4th Day in Prague and on to Berlin…

This is from my 4th day in Prague and this was just a sit around and relax day. I’d made arrangements a couple days before to travel to Berlin and the best way for me was by bus. Today, after a low cost breakfast at the hostel, I just spent lounging, internet, email, catching up with my cartoon reading…that sort of thing. But later that evening, I once again had dinner at The Green Tomato. This was stuffed chicken breast with sauteed veggies. Very good.

Note the loop string attached to my glasses. I’ve been known to put them down in my own house, 330 square feet of living space RV, and not find them again for hours. And in a couple instances, a couple days to find them when they’d fallen between the nightstand and the bed. But, whatever, on this trip I made sure I brought a bunch of those neck straps for my glasses. They really helped! Now, it just happened this night I’d taken them off and laid them on the table, but usually they’d be dangling around my neck. It was just too easy to wander off when distracted from nearly anywhere while traveling, but these loops prevented lost glasses time and time again. Anyway, I got 10 of them for $3 back in the states and I’m happy I did. I will use them whenever I’m traveling from now on. And a last shot of the street right outside the hostel. I took the shot because I like the sidewalks with patterns in them. Cool.

Next day it was time to head for the bus station and board my Berlin bound bus. I wanted to take ground transportation because I grew up during the Soviet era and wanted to see the countryside and the villages up fairly close to see if there were any remnants of the gray Soviet era. Neither plane or high speed train would fill the bill for that. What I’d read before I booked was that the buses are modern, had on board bathroom, WiFi (although it turn out it was broken on this trip), and they stopped occasionally so you could stretch your legs.

And off we went…

Soon we were outside of Prague and crossed over this river. Same river that ends up in downtown Prague. And here’s a little Czech Republic countryside. Lots of fertile farmland. River is still with us. Not huge, but big at this point. We’re heading for that village way off in the distance.

And here it is. Noticeably spruced up. We drove into town, negotiated our way to the downtown bus station and you could see where virtually every building had a fresh, bright, joyful coat of freedom paint. As we drove into the village, and drove out of the village, it looked like people had been working their asses off rebuilding, refurbishing, renewing their own ‘place’. This is not your mothers Czechland.

Even the countryside farms looked spruced up. Here’s the high speed train I didn’t take this time. Not really, that’s a local commuter train… And after a 30 minute pause at the German border, where they had us exit the bus for a bit and checked all our passports, we are soon in Berlin. The entire trip by bus was 6 and 1/2 hours. Less than a typical day driving my RV. With the added benefit of not having to drive myself.

After arriving at the bus station, I had to arrange for a taxi because the public transportation in Berlin is really confusing. I knew from the hostel’s web site that a taxi should cost around 20€ and told the driver the address of where I was going and the name of the hostel and that it shouldn’t be any more than that and he was agreeable.

After the driver stumbled around trying to find the address (it was a side street off a main drag of the same name, though I told him repeatedly of the extension to the street name), we finally arrived at the hostel. On a nice quiet side street right across from a monument park that indicated that the building I was in was once a Jewish school for the deaf and that all the children, along with the staff, had been sent off to the ovens. Heavy.

Next time, we’ll explore Berlin.