read the metro maps and bus signs on this tram. As I’m finding the end destination, now only 3 stops away, I begin to look at how we can go backwards cause apparently this tram just stops.
A man standing near me realized we were looking at the maps and he stands behind me and says we are here and points to where we are on the route line. I already knew where we were, but I appreciated the help. He asked where we are trying to go, we show him the name of the stop and he says “no, no, wrong way. Here, get off here, take the bus back 6 or 7 stops and then get to your stop” alright, seems easy enough, he was nice. We thank him and get off 2 stops from the end. We go back to the bus stop, look at the trains and stations and realized we got on the 22, that was totally right for the stop we needed, we were just going the wrong direction!
Instead of going into Prague, Holly and I have ourselves our very own free country side tour, haha! We got off at our stop (which was only one after where we got on, go figure) and continue with our directions. Well, because the United States just can’t be like everyone else and use the metric system, our directions said to walk up this hill 300 meters. I have no idea how far 300 meters is. Holly says there’s 1,000 meters in a kilometer so 300 meters doesn’t sound so bad. Which it wasn’t. Except it was entirely uphill on a cobblestone sidewalk. With our backpacks. Ill have to post a picture of Holly’s backpack because hers has so much attached to it, I can’t even guess now heavy it is. So now it’s like 5:30 and we are hiking up this hill and finally make it to hostel. We check in, get our towels and sheets, drop everything and go to find food. We hadn’t had food since we left Berlin and we were starving. We chose this Garden restaurant which turned out pretty good, it was cute!
Holly and I decided to splurge and split a bottle of Riesling because it came out to about $7 each and it was our first night in Prague! As the waitress brought the wine she asked who wanted to try it and Holly told her I would. So I take a sip to find it not as sweet as usual and the waitress says “it’s a dry wine. All our wine is dry because we don’t have much rain” I feel that that’s either a) something you just don’t tell customers or b) tell them before they ask for a bottle of it. But it tasted fine and it all really worked out great.
As you can see I ate very American with my club Sandwhich, but the bacon man. Wow. The bacon. You would have sworn they had just kiled the pig and it was hanging in the kitchen.
We both loved our food and ate it all. From there we decided to walk all the way into town and explore a bit. This turns
Into a great decision.
We saw the Charles bridge, all sorts of street performers, buildings and the people. I loved it!!
This city is do beautiful I can’t wait for tomorrow! !
The Wandering Sandals 