Prague

I hopped on my train to Prague which was set up in 6 person cabins, 2 rows of 3 seats facing eachother. I walked most of the train looking for an empty or mostly empty one and eventually found one with only one other person in it. On trains like this it's actually a calculated decision, because sometimes it's better to look for other travellers or meet people heading to the same city as you. At this point i felt I would rather keep to myself and try to fully recover from Oktoberfest. We ended up having one other person in our cabin, but for the last two hours of my journey I had it to myself. However, on an old train in the dark, heading to central Europe this can be a little creepy.

Anyway, I made it to Prague in one piece. I guess I should've checked the weather report because it was raining there and I was still wearing my shorts. It was about 11:30pm by this point. The Prague train station is not the nicest or most welcoming place at night. In fact I kind of felt that way about much of Prague. It is a fairly dark city, with lots of gothic or neo gothic architecture. I had only booked a hostel for the next night because I thought there was still a chance that I would travel with Erin and Kim around Germany for a bit longer, but they left before I could get a hold of them, which also left me lugging around my trachten.


Anyway, I actually found my hostel, which was on a side street, and I had no idea where in relation to everything else at this point. It ended up I was quite close to the main areas of the city, which is actually quite small. THANKFULLY, someone was still at reception because they usually leave at 10pm and it was 11:30ish at this point. He did have an extra bed for me at the same good rate so I took that one and went to sleep. The next day I got up, got myself acquainted with the city, and eventually met up with Bill and Katie. We walked the St. Charles bridge and headed up to the Prague Castle. Both of which are full of amazing statues and architecture. We decided we'd do the Prague pub crawl that night, so we went back to our respective lodgings and got changed and ready.

We met back up got a quick bite and started on the crawl, which I enjoyed much more than the Amsterdam one. We apparently had two different Contiki (a young person's travel agency) groups with us that were mostly Aussies and boy do they get rowdy. I did meet a pretty tame one named Tim, and we plan to meet when I head down to Sydney. I will say, Prague did live up to its reputation of having an amazing night life. I would be even more curious to see it on a weekend or in the summer. There are literally bars on every block. Even more than starbucks in the states. We finished the crawl at the 'largest club in Central Europe', a five story dance club right next to the St. Charles bridge. I was tired at this point being very used to the 2am cut off of California, and only stayed for until 3 or 4, and headed home.

Woke up and had to decide to whether to stay in Prague for another night or head to my next destination which was likely Budapest or Vienna. I had to check out by 11 and my hostel had a very nice lobby with WiFi and a big tv, so I actually got caught up on some world news. I also didn't feel too bad about staying in because I had walked around Prague for basically all of the last two days. The nice part was I met two guys from Boston while sitting there. They were spending their last night in Prague before heading to Munich for the last weekend of Oktoberfest. I gave them a bunch of pointers and recommendations which they appreciated, and they asked if I wanted to tag along with them for the day. I obliged considering I hadn't been doing a great job of meeting other travelers. Bill and Katie offered for me to stay with them as well, bc they were in a nicer hotel that had a futon. I was planning on doing that but Derrick and (oops I kinda forgot his name) we'll call him Jeff, offered to let me crash on the cot they had in their room in the hostel, which other than the dorm I was in was mostly private rooms. I accepted, met them up there and dropped my stuff off. We went out to some shopping. We asked the girl at reception where a good place a bit out of the city was to do some shopping and she gave us a few ideas.

Apparently she was unclear on the concept of wanting to shop for stuff you couldn't get in states and sent us to a shopping mall full of american stores. Anyway, it gave a good amount of time to get acquainted with eachother, and they were both really good guys and were a lot of fun to party with. I we exchanged stories about our travels leading up the there and I told them about the pub crawl I had done the night before. and the one bar I had really liked because it had everything, a dance club, multiple lounges and even a room with girls dancing on the bar. Their ears perked up like excited puppies and we had a plan for the night. We got some food and did some more shopping, we all ended up getting some cool canvas prints of St. Charles bridge and cityscape. We ended up negotiating about a 30% discount from what was originally asked, but somehow in Europe you always walk away feeling like you got ripped off.

Anyway, As we got to know eachother over many drinks, I thought of a different plan for my trachten because Dennis wasn't sure he was going to buy any, whereas Jeff was. Jeff was much smaller than me and Dennis a bit taller but pretty similar build. When I had originally met them I offered to sell them to him because I didn't care that much and I could already tell that Europe was going to kill my budget. But I figured there was a way for us to both come out ahead. So I offered to let him use my outfit for his trip, if he was willing to ship it and the painting back to SF for me which would be much cheaper than me shipping it from Europe or him buying his own, so it was a win-win. We ended up having a pretty late night, which was worse for them because they had a 7am train to catch, but I was able to sleep in because I was taking the overnight train to Budapest. Now I just have to hope he follows through... I spent the rest of the day hanging out and walking around Prague for the last time.