We had decided to leave at 09.30 to be on the safe side, knowing that we needed to catch a bus and a tram to get to the main coach station, but unfortunately when we stuck our heads outside the door we were greeted by a torrential downpour. We had no choice but to trudge through it to the bus stop, but as we stood there waiting it fortunately eased of slightly. The main problem was that the bus we were waiting for didn’t seem to arrive, and when we eventually figured out how the Saturday timetable worked, it emerged that there wasn’t going to be a bus until 10.25. I was worried that this wouldn’t give us enough time to catch our coach, so we reached the decision that we were going to walk into the town. Initially this went as well as walking a couple of kilometres pulling a suitcase can be expected to go, but no sooner had we arrived in the town centre when the storm broke again and we proceeded to get absolutely drenched.

And when I say drenched, I mean drenched! The rain was coming down in sheets and I was soon soaked to the underwear. We were all thoroughly miserable, but I couldn’t think of any solution to the problem other than us continuing to walk onwards for another 15 minutes, at which point we would hopefully find the coach. It was at this moment when Babel, who I assumed was not speaking to me because I had failed to organise this segment of the journey satisfactorily, piped up with the suggestion, “Why don’t we just take a taxi?!”.

The idea of taking a taxi had never entered my head, nor would it probably ever have done so, but sure enough there behind us was a taxi rank We positively ran towards it and I was so desperate to get inside that I had no qualms at all about practising my appalling Czech on the driver in an attempt to explain that we needed to get to the bus station. It wasn’t actually far away so he got us there in a couple of minutes and we were so exceedingly grateful that we let him keep the change from a 100Kc note, before setting off into the rain once more.

It was another one of the super yellow buses which took us to Prague, and this time we managed to get our complimentary cup of coffee. Unfortunately we were exceedingly wet and miserable on the bus, and the cool air conditioning didn’t entirely help. I felt especially bad, because I’d managed to bang my head quite hard on the side of the bus when trying to put my suitcase in the baggage compartment By the time we arrived in Prague main station after a tube journey from Cerny Most we weren’t in the best of spirits, and matters weren’t helped by the fact that we didn’t have the correct change for the luggage lockers. This was entirely my fault, me having had the ‘brainwave’ the night before that we should spend all our small change on drinks, seeing as we would only be able to change unused notes on our return back to the UK. It was a reasonable idea in moderation, but getting rid of all the change proved to be a mistake, particularly when we were standing in the station in front of the luggage lockers, desperately trying to make up the amount of 60Kc.

I thought we’d actually managed it, but it turned out that the blasted machine didn’t accept 2s or 1s. Bother it. We needed a 5Kc piece and Babel set off bravely to try and obtain some change, but the people in the shops were most unhelpful and he returned after a fruitless search with nothing but a bar of chocolate. Oh dear. Babel expressed the opinion that we ought to ask someone if they could change money for us, but decreed that he wasn’t going to do such a thing. Oh dear again. I approached some people standing nearby and tried to talk to them in Czech, but it turned out they were German and having exactly the same problem as us.

I don’t honestly remember how the problem was resolved in the end… I can only assume that Babel must have found something else to buy… but that was certainly our first bad experience in Prague

Our second (and only other) bad experience in Prague occurred at dinner time. Being somewhat hungry by this stage, we headed out in the direction of Wenceslas Square in search of something to eat. Neither of us felt like walking far, and try as we might we couldn’t seem to get away from the touristy area with its higher prices into a cheaper part of town. In the end we settled for a moderately priced steakhouse which from the pictures on the outside, looked as if it did decent burgers. The burgers when they arrived were indeed magnificent, but the experience was marred by the receipt of the bill.

I thought the bill was actually going to make Babel explode, containing as it did a significant sum (about 60Kc I think?) for the pleasure of “condiments”. When Babel queried what these condiments might be, it transpired that the charge related to some rather sour tasting bread which had been put on our table without us requesting it, and the use of the tomato ketchup. It was absolutely outrageous, and Babel didn’t hesitate to say so to the waitress.

Frustrating as it was, we didn’t let it spoil our day and spent another hour or so wandering around some of the beautiful squares in the centre of Prague before heading to a bookshop which Babel had identified as selling English books for a coffee. We spent a relaxing hour or so there until it was late enough for us to make our way to our hotel. We were staying in the same place as last weekend, and luckily this time around we didn’t experience any problems with checking in. After a bit of a rest and a shower, we headed out again to the lovely pub we had discovered the previous week.

The waiter was different this time and we had to wait a little while to be served, but the schnitzel tasted just as good and I ended up with an entire jug of wine entirely to myself. For some reason Babel decided that he wasn’t in a drinking mood, and so I felt like a bit of an alcoholic, demolishing a whole jug in comparison to his couple of beers. Needless to say, I fell asleep pretty swiftly after returning home…

The next morning dawned bright and sunny, and Babel and I were all set to make the most of Prague. The only things hindering us were our feet, which were in a bit of a sorry state. To be fair, mine were on the verge of recovery, having been cut before we left home and rather painful in Liberec. But Babel had developed some very nasty blisters which make walking almost impossible for him

Even sore feet couldn’t take away the beauty of Prague, however. We spent the morning wandering round the old town, soaking in the atmosphere and the buildings, and after a delicious lunch in a very cheap little bar, we made our way across one of the enormous bridges and to the other side of the river with the castle. I had always known that Prague had a castle, but I had never realised quite how impressive it was. To call it a castle seems to me in fact to be an injustice; rather it is an entire series of castles and palaces and beautiful buildings. Babel and I climbed up to it in the baking heat and wandered around the gardens, which are free of charge. There were breathtaking views back out across Prague and I’ve got some beautiful photos which you can see on Facebook (maybe one day I’ll manage to shrink them down to illustrate these blog posts too!)

It was a long way up to the castle though, and the way back seemed an awful lot longer, especially for poor Babel’s feet We made it in the end, and set off in search of somewhere to get our last meal in the Czech Republic. We would have liked to have gone back to the pub where we had lunch, but we got a bit lost looking for it and then when we finally arrived, they announced that they were no longer serving food. Instead we dived into the nearest pizza place we could find, and had what was mercifully a very quickly-served meal. I was starting to get a bit panicky at this point about whether we were going to get to the coach station on time, and Babel started doing mean impressions of me

We made it though, with about half an hour to spare, and despite the seemingly large numbers of people waiting at the bus stop, we managed to get a good seat on the bus. The coach left Prague at 9 o clock in the evening, and arrived in Warsaw at 7.30 the following morning, after a night of bumping and bashing along Polish roads. I purposefully stayed awake until the border, which we passed after a mere two hours, but after that I would quite happily have slept. Unfortunately I couldn’t get comfortable and didn’t manage to doze off until somewhere undefined between Wroclaw and Lodz. I woke up again when we got to Lodz around 4am, but I really needn’t have bothered, because I don’t think I have ever seen a more god-forsaken town in my life. I dozed randomly between Lodz and Warsaw, waking up properly around 6.30 which was the time we were supposed to arrive. Somehow we’d got a bit delayed en route though, so it was an entire hour later when we finally arrived at Warsaw West bus station.

That was where the ‘adventure’ really began! Unfortunately I’m going to Austria tomorrow and so won’t be able to continue the story for a week, but perhaps in my absence Babel will have something to say about it!

Tags: Esperanto, Prague

This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 8:45 pm and is filed under Esperanto, Holidays and outings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.