Landed!

With as much traveling as I have done, I was surprised to find myself not very excited as my plane approached Frankfurt. I was again going to be alone in a foreign country. It’s been 3 ½ years since I was in Europe (Spain, Italy and Austria), but it feels like a lifetime, what with 4 months in Southeast Asia, 2 months in South America, and a month in India and Bhutan stuck in between (besides Alaska, the Jack Johnson tour, and various other trips).

I now wait in the under-construction train station at the Frankfurt airport for my train to Prague. I got as far east as Frankfurt using miles, so the train was a logical way to see some of the countryside and make my way further east. Slowly, the few German words I learned from my many trips to Vienna to see my sister are coming back to me, and with a little hesitation I manage to utter “danke” to the nice man who gave me coffee for the 2 paltry euros I had scavenged from my spare change drawer. Seems the network is down and there is no cash or credit to be had (there was an embarrassing moment when I almost handed him an Australian five dollar bill, which I had grabbed at home thinking it was a five euro note!)
Turns out the train took me only as far as Nuremburg. Then it was a bus to Prague. How did I miss that when booking? Maybe it was because it was all in German. It was a nice bus, on the nice autobahn, and I curled up into a ball on the bus seat and fell asleep.

I awoke to brilliant sun over rolling green hills, greener forests and small red-roofed hamlets in the Czech countryside. In Prague it is 35 degrees Celsius – HOT- and everyone seems to enjoy a cold glass of beer at the outdoor cafes. The heat also seems to bring out the worst in people’s wardrobes. Yikes!