After spending a way too short amount of time in Italy, it was time for my sister Coral and I to jump back out of our comfort zone and head to another country where we couldn't speak or read the language: the Czech Republic. From Florence, Italy, we took a night train to Vienna where we would switch trains for the rest of the trip to Prague. It was our first night train experience and was interesting. We shared a four-person sleeper cabin with a priest and another guy. Since it was towards the end of the evening, everyone prepared for bed and settled in. I'm a light sleeper, so every time we pulled into a station to pick people up throughout the night, I woke up. Most of the ride was uneventful except when the priest's suitcase fell from the upper berth during a bump and sent it's contents pouring out all over the floor and scared everybody. My initial reaction was to help the guy gather his things back up, but he insisted that I not worry about it and go back to sleep. As the light of very early morning started to shine, we pulled in Vienna where we would have a short layover while we awaited our train to Prague.
It was a brisk morning and since we were at a smaller station in Vienna and not the main station, there was really only the platform to wait on which luckily had a little enclosed glass room to hang out in until the train arrived. In a continuation of occasionally meeting unexpected people (eg Sammi at Gad in Cairo) during our travels, the older couple waiting in the glass room with us on the platform turned out to both be school teachers from Connecticut who also owned a KFC. Chatting with them allowed us to pass the time quite nicely. When the train pulled in, we gathered up our stuff for the few hour trip remaining to the Czech capital. Thankfully, we had bought bread, juice, and a few other things at the market in Florence before we left, so we had snacks to hold us over until we reached our destination.
Knowing that we were going to a city we didn't have a good idea of how to get around in, we had scheduled a ride with a driver affiliated with the apartment rental we had reserved. If we'd known how amazing easy it was to get around in the city and how close our apartment was to everything, we could have easily walked it, but it was nice to not have to worry about that upon arrival. After a quick ride from Praha hlavní nádraží (the main train station in Prague), we arrived at our apartment located at Pštrossova 33, Prague 1 on the northern edge of Nové Město (New Town) just steps from Staré Město (Old Town). The driver dropped us off and not longer after, our contact showed up to let us into the apartment and give us a quick rundown of how to get in and out and use the various amenities. One of our favorite things about the place was the notebook that people who had previously stayed in the apartment wrote various tips and tricks in. It was full of hints about places to eat (or not), things to see and do, and general advice about things like how to use the shower without accidentally hosing down the entire bathroom. Being famished by this point, we tossed our bags in the wardrobe and did a quick cross reference between the apartment notebook and one of the guidebooks I had brought to find someplace local to eat.
As it turned out, there was a pub called U Zpěváčků (Na Struze 7, Praha 1) right around the corner which had gotten favorable reviews from past travelers and met our requirement of having food. In preparation for our trip, well-traveled friends had told us about how wonderful Czech beer was, but how bad the food was. We made our way down the block to the pub and, wanting to continue our "tradition" of eating local cuisine on this trip, ordered up some Czech pilsners and Czech food. I had the traditional Czech plate which consisted of three different types of dumpling, a nice slab of roast pork, some sauerkraut, etc. In the States, I've never met a sour kraut that I haven't despised, since it's typically closer to rancid than fermented. The sauerkraut in Prague was so amazingly good. It was a mix of sweet and sour and was what I had always thought sauerkraut was supposed to be. All the food was wonderful; however, the beer was a let down.
After dinner, we decided to explore a little to check out our neighborhood and find the closest public transport stop. At the metro station, we stared uncomprehendingly at the sign posted on the automated ticket machine. The letters looked familiar, but the combinations and accent marks made it indecipherable to us. Luckily, a passing student leaned in and said, "It says it's out of order." After getting a ticket around the corner at the little ticket window, we headed back towards our place to relax; stopping briefly at a little grocery to grab some juice.
The next day was go, go, go. We started off by taking the advice of friends and got breakfast at The Globe, a hip, english-speaking book store/art gallery/cafe/brunch spot that had been recommended by a friend. From there, we headed toward the bridge to cross over into Malá Strana to the foot of Petřín Hill. On the way, Coral needed a pitstop, so we attempted to swing by the public one under the performance hall, but as we descended, we witnesses an english-speaking gal screaming "get off me you crazy bitch" as she wrestled herself away from an older Czech woman who appeared to be the bathroom attendant. After that episode, Coral thought she'd rather not go in there. We walked across the bridge to the foot of Petrin Hill to take the funicular railway up to the top (grab a day pass for the public transportation system across the street at the tobacco shop) and wandered around for a while, coming across the observatory, the tower, a walled garden, lots of walking paths, and some nice views of the city along the way.
Next up, we walked down the hill and across the Charles Bridge (lots of touristy crap going on and near the bridge) over into Old Town. We were going to go to the old Jewish Ghetto and cemetery, but the entrance fees were really steep, so we skipped those and got a picture of Coral with the Franz Kafka statue across the street from the Franz Kafka cafe before stopping in a bakery for a quiche lunch. From there, it was an nice winding walk through the middle of Old Town to check out the Astronomical Clock. While wandering around in the central area, we stopped in several shops to look around and found a little phonograph museum tucked away back down a little side street.
One of the things Coral wanted to do was find this photography gallery mentioned in one of the guide books. It was supposed to be located off of Wensaslas Square (where the velvet revolution occurred just before the fall of the soviet union) which is a huge, modern shopping area in New Town. The amazing thing about this area was that the shops weren't just along the street like in many cities, they extended back into the interior of the city blocks like malls, forming a labyrinth and making it difficult to figure out where a particular address might be. Coral's determination paid off though and we found the gallery by going through the giant, three level camera store we came across, out the back into an interior courtyard area, and into a house-like building. The exhibit at the time was hundreds and hundreds of photography books, magazines, and other print media stretching back years. We browsed for hours looking back through the history of photography before getting hungry and deciding it was time for dinner. While completely unnecessary for the distance we were going, we thought we ought to at least use our day pass once to ride the metro (which is deep, deep, deep underground) to the station close to our place which was only one stop away.
After a little rest, a few walkable blocks away from our apartment, we had dinner at the Lemon Leaf, a fusion restaurant with really fantastic food and wine, which put us in a great mood for a night walk along the river where we saw Frank Gehry's dancing building, Prague Castle and the Cathedral, and other folks out enjoying the brisk, but fantastic evening. Having made our way up to and across the Charles Bridge, we decided we were done and headed back to get some sleep to prepare for flying back to London the next day.
Up early, we headed back down to The Globe for breakfast again and then gathered up our things, finished writing in the apartment journal, and made our way to the metro to take the trip out to the airport. The metro gets you pretty close, but doesn't quite get you all the way there. You have to get out at the last metro stop and go to the bus stop to catch a bus the rest of the way to the airport. At the airport, we saw a couple of long lines at some of the airline windows, but since we already had our confirmations, we went to the ticketing area to get our boarding passes. When we got to the front of the line, we were greeted with a "sorry" and handed a piece of paper which informed us that due to the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland and the ash cloud that had spread over northern Europe, all flights were canceled. Not knowing what to do at first or realizing the scale of the travel disaster, we got in one of the long lines for the airline window where they really just told us that they could reschedule us for another flight two days later. After a running around to the windows of some of the other airlines and finding expensive prices, we grabbed a quick bite in an internet-enabled cafe to figure out what to do next. There just wasn't any way to get on the last flights out, so I looked at Coral and said "We've got to get back to the central train station as fast as possible before everybody else figures out that's the only way to leave."
We hurriedly made our way out to the bus and then the metro and upon arrival in Hlavní Nádraží , we sped to the travel agency to see about a train ride. At the first travel agency, the guy was incredibly helpful and found us a really inexpensive two-person private cabin on the night train to Cologne (I was amazed at how much less expensive it was than the night train tickets we had bought at the Florence train station which goes to show you should always use the little travel agencies near the station rather than the station itself for this kind of travel). When we asked about getting the rest of the way to London, he told us we'd have to go around the corner to the other travel agency because trains leaving from Cologne were by a different company. As we made our way to the next agency, it was getting a bit more chaotic as the scope of the problem was becoming more clear. The next agency had quite a few people in it, but we patiently waited our turn. The gal that helped us was very nice and managed to get us a connecting train from Cologne to Brussels, but she wasn't able to get us any further than that because the last legs across the channel were filling up with all the travelers returning to the UK from their Easter holidays. With as many train rides as we were able to secure, there was nothing left to do but kill some time before our night train, so we stopped at a restaurant at the station where we met an Irish/English guy that used to be a security consultant (he was pretty cagey about the particulars of what that meant) who was in the country looking to buy some rural land to build a house on. We learned that while the land is incredibly cheap, the building materials are super expensive in the Czech Republic. He was quite the paranoid guy and several times told us how we needed to be really careful on the night train and how if anyone knocks on our door during the night, we should position ourselves thus and so and put our foot in a particular place, so that the door couldn't be forced open. Interesting guy.
After several hours of waiting around and bumping into an older English couple who were trying to get back to London as well (they had managed tickets as close as Calais), it was finally time to board the train. We ended up getting bad information from the porter about when the dinner car was available and ended up missing it, so we had to eat the last of our travel bread. I'd love the go back and take the train going from Cologne into Prague because the river valley would be gorgeous in the morning light.
We arrived at Brussels South station which was packed with people trying to figure out how to get to wherever they were going that had now been made incredibly challenging by the volcano which the news revealed was still erupting with no signs of letting up. Searches online for buses, trains, cars, planes, etc all came up as full for many days into the future which made us start to freak out a bit because all the hotels nearby were filling up and getting expensive quickly as well and my flight back to the States was leaving in a couple of days. All the ATMs we could find at the train station an in the surrounding neighborhood were either out of money or out of service which didn't make us feel any less stressed. The only solution Coral and I could think of was to try to get in contact with our relatives that live in Belgium to see if they had any ideas of where we could stay or perhaps put us up until we could get back to England. The only problem was that we didn't have any of the contact information for any of them. After attempting contact via an old email address to no end, we decided to use our last Euros to get a phone card and see if calling information would yield anything. When we were last in Belgium, Coral and my mom had stayed with one set of relatives and my cousin and I had stayed with another. Luckily, I remember where they lived and information was able to give me a telephone number. While not being able to get in contact with anyone, we felt a little better just having at least some bit of hope for assistance.
After trying a few more times, we got in contact with Connie (who knows a little English) who told us we could get hold of Patrick (who is fluent in multiple languages) at his parents' house if we called back in about a half hour. Woohoo! We now had a lifeline! Giddy from how close we were to getting to see some of our favorite people, we decided to stop in at the ticketing office to see if there was anything at all available (bus, train, car, large dog, we weren't going to be picky) and how long we would be in Belgium. To our surprise, the agent informed us that the Eurostar has just added another train for the next day, so we snapped those tickets up and heaved a sign of great relief. We then got in contact with Patrick who told us to grab a ticket for the local train that would take us to Hasselt where he and Connie would pick us up and take us to Remi and Rachel's to stay for the night. Our relatives took fantastic care of us, even having the next door neighbor come over to translate for us while Patrick was gone until his Johnny and Frieda could come over. We had a great time talking to everyone, seeing Russel (the dog) and enjoying some awesome St Petrus Belgian beer (dubel, tripel, and blonde and all terrific) which made us sad that we had tickets to leave the next day because we would have loved to have stayed longer to enjoy our relatives.
A lovely breakfast and packing sack lunches (and an attempt to pack us dinner as well just in case we needed it) preceded Johnny giving us a ride back into Brussels to catch our train. The train trip was fast and uneventful and Coral felt a lot of relief being back in Hatfield where she had exams and homework coming due in a couple of days. While she felt relief, the next couple of days got more and more stressful for me because of the volcano and the continuing havok it was playing on air travel which caused me to start worrying about bills and rent coming due and other stupid things like that. My original flight got canceled as well as two rescheduled flights that they had put me on which initially made me wonder if I was ever going to be able to get back home. Eventually, I stopped worrying about it, since there was nothing I could do about it and settled in to enjoy where I was. Coral and I went to London to see some sights and walked the Queen's Way (which is really friggin' long) when the subways stopped working. I also got to meet several of her study-abroad friends, see Hatfield and St Albans (where we had an amazing real English breakfast) and have a good time just hanging out with Coral.
Eventually though, the volcanic ash cloud had shifted a bit and the MetOffice stopped being overly-cautious which allowed me to finally catch a flight home after an additional week of being "trapped" in England. What was really disturbing about returning home was how absolutely ridiculous and assinine "Homeland Security" and the TSA are. Going through the horrendous lines at customs at the Chicago airport and all the unnecessary and ineffective security that exists at US airports these days made me pretty angry. During all our travels and going through heavily-used hubs in many different countries, airline travel in the US is by far the most frustrating and sad experience. Even in places where there are far more security risks than in the US, the security process is much more humane and reasonable.
Upon getting home, it seemed like I had been away an awfully long time due to the number of places I'd been, things I had seen, people I had met, and adventures I had had with my sister Coral. If anything, this trip made me want to go to even more places that put me out of my comfort zone and experience many more different cultures and countries.
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