So here is my travel journal from my backpacking trip to Europe. It's more involved than my day log stuff that's already been up the site. There has been some complaining (you know who you are) that my daylog was rather boring and that it focused too much on the details of transportation. I can't promise that this is less boring, but's there's certainly a hell of lot more of it. Occasional parts of the journal have been omitted to protect the (not-so)innocent. These parts really weren't that common, but hey - use your imagination. Keep in mind that this is a journal and things like punctuation, sentence structure, paragraph breaks, grammar, and spelling may or may not been a part of the writing process. Not to mention my almost criminal use of parenthesis. Like my pictures, the writing is quite erratic as far as consistency of content. The journal style kind of mutates over the course of the trip. Read at your own risk.
 4/28 Cincinnati 4/30 Paris 5/02 Paris 5/03 Paris 5/04 Bayeux 5/06 Toulouse 5/07 Barcelona 5/08 Barcelona 5/09 Madrid 5/11 Salamanca 5/12 Salamanca 5/13 Barcelona 5/14 Portbou 5/15 Narbonne 5/17 Nice 5/18 Venice 5/20 Naples 5/21 Rome 5/22 Rome 5/24 Florence 5/25 La Spezia 5/26 Lucerne 5/29 Interlaken 5/30 Interlaken 6/03 Amsterdam 6/04 London 6/06 Salisbury 6/09 Nottingham 6/11 Edinburgh 6/13 Kyleakin 6/15 Dublin 6/17 Dublin 6/23 Hamburg 6/27 Brussels 6/29 Berlin 7/01 Prague 7/02 Munich 7/03 Munich |
7/1 - Prague, Czech Republic Sheesh...Prague has been a bit of a fiasco from start to finish. Amusing in retrospect though. I got in on Sunday night at around 10:30 (again no reservations, at this point it's become somewhat of a game to see how much trouble I can get myself into). I didn't know which of the 2 train stations to get off at, so I got of at the first one, which turned out to be a bad idea. Everything in the station was closed, so I had no means of getting change for a phone to check hostel availability. Having no map that showed this station, I ducked outside to see if there was anything nearby. I found only dark empty streets, not even a taxi. Going back inside I ran into a couple backpackers that said they had a reservation somewhere, so I decided to follow them. Even if they were full, I figured it could be a lead on finding somewhere else. We took the subway to the next train station (where we should have gotten off in the first place). Being somewhat lost upon leaving the station, we split a cab to the hostel. In retrospect, I think we got ripped off, because the hostel was only about a 10 minute walk away, and he charged us the equivalent of 8 Euros. Anyway, when we got there (The Clown and Bard hostel), they of course had no room. When I asked about other hotels, he indicated that they would all be full too. He then said I could crash on the couch in the bar for free, to which I gladly agreed. The downside to this was that I had to wait until the bar closed, so I went down and had a beer. When the bar cleared out at around 1, I decided to ask at reception if there were any reservations that hadn't shown up, and sure enough, there was a space. When he showed me to the room, it took him about 5 minutes to get it open, because the handle was busted (fortunately, there was no one inside, so no one got woken up). My bed (er..mattress) was up a rickety ladder into a loft. Posh accommodations, let me tell you. Still, as tired as I was, it felt like the Ritz. Waking up with the knowledge that I didn't have to check out was very nice. I haven't stayed in the same hostel two night in a row since Tralee, and that really starts to wear on you. In the morning, I leisurely got up and partook of the quite varied all you can eat breakfast that the hostel serves. My day was a rather leisurely day of sightseeing around the city. Apparently Prague in the summer is very humid and hot, which made the going a bit slow. I walked through central Prague, seeing all the cool architecture  , before heading up to Josefov, which is the Jewish quarter. I went into the Jewish Cemetery, the resting place of Rabbi Loew (of Golem fame). Very interesting cemetery, all the graves are tightly bunched together and uneven (something to with older graves rising up from beneath). After a cheap but tasty Pizza, I wandered north across the river to one of the parks. I spent a fair amount of time wandering and sitting while plugged into my headphones. Very relaxing. I stumbled on Prague castle, which contains St. Vitus's Cathedral, which had some really neat gargoyles. After that I caved and bought a handmade wooden chess set. I'd been looking at chess sets all day, apparently some small town makes them and sells them in Prague. It was supposed to be 1200 Kroner (or whatever you call Czech money) , but with a discount and my indecision(causing them to lower it to make the sale) it came to 900(about $30). When I got back to the hostel, I hung out with the guys in my room for a while. We then went to dinner, which was pizza again. After dinner, we went back to the hostel bar with the goal of trying Absinthe. We did the whole boiling Absinthe soaked sugar in a spoon thing before drinking this bright green liquid. Being around 150 proof, it was pretty harsh. But hey, Kafka drank it... Spent the rest of the evening hanging out, and briefly going to another bar right down the street. In the morning, woke up, showered, checked out, had breakfast, and went off to the train station. I made a reservation for the night train to Munich, not a sleeping car, trying to save money. I also had to pay for the journey to the German border, as Czech Republic doesn't honor the Eurail pass. After figuring out the weird combination lockers, I went walking towards the bus station to catch a bus to Kutna Hora for the day. After getting slightly lost, I found the station. As I was about to go into the station, I suddenly noticed with mounting panic, that my wallet was not in my pocket. I remember having it when I left the ticket office, and juggling a bunch of things including the wallet. After that I don't know. Whether I simply lost it somewhere, or if I got my pocket picked, I'll never know (unless it turns up in my baggage somewhere). I prefer to think it was stolen, because that would mean it's not my fault. After getting back to the train station to see if I'd accidentally put it in my big pack with the tickets (I didn't), I made an unsuccessful attempt at cancelling the debit and credit cards that were in my wallet. Apparently I couldn't call the number from the Czech Republic or something. Crossing my fingers, I decided to try again when I got to Germany. My backup credit card (hidden in my pack) fortunately worked for cash advances (this was in question because I set that up right before I left and hadn't tested it). Seeing as how the next train to Munich was the one I was already taking, I went back to the bus station and grabbed a bus to Kutna Hora. Upon arrival, I followed the directions in the guidebook to the Bone Chapel there (my reason for going), stopping at a grocery store along the way for some food. The bone chapel was crazy. It was set up more majestically than the Capuchin Cemetery, being that the entire church has bones all over instead of a few small rooms. Unfortunately it was busier, and that took away some of the reverence that I felt at the Capuchin Cemetery. They allowed pictures, which while I liked being able to take them, the constant flashing and beeping annoyed me. After a while (I spent about an hour there) it calmed down a bit and I just wandered back and forth in silent awe. The way the bones are set up is quite impressive. The walls and archways have all sorts of different patterns , from crosses to strings of skulls. In the center there's a giant chandelier made from bones (I think it's supposed to hold every bone in the human body). In each corner there's a huge pyramid of bones (mostly skulls and what looks like femurs). Altogether amazing (and morbid). You can't help staring at each skull and wondering who they were. The how they died isn't necessarily a mystery, as many of these were plague victims. After that I headed back to the bus station where I thought I could catch a bus back to Prague (crazy assumption since the bus from Prague had dropped off here). After a couple of hours and several buses that I mistakenly thought were going back to Prague, I decided that I was in the wrong place. After talking to an equally confused Irish couple who were trying catch a train, I decided that the bus I wanted left from the train station (makes sense, right?). Some guy told me then told me (after checking something on his cell phone) that there was a bus leaving for Prague at 6:30. I looked at my watch which said 6:25, so I took off running in what I hoped was the right direction. After a few minutes, it became painfully obvious that I wasn't going to make that bus. I knew there was a train back, but that was from the other train station which was at least 3 km away, and I only had about 25 minutes til it left. With visions of having to hitch back to Prague (as well as missing my train to Munich), I stopped to ask directions at a nearby hotel. The (thankfully english speaking) manager pointing me in the right direction for the closer train station. I made sure to ask him what the Czech word for train station was, so I could ask again. After about ten minutes I found the train station where miraculously there was a train about to leave for the other station (where the train to Prague was going to leave from). I hopped on it and made it to the other station where amusingly the Irish couple(they had taken a cab) as well as the guys I'd been hanging out with last night (apparently they were in town to see the bone chapel as well) were waiting. It all worked out creepily well. Once I got back Prague, I went and paid for the second half of the train to Prague, as my Eurail pass was in my wallet. Fortunately, this was going to be me my last train ride, so it wasn't that big of a deal. Once I got to the platform, there was a little confusion because the sign said Frankfurt, not Munich. Once the train showed up, it said Munich on the side of the car I was in, so that meant the train was splitting in Nurenburg. I then relaxed in what turned out to be a private cabin (it was a fairly empty train).
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