And then it Rained

My penultimate destination was Prague. I needed to get from Athens to Prague fairly quickly as time for my travels was running out. I have a surgery planned for 16th September so I need to be home for that. 

Flixbus company changed my ticket and asked if I wanted a refund. Of course I didn't. I needed to get to Prague. My new route took a few hours longer and went via Sofia - another country accidentally bagged thanks to Flixbus. My passport is filling up with stamps. Having huffed a little, I sucked it up and got on with the trip.

I chatted to a professional violinist on the bus from Sofia. What an amazing opportunity and what a lovely person too. This made that leg of the trip fly by. Then spending half a night at Zagreb bus station slipped by chatting to another lovely lady from Bulgaria; mostly about the failings of men. Everyone speaks English beautifully while I struggle with other languages so having people to speak to who have such a good command of my language never fails to impress.

I had three days of planned sightseeing before moving onto Brussels so I could return on the Eurostar. I have been away for just over a month, travelling through ten countries and absorbing so many different things, my mind goes giddy just trying to work out what day it is.

I do get a few clues from my phone. I always know it is Tuesday as someone from the orchard where I volunteer sends far too many whatsapp messages to let everyone know which bus she is on. I get to see these even though I am away. Because I am on limited data, I don't open my messages up if I can help it but when I see ten or more, I wonder if there is a problem. 

I have recently realised that I had not been rained on until Wednesday. It was such a lovely sensation, I was happy to get wet. I walked through the streets of old Prague stepping in puddles and getting a buzz out of feeling cooler. Give me a couple of wet days back in Blighty and I'll probably feel depressed like everyone else.

I love Prague. I get the feeling it is a city that doesn't take itself too seriously. Clock bells ring out on every hour and the historic towers that got knocked down during conflicts were rebuilt in the original style. The buildings are decorated with baroque plaster work across the whole city, I wanted to take pictures of everything. How do you chose the nicest? Impossible. I just gawped and absorbed the delights.

I did the Big Bus tour and the river tour to get my bearings. I found my way through the narrow streets from the area near the castle across the river to the streets of the old quarter. My hotel was really close to the Powder Tower so that is a good landmark that helped me locate myself.

I climbed up the Powder Tower, so called as it might have stored gunpowder. I also climbed up the astronomical clock tower and then visited the dungeons below. However, my trip to the cathedral of St. Cyril and St. Methodius made the biggest impact. It was there that seven freedom fighters fought to their death against 700 Nazis. The reprisals for their resistance resulted in hundreds of people being executed and two villages destroyed. A film was made of the story. 

The crypt

It left me thinking. These people fought and died to make their world a better place. Today we are in an even bigger mess. The crypt is a memorial to these men who died to save their country. We certainly don't learn from history. That's for sure. 

On my last day I did the museum. Once again I was impressed. It was interactive and engaging. The Twentieth Century rooms covered the wars and communism. The natural history section was laid out in an informative way; linking the rooms with evolution theories.

Exhibit A. A giant garoupa

The history of the region was more difficult for me to grasp. Being land-locked, the shape and size of the country changed and shifted over the centuries. It fought the thirty years war against Sweden, through a few religious renegades out of windows, struggled with the ethnic makeup of its population. It also spent some time subsumed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then soon after independence was then rocked by the rise of Nazism. Now it is two separate countries and thriving. A success story on so many levels.

My planned overnight sleeper to Brussels did not work out. A moment of panic passed and then I booked another long bus trip. So without a bed for the night, I set out to explore Brussels before my Eurostar departed for London.

I'm home, I've had guests for the weekend and my son has come up from Brighton to visit too. I gave him socks made from camel hair. I said I couldn't fit a whole camel into my small suitcase so it cold only be a pair of socks. So... I'm home.

Dam wesring his camel-hair socks