It was time for Rian and I to depart Prague and head towards Krakow, Poland. However, we had a choice to go up to a rock park area to the north or go to a uni-town, called Brno to the east. The easiest route was to head to Brno, so we decided on this, which would give us a full-weekend in Krakow.
We arrived in Brno around 16:00, the weather was overcast with minimal rain. Brno has many universities and students are mostly from the Czech Republic. Brno has around 400,000 people living in it, but we found it to be pretty non-chalant and not as buzzing for a uni-town. As is the case with backpacking, typically when you arrive, the first thing is to find your accomodations (hostel or hotel), drop your backpack off, and than go walk the city, find some food, and maybe finish the evening in a bar, cafe, or pub....Simple, right?
On this night, Rian and I headed for the "Traveler's Hostel," located near the train station and in the city center. When we arrived, we found out that it was closed and reading some of the fine details in our Lonely Planet Travel Book, the hostel does not open its doors until July, only 2 days away....oh well, when the door shuts on you once, the best thing for us at the moment was to go find a cafe, have a beer, and maybe we would be able to ask some locals about where we might be able to stay. We found the cafe, had a beer, and realized that most of the locals spoke about 2 to 3 words of english....Bad idea, right?
While we were sitting at the cafe and now the time was around 18:30, we noticed a young backpacker walking up the street with his Lonely Planet Travel Book in hand. Rian and I started laughing and than yelled to him "hey, trying to find a hostel!" He came over, sat down, told us about the closed hostel, we confirmed, and than grabbed him a beer. His name was Chris, a 20-year old from Australia, who was traveling for about 7 months. After some laughs, some free beer from the ladies behind the bar, a couple slices of pizza, we decided that we would rally at 20:30 to go find the other recommended hostel. Still with me, right?
The next hostel, located at the end of Tram #12, only a 25-minute ride from the city center, and than go to the underpass, make a turn, and we should be there....Well, the three of us made it to the end of the line, so we think, but were unable to find the underpass (so much for my rockin' map-reading skills). Now you might ask, what to do, right?
When in doubt, go find some locals and ask them. Across the street, a gal and guy were standing and talking to each other, so we went to them and asked about the hostel. They had no clue, but the guy, Mark, a student at the local university offered to put us up in his dorm room for the night. It all happened pretty quick, but since we had three of us, we all said "OKAY." Off we went for about 10 minutes to Mark's dorm room, but when we got there, we found out that the dorm had an attached bar for the students. We stopped in there, bought some drinks for Mark to show our appreciation, took some photos, laughed about the night, and than preceded up to the dorm room. We made it safely, except that the room was a dorm room (remember your dorm rooms at school, tiny)and we had four people. Now what, right?
Rian took one bed. Mark had the other. Chris took the floor space in the middle. I took the floor space between the two desks, feet under the desk and head inching towards the other desk hole....That's how we slept, but before sleeping Mark gave us a wonderful welcoming to Brno and the Czech Republic with a signature, home-made liquor, called Silowitz. That was the end for all us, good night, and as you can see, no worrying, just some laughter, some drinks, and trust in the locals!!!
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