My first 24 hrs in Europe has been quite the adventure. A few points I'd like to touch on: hostels, walking, and money. My first experience in a hostel turned out to be like a bad camp experience. The beds were cute, like a little man whittled them out of wood himself. We were in an 8 bed room and we went to bed before anyone else was in there. The hostel gives you 5 keys, none of them labeled, so all night, every time someone came in the room, you heard them try all 5 keys because, of course, it's always the last key! Then, there was the snorer, the sleeptalker, and me, the one who woke up at 3am and felt wide-awake. I thought about how to convert the local currency, where my lost face wash was in my bag, and how I hoped I would be able to make it through the whole next day. In the morning (after I finally fell back asleep), I had the pleasure of finding my glasses just in time to see naked guy get up, put on his bikini underwear and go into the bathroom for a shower. It was the same place I wanted to go to put in my contacts, etc, but I waited the extra time, just in case ! Today has been lots of fun - Aaron is good about feeding me beers, water, candy, and finding the WC when needed. We have an 11pm train to Budapest tonight and it will be my 3rd night to sleep in an abnormal place. It's such an adventure though. As far as walking and money, the streets are old school stone, which is great, but really uneven and hard to take in flip flops. And, the money is crowns and it's all I can do to keep it in my head that 100 crowns equals 5 dollars. We're about to find dinner and go buy some Praha tshirts and other goods!
See you in Budapest!!!!
-Annie
Well, so much for finishing some entries about Istanbul and Spain before arriving in Eastern Europe. I guess I'll have to catch up later.
Annie arrived in Berin at five after eight on Tuesday morning. I'm sure my hostel bunkmates enjoyed the six o'clock alarm. Annie and I had a train reservation to Prague at a quarter to one, which gave us a few hours to kill. We spent them at the train station because lugging our bags around Berlin seemed tiresome.
Our train was nice. Our second class seats were in a six seat compartment, which we had to ourselves. After the green and yellow farmlands of Germany, we had our passports stamped by some serious officials and found ourselves in a beautiful, narrow river valley with high, blocky cliffs on the east side, standing over cute clusters of vacation homes. We arrived in Prage just after five o'clock in the evening to be accosted by several people speaking poor English trying to get us to their hostels. After the third or fourth encounter, we made a fast getaway into a convenience shop to buy water.
The Metro system in Prague does not seem as comprehensive as those in Berlin or Madrid, but it seems to take us where we want to go. Three stops from the northern train station, we got off in the old town section of Prague to search for accommodations. We found a hostel without too much difficulty and, after settling in, set out to explore the city before dinner.
The old town section of Prague is amazing. Every block seems to hold some architectural marvel. We've heard that Prague has retained so much of it's old charm because none of the last century's wars have ever had much reason to destroy it. The sun slowly set during our exploration, throwing a slanting light on colorful buildings. We crossed the Vitava River on the Charles Bridge, which has stone statues on each side set about fifty feet apart. The view east from the bridge into the old town is picturesqe. We had a flavorful dinner on the west bank of the Vitava.
Today, after a large breakfast at our hostel, we stopped by the central train station in Prague to buy our tickets to Budapest. It is a short walk from the train station to the new town section of Prague where a wide, boulevard called Wenceslas runs roughly north from the imposing National Museum. In the afternoon, we stopped in a few clothing stores, trying to get a feel for the local flair and then went to the _very_ intense Franz Kafka Museum. Since Kafka wrote in German, I always thought that was his nationality, but he was Bohemian, born and raised in Prague.
At four o'clock, we found our way to the old square, which is a large, heavily touristed, cobbled square surrounded by incredible buildings. We sat for a taste of the Czech brewed Pilsner Urquell and watched the various nationalities flow by. The internet rates here border on the extortionary, so it's probably time to close. Ciao.
-Aaron
No comments:
Post a Comment