the trip to prague tues 3 oct
i leave kie and the girls at oktoberfest and head back to my hostel at about 1am on monday, the plan is to meet kie at the train station about 10am but we agree that theres a very good chance of us both running late after the days events. i get in at about 10 and kie texts me saying he'll be late. we meet up at midday, run to buy tickets and make it onto the 12.05 train with about 2 minutes to spare
1. "just enough time to buy a bottle of water "
lizzie on train at munich with her bags and kierons bags, kieron on platform buzing water, SLAM. doors close, train drives away, kieron runs down platform, lizzie yells out train window - kieron has schedule of where to change trains - liyyie has no idea where shes going. great. got off at the first stop and an hour later am back where i started 3 hours ago but with double the luggage, meet up with kie get on the 1:26 train to prague
= take 2 =
we have 2 stopovers and are due to arrive in prague at 8.45pm we meet a canadian-german couple sasha and denvan who are also on their way to prague and sit around and enjoy the 2 hour ride until our first changeover, our train left a couple of minutes late so we get to the first changeover stop Plattling we RUN to make the connecting train to Bayerisch Esenstein 'BE' and get on just in time. i notice 3 guys with backpacks running ahead of us and wonder if they are heading to prague as well (remember this they make another appearance soon)
the train pulls in at BE a middle of nowhere station thats surrounded by nothing much more but trees, but this time about 30 people are waiting to get on the train. a guy in his 40s gets on and starts talking to us in either czech or german and we assume he wants us to move our luggage out of the way so everyone can fit on the train, we look up and see sasha waving us to the door and the 4 of us jump off the train just before it heads back to P ( in the direction we just came from) - that was close. i realise the 3 guys with backpacks didnt get off but kie points out that they could be going anywhere and i think nothing more of it.
so we're all starving and have half an hour to kill before our next connecting train to Klatovoy, luckily there is a pub-cafe place at this middle of nowhere station and we all have a quick feed before our train arrives.
2. "i dont think thats our train"
just before we jump on the train (its in the same spot as the one we just got off but with a railway station this size and in the middle of nowhere that didnt seem too strange) i notice that the sign on the train says Plattling (the station we just came from), kie says its not lit up so itll be ok and the 4 us jump back on ... and...surprise... start heading back to Plattling.
thankgod we are with sasha from germany is all i can say, there was no way i was leaving her side! she finds out that there will be another train going to BE in 10 mins so we all jump off at the first sation (even more middle of nowhere than the last stop, with a wolf and other scary mountain creature enclosure park on the hill behind us - eeek!)
the train turns up, we all jump on, and who should be there but the 3 guys with backpacks we saw an hour or so ago at Platlling. turns out they are heading to Prague as well but ended up going backwards on the first train to BE and they're aussies!!! from aubrey wadonga. about 30 mins later the group of 7 of us now are back at BE with a 2 hour wait for the next connecting train to Klatavoy - things are looking up, the old boys at the BE pub cant stop laughing at us but we have some dinner and beers and figure out that the train junkyard looking spot about 300m down the opposite end of the platform, over the germany/czech border was where our original train was waiting for us all along - doh!! (i even took a photo of it when we were here the first time - unbelieveable!!)
3. "bad things happen in 3's"
so off we go across the border to our correct train, which again looks like it came from the junkyard - and guess what its now due to head for the junkyard - engine failure. faaaaaaaantastic!
it could have been worse though, they have a spare engine at the station and roll that one in and connect it up and we leave pretty much on time at 7.30pm, but with 2 more changes at Klatavoy and Plzen to connecting trains, none of us are feeling to confident about making it to prague tonight and are all ready to roll out the sleeping bags at one of the next crazy communist looking train stations.
We had one unhelpful angry czech ticket lady and one very helpful guard (and his young daughter as trusty sidekick) who made sure we got off at the right stop and helped us find our next trains - 4 or 5 more hours passed and with help of some kind of miracle we made it to prauge, with no czech money and no accomodation at 12.45am
our luck rolled on, we walked straight up to a bankomat - got hassled by a accomodation man that smelt of urine, ran away, got change for the payphones and found the czech inn a beautiful hostel that had beds for all of us - checked in by about 1.30 and i was asleep as soon as my head hit that pillow!
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