Long Day, Long Night!

Sunday 15th - Journey to Prague
The early morning was not easy due to our late night :s but I forced myself up to pack my stuff together for the next 9 days (approx) of my first Europe holiday ;) then a quick breakfast with Petra and Theo, made our packed lunch and a quick shower before it was in the car and off we go! We headed out to the train station at Idar-Oberstein and then I had my first experience on a German train! I was impressed. And this one wasn't even one of the fast ones! just the "regular" ones! but it was faster and way way way quieter then any NZ train I've ever been on before!
Then at Frankfurt train station we changed to an ICE which was pretty smooth sailing ;) (and as Ingo informed me, this wasnt even one of the NEW ICEś) so I was kind of disappointed when we got to Nurnberg and had to change to a bus for the remaining 4 hours of our journey :( But the bus was a double decker and we were right near the front so it wasn´t too bad :)

When we arrived in Prague, it was around 6pm. Ingo (who is now classed as my tour guide) had all our subway connections figured out so away we went! Very easy rational subway system in Prague - but kinda old looking and grotty :s

We found our hostel ok, and chilled out for a bit, while we waited for Clare to arrive... she was originally due in at 10.55 so we had a beer each and settled in. At 11.30 when Clare still hadn´t arrived I started to get a bit worried :/ so at 12.30 when she still hadn´t arrived I decided to go down to the reception area to find out when they were open til and wait down there. Ingo came with me.

At 2am when she still hadn´t arrived I was really worried! silly us for not getting her flight info and no one had a working phone either so it was all just ridiculous planning but I was most definitely not a happy chappy at this point - imagining all the awful things that could possibly have happened to my friend! Plus it was raining like there was no tomorrow and thunder and lightning to boot! (anyone rational would have seen by this comment what was most likely to have happened) We´d found a flight that was due in at 10.55 that was delayed by 50mins, but still that flight was leaving from Louton not London and if it had been that she would still have arrived by then.

So we decided to go to bed and then try figure out what to do in the morning :( Ingo was confident that Clare with her travel smarts (experienced traveler) would know what she was doing so we went to bed. And I tried to sleep, I may have dozed for a few minutes at any rate, but at 3am when there was a knock on the door I jumped up and raced to unlock the door - dropped the key a few times :/ and then finally got the door open to a soaked and not very happy Clare! :D I was stoked! YAY!!! phew!

Turns out even Clare hadn´t known what was going on and had thought they were coming in for landing at Prague... which was taking a bit long... a bit too long, then they finally land, only to be told that actually could everyone please stay in their seats as they are not in fact in Prague, but actually in Germany! Germany!! Where in Germany?? well Clare still has absolutely no idea. They all had to stay on the plane seated in some tiny private looking airport until around 1am ish when they finally took off again and made it into Prague. Phew.

So when we´d calmed down Clare went to bed and we tried the sleep thing again :)