Cedric #2: May 26

We needed to catch an early train (departure at 8:36) to make our way to our next destination of our journey: Prague. We decided that we wanted to get to the train station at least 30 min early in case of problems, and that worked perfectly. Everyone was up, showered, and ready to leave by 7:30 and we were out the door to a quick breakfast at a nearby bakery before taking the U and S bahn to the main train station of Berlin: Hbf. Luckily, after a small debate, we decided to buy the metro tickets for 2 euros. The debate sparked because in Berlin, you can just walk onto all public transportation without anyone or anything checking your ticket. Instead, the Germans will have random ticket checkers on the trains and ask for tickets. In our previous few days in Berlin we had not seen one ticket checker so some of us thought we should just wing it that morning because we were only on the metro for 3 stops. Nonetheless, the prevalent idea was to be safer than sorry so we bought the tickets. Right after leaving the metro station two men disguised in civilian clothes pulled out ID's and asked random people for their tickets. We were not asked for our tickets (because they started further down in the train and went in the opposite direction) but there was still that feeling of relief that we could have shown our tickets.

We arrived at the platform (it was deserted) by 8:00 so we sat and waited for the train. People slowly trickled in until by 8:36, when the train arrived, there was a whole crowd of eager passengers waiting to charge onto the train and claim seats (for it was a first on first serve basis). Luckily, a door on the train stopped precisely in front of us and we got good seats together. Ten minutes later the train started moving; good bye Berlin!

The train ride was 6 hours of Saxon and Bohemian scenery: very beautiful. For the first hour or so the land was mostly flat farm land which slowly gave way to Eastern European forests of lush green trees and pines. Then, after stopping in Dresden, Germany for five minutes, we followed the Elbe river and a tributary (the Vltava) all the way to Prague. The border of the Czech Republic was quite hilly, with small cliffs on either side. Henry said the scenery looked very similar to driving through New Hampshire.

On the train, we tried to catch up on blogging which had been building up over the last few days. The problem was we arrived at the hostel fairly late every night and after walking all day we were quite tired. Also, some of us (no names…) kept putting back their blogs which backlogged the others. Nonetheless, everything worked out and three blogs were typed that day (though not all were posted for we wanted to post them in order). I caught up on Czech history to prepare for our next day and a half of touring. Czech history is very fascinating. Here is a quick summary of its highlights. It was a very important city in the Holy Roman Empire; with influential Kings from around the 10th to 15th century (when it fell under rule of the Austrian Habsburgs). It was also where the 30 Years War broke out in 1618 with the Defenestration of Prague (when the Protestant Czechs threw some Catholic diplomats out of a 70 foot high window). The Czechs lost early in the war and remained under the Austrian rule until the end of World War I. Unluckily for them, they were once again taken by the Nazis before WWII officially started. Then they ended up behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. In 1968 Czech students revolted (but were crushed) in what became known as Prague Spring (that was where the yellow smiley faces comes from).

Around 13:30 we arrived in Prague, which is a fairly small city. We jumped off the train desperate for food. But first we had to get the metro tickets and get our first kronors, which would turned out to be such a pain!! 20 kronors (or krona in English, we think) equals about 1 dollar. The machine was awful, when we asked for 2000 kronas we got one 2000-krona bill! And for some reason the machine didn't like numbers that were not divisible by 1000, so no matter what we received large bills.

So after getting some dough, we walked out of the station and tried to find a restaurant. Finally, after walking for what felt like ages (but was probably only 5 minutes) we stopped at the first place we saw that served food: what a mistake. It was a Czech "café" that had three food items on its menu: a cheese sandwich, a ham and cheese sandwich, and a slice of what turned out to be terrible pizza. The only positive aspect of the place was that it was cheap.

So after suffering through an interesting meal (we vowed to be more careful next time, even if we were desperate) we left to find the hostel and drop our luggage. We took the metro (which only has three lines compared to like twenty or more for Paris and Berlin) which was at least 100 feet underground. There was a super long, steep, and very fast escalator down to the metro, which turned out to accelerate very suddenly, causing some of us to lose our balance (but no wipe outs!). After three stops we were off the metro into the side streets of Prague. We really liked everything that we had seen up to that point. The buildings were very pretty and colorful and there were plenty of Medieval towers around.

The hostel turned out to be AMAZING! Even better than the Paris one in my opinion. We had two rooms (one with four singles and one with a queen sized ben), a small kitchen with a fridge and microwave, and a private bathroom. The only minus was the the floors were a little dirty and dusty. We set our stuff down and, around four o'clock, took out a map to pick our first destination: Charles Bridge. The bridge turned out to be only a ten minute walk away. Before crossing the bridge, we peaked in the bridge's museum and decided it wasn't worth the kronas. After a twenty minute walk through the free part of the museum, we crossed the bridge. It was beautiful and looked very medieval, with statues of old Kings in armor with many coat of arms and other statues with religious themes. This was very different from Paris where most of the architecture was from after the Renaissance. Across the river was a huge hill with Prague Castle on top. Prague Castle doesn't really look much like a castle anymore. Instead its a complex of tall buildings and palaces with a huge cathedral inside. After crossing the bridge and going under an awesome gate, we started walking up the big hill towards the castle. Once on the top, we looked down upon the city. What a wonderful view.

After admiring the view for a few minutes, we walked back down and crossed the bridge to a local Czech restaurant we had passed by earlier. The restaurant was on a floating platform on a small side river/canal, and it was delicious. We each tried a different local plate and tasted each other's foods, including potato pancakes, bread dumplings, various meat dishes, and melted Bohemian cheese (as a shared appetizer) which did not last long in front of us five guys. After stuffing our faces with delicious Czech food, we once again faced the challenges of Czech money. Paying for the bill that night turned out to be quite a challenge since we each had large bills and very few coins. So we finally devised a system using Sam's blackberry to record each other's loans.

During dinner it started raining so once we had paid we returned to the hostel to catch up on rest after many days of intense touring. But before that, we had to stop by the supermarket to get water and ICE CREAM! However, the guy at the counter was a complete jerk. He demanded the exact price in coins, which we couldn't give him because we didn't have any. So after much muttering and angry waves he finally caved in and accepted our 50 and 100 krona bills (about $2.5 and $5)! Well, at least the ice cream was tasty. So we returned to the hostel, wrote postcards, took showers, watched a bit of Czech TV, blogged, and went to bed early to prepare to tomorrow's early awaking and late night…

Another long, eventful, and fun day over. Good night!