Dresden to Prague

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What a great night sleep. The bed was hard as a rock. You would think I would like camping out. I might if they had porcelain available in the woods. I don’t need privacy; I just need good old porcelain.

We ate so much last night at the Sophia Keller we weren’t hungry this morning.

Kirsten was up and already showered and is looking at me like she expecting a project update. What, I don’t know.

Oh yeah, Happy Birthday!!!!!

That’s right today is Kirsten’s birthday!!!!!!!

I roll out of bed and crawl into the shower. Now were staying in the IBIS Budget so the room is small and the shower is in the corner with glass walls. Talk about a peep show.

Kirsten has everything packed and ready as I finish getting dressed. She’s ready to continue exploring Dresden.

We store our bags at the reception desk and out the door we go.

Me…. I’m looking for a cup of coffee; finally I find a café that’s open servicing all the locals. I go in and order two cups of coffee. Kirsten is outside waiting. We’re sitting with all the same construction workers from yesterday. Go figure, only Kirsten has such a fun life. I’m just glad I get to tag along.

Dresden was carpet bombed majorly during WWII and then the Russians took over. These poor people they were UBER screwed.

The buildings either looked old (but rebuilt) or a nice modern architecture or cold war error. I even found one mural that showed lots of soviet stuff. It was being restored. Figurines of people carrying wheat, working and looking toward the fatherland. Of course that is a Red Star in the middle. The mural is expressing the story/theory that if you work hard it will all work out. LOL…. Not even NO!

So we went through 3 cathedrals and the Resident (the castle) after the second cathedral we stopped and had a cup of coffee. The baroque architecture was early 12 century with subtle traits of early Romanesque. Yeah, I got your Romanesque…

We then went to the I(Information). You know where you find all the free maps and cool information and stuff. We, well I found a movie showing all the same stuff we’d seen. But then the movie started showing the stuff in the Green Vault (massive museum inside Resident). Now if you remember Kirsten is not big on museums. I might even be under stating her position with the last statement.

Yep, Kirsten lasted maybe 15 minutes at the most and was out the door. I followed knowing she had the tickets to somewhere on something.

We walked back to our Ibis picked up our bags and headed to Dresden’s Bahnhof (Train Station)

We stopped and picked up a couple of sandwiches knowing we’d need to eat something on the train.

The station was busy, people coming and going it was like a bee’s nest with everyone buzzing in and out. Pretty exciting.

We stopped and had a beer before getting on the train.

Track 1 was where we’re getting on the train. I’m following Kirsten and dragging my luggage.

We get to the train and it’s crowded. I don’t mean a little crowded…. I mean people on top of people crowded. We move from car to car looking for a seat, they are all full and I don’t want to sit next to any of them. Finally we come upon a cabin with four young kids maybe in their early 20’s at best.

The young lady in charge of the cabin looks at us and Kirsten looks at her….. some type of communication goes on and we are in.

We have a seat. I really don’t know what was said or what nod or wink or did we just meet their approval but I’m now sitting with four young Italians whose friends are in the cabins on both side of us and they are enjoying us as much as we were enjoying them.

We talked about where they were from and I told them I was here surveying young European people about how they felt about Trump.

Everyone feel asleep after about an hour with the train just rocking along.

As we were pulling into Prague…. it started raining.

Kirsten and I ducked into a bar and had a beer and waited out the rain. The beer was 300 Kronners that’s Czech money. I think it worked out to fewer than 5 bucks for 2 beers.

Kirsten is struggling with the currency conversion. We go to the ATM, I withdraw 500 Kronners and Kirsten panics and thinks that transaction cost us $22.00. It took 30 minutes and a calculator to show her I withdrew maybe $21.00.

We walked about a few blocks dragging our suitcases looking for our Ibis. Finally, we found our hotel for tonight.

We checked in and took a quick nap and dried out. In about an hour we decided to go find some dinner.

We left the hotel; jumped on the subway to the old town. Kirsten is a master at finding her way around. We go into the subway and resurface in Prague’s Old Town. Beautiful, very beautiful…

Had another great dinner and face timed OMI, OPA, Mandy, Will & Mark.

Kirsten has had a great birthday.

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Comments

[Pat Griffin]

Happy Birthday Kirsten - hope you had a great day and enjoy your travels. Thanks for adding me to the blog - I love to read these and look forward to catching up with you both when you return.

[Patrick Larkin]

whew...
As usual your blogs wear me out. No wonder you both sleep so well every night...btw ..nice shorts Steve