I just got back from Prague (3 hours later than intended, but I'll get to that in a sec.)! It was so much fun. We toured a gothic Cathedral and some old Jewish Temples and cemetaries. Then, at night, we went to a five story club (each level had a separate DJ and different kind of music) and danced until we could dance no more. I don't think I've ever sweat so much in my life. Sexy, right? ha ha.
Moving on to the 3 hours late part.. So yesterday Lisa and I decided we were going to go home on the Sat. night train instead of the early morning Sunday train. But we had no idea how to get to the train station to make reservations. With the much needed help of our friend John, and a map of Prague we finally figured out where we needed to be--on the other side of town. The 5 of us piled into a taxi and get to the main station which looked like it could have been a subway station in the Bronx, complete with flickering overhead lights and grafitti on the walls. As we stand in front of the ticket booth with our map out, obviously lost, a girl walked up to us and said, "You guys look like you need help." Turns out she was from Houston, TX, and out in the Czech Republic doing mission work for 7 months. She assured us that yes, this is the main station, despite it's haggard appearance, and helped us figure out what tickets we needed to buy. We walked back to the main square, crossing under a bridge-tunnel thing which had enough needles littered on the ground to keep any addict busy for a while, and henceforth decided the Czech Republic was now the Sketch Republic.
Five hours, one subway ride, and a WHOLE LOT of walking later, Lisa and I were back at the train station, and all of a sudden, panic hit. Our ticket said 7:50 on it and we had thought our train wasn't leaving until 8:30. So, off we go, running around the station like a couple of crazy people (me, with a backpack as big as my own body strapped on), and after leaving the wrong platform, we found the right platform and discovered... Our train was leaving at 8:30 and 7:50 was the time we were supposed to arrive at the border of Germany. Wow.
We get settled into our compartment, the whole time praying that no one else will come in so we can stretch out and sleep the 11 hours it takes to get back to Mannheim. We ended up having the compartment to ourselves for most of the night and were able to get a good 11 hours of sleep in.. which turned our to be an hour too much because we eneded up sleeping right through our stop. I woke up first and realized we weren't in Mannheim (where we should have been over an hour before). I wake up Lisa who immediately starts to panic and we jump off on the next stop, which ends up being some podunk little town neither of us had ever heard of. Offenburg?? What the Off?! We find the train that will get us to Mannheim, scarf down some bread, and pick-up our journey where we had left off. An hour later we arrive in Mannheim, (finally something familiar!) take a train to Heidelberg and literally kiss the ground when we get there. Then we hoofed it back to the house and enjoyed a hearty (and much deserved, I think) breakfast.
Oh, I do love a good adventure.
This map shows where we left from Prague (A), where we first got off after realizing we had missed our stop (B), and where we finally managed to make it back to as orignially planned (C).
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