Czech Republic

Day started as any other with another long day on the bus. Those days are just so draining. It was quite amusing though. We took a rest two hours into our journey in a little city named Glendale which is famous for the church that was completely rebuilt with original stones after the war. The church was nothing but rubble but they successfully restored it. The city was little and very friendly. The Christmas fairs were just winding up which made a nice little scene for a morning walk. It was after this city that we experienced some troubles on the bus. One of the guys on the bus had forgotten his passport in the hotel in Berlin. So a buddy of his and him took off and caught a train to join him in a quick journey back to Berlin. They joined us later the next day in Prague. At the border of the Czech Republic we ran into more problems with a couple of guys having troubles with the border patrol. We almost lost two of them to deportation due to illegible stamps on their passports into Heathrow airport. Top it off; once we arrived in Prague, we became lost trying to find our hotel due to bad translation of directions. So an 6 hour bus trip turned out to be close to 13 hours. It did provide a lot of opportunity to take a nap though. Prague is the capital of Czech which seems to have a bad stigma of being an third world dirty horrible little country. I find the truth to be so different. The items there are cheap since the krona is much weaker and the culture there was amazing. So beautiful!

We started our full day by taking a shuttle into town because our driver, Jaimie, Had the day off, a much needed one at that. We rode to shuttle into town and climbed up to the castle of Prague and watched the changing of the guards. Apparently the president of Czech struck a deal with a notable designer and he designed the outfits of the royal guards. They did look quite trendy. After a stroll through the castle we made our way down to the first stone bridge of Eastern Europe. It was here that King Charles, whom the bridge was named for, made a pact with the devil. He asked the devil to help him finish the bridge on time and in return he would give the soul of the first person to cross the bride. The problem was that the first person to cross the bridge was his pregnant wife. So her soul went with the devil and the baby is in purgatory and it is the baby that haunts the bridge.

We made our way to the waterfront where we had a scheduled lunch cruise around the city of Prague. It was a really good meal with commentary of the history and buildings of Prague. Very well done. That night many of the people on the tour went down to the biggest disco in Eastern Europe which has 5 floors. Sadly I did not go because I haven’t had great sleep the past few days and I knocked out as soon as my head hit the pillow in the hotel. I was fully revived for the next day on the bus to Munich.