Eurotrip Day 17: Czeching Prague out

The Swiss cough syrup has worked wonders! I almost got through the night without incident. I was only woken up once - by Nicole's coughing fit! I have no idea how she ever managed to sleep through all of mine. She sure wasn't able to sleep through her own! I gave her a capful of cough syrup, and she quietened down after that. We both slept through the rest of the night just fine.

The bottle is already almost half empty, though, which is worrying since we now need to share it between the two of us. We were not sure if we'd find any open pharmacies, though, since it was a Sunday and the next two days would be public holidays. We'd just have to stick to the dosage (as far as we understood it) and hope for the best. Until then, it'd be loads of vitamin C in the form of orange juice for us both.

At breakfast, something quite funny happened to other members of our tour. Two of them were sitting at a table for four, when some random Chinese guy showed up and sat down with them. He didn't say anything to them, just quietly sitting there enjoying his breakfast. It was very awkward for the two of them, though!

Nicole and I were the first two people on the bus this morning because we walked straight up to it, while everyone else was waiting in the lobby. My bag is getting very heavy, and our bedroom was quite a long way off from the lobby, so my bag was eating quite painfully into my hand by the time we got there, and I didn't want to stop until the whole ordeal was over. Following that, we found ourselves standing out in the cold next to the bus until I figured out which button opens the bus door (clever me!). Once on the bus, though, I realised that I still had our room card (not so clever me) that I had to return before we left. I tend to take the room card with me onto the bus almost all the time.

The morning bus drive was a lazy one through the pastoral countryside of Austria. Nicole seems to have finally mastered the art of sleeping on a bus (ahem, coach - Joey doesn't like the word bus) and spent some of the morning napping. I spent it blogging about our Vienna trip. Luckily, the drive to Prague is only 4.5 hours, so there wasn't a good chance that I'd run out of blogging to do and do some napping of my own, which may interfere with my evening sleep.

Just when I was thinking that everything in Europe was starting to look the same, things got weird pretty quickly as we crossed over into the Czech Republic, where there was a service station that looked like a theme park. There was a huge painted airplane outside and a globe painted like the earth on the roof. A giant knight was holding up the roof of the station. Behind that was "Excalibur City" with a restaurant that had huge dragons on the roof. We also passed a "non stop nightclub" that looked decidedly closed and signs every 100m for "Moulin Rouge" with erotic pictures all over the show. We also passed a statue of a man victoriously holding a machine gun above his head. It was like we had driven through a time warp.

You can see that the Czech Republic is a lot poorer than any of the other countries we have visited. Their houses are simple and dilapidated, with plaster coming off the walls in huge chunks. The houses are more brightly painted here, though, unlike other countries that have tended to stick to neutral colours. The streets have been absolutely dead, with almost no people or cars in sight. It is a Sunday, though, I guess. And the coldest it has been so far. There is snow everywhere and all the lakes are frozen over.

The service station that we stopped at for lunch was also pretty empty until we showed up and took over. We headed to the cafeteria, where Nicole ordered a schnitzel and potato bake, while I had a mixed potato dish. Despite the Rand being twice as strong as the Czech Crown, our meal wasn't any cheaper than the previous rest stops that we had eaten at so far on our trip. For that reason, we've decided to do the R1200 New Year's Eve pub crawl with the rest of our tour. At least drinks and entry into bars will be included and we'll be guaranteed a good time.

Upon arriving in Prague, we didn't stop at the hotel first. Instead, we headed to the old palace Habsburg complex (they seemed to have property everywhere), where the president now lives. There are guards outside the palace that stand staring straight ahead like you see at Buckingham Palace. Everyone gets their photos taken with the guards. It seems like a pretty crummy job, and I saw one guard even sigh as I was taking a photo of him and one of the girls on our tour. Poor guy!

After that, we walked down, down, down to the Charles Bridge. At one point, Nicole and I lost the group and were unable to find them. Luckily, I'm pretty good at map work and was able to navigate us to the bridge, but we still couldn't find anyone we knew. Nicole began to panic, despite my assurances that I could even get us to the hotel if necessary. To calm her down, I switched my phone's data on and got the phone numbers of some of our tour from Facebook, but no one answered when I phoned them.

Eventually, we found some familiar faces in the crowd of people on the bridge, and Nicole breathed a very heavy sigh of relief. As we walked along to the other side to meet up with Jen and the rest of the group, we realised how easy it was to lose people in the swarming crowd around us. At least we were fairly contained on the bridge, so we couldn't get too separated (but goodness, little Nicole is hard to spot when surrounded by people - thank goodness for her red hair!).

When we hit the streets, though, and headed to the square that is home to the famous Astronomical Clock and that Jan Hus statue. I have no idea who Jan Hus even is. I swear, I took in so little history while in Prague. What is the significance of the famous statue-studded bridge? I feel like I've reached my historical saturation point, and I just can't take anything else in anymore.

Nevertheless, Prague is a beautiful attractive city, especially considering what we'd seen in the poorer, smaller towns that we'd passed earlier that day. It was also jam-packed with people, making it hard to move at all. In Prague, Christmas markets extend beyond New Years, and Nicole and I were able to get our gluhwein fix at one of the stalls. We also tried some Czech delicacies, such as Langose, a flat piece of deep fried dough (a LOT like vetkoek) that they cover with cheese, garlic, and ketchup. They also make these spiral pastries called Trndeljnk, which are deliciously covered in cinnamon and sugar. #Nom.

After that, we made our way along the high end shopping street, passing by the likes of Dior and Armani, to where the coach was parked quite far away from the heart of the old town, finally making our way to the hotel. Luckily, in Prague, we were treated to another pretty corporate hotel with comfy beds and decent bathrooms.

The beds only had one pillow each again, but in the cupboard, we found one extra pillow and one extra blanket, oddly. Nicole joked that the extra bedding was for the secret fugitive we must have stowed away in our luggage. Why else wouldn't there be two extra sets of bedding? I joked with Nicole that she could buy my 50% of shares in the spare pillow and have it all to herself rather than only one of the two nights. Instead, she pretty much commandeered it.

The only two problems with the hotel were that the room key cards tended to stop working, so we needed to keep heading to reception to get that sorted out. The other problem was that the lifts would take forever to collect you, even though there were three of them, and there weren't any stairs you could take instead, even though we were only one floor up. (Surely that is a fire hazard?)

Dinner was included at our hotel, and to our delight, it was a buffet offering a wide variety of cooked and salad-style vegetables. You have never seen a girl so excited to see Brussels sprouts as I was when I lifted the warmer and saw all the greens that we had available for dinner. We ate very well and healthily that night!

Our hotel was also very conveniently next door to a large shopping mall that stayed open quite late into the night. Even the pharmacy was still open when we got there at 7pm, to our relief, so we were able to get more cough syrup for both Nicole and I. While we were there, the very cheap handbag that I'd brought along from South Africa finally gave up the fight, with both the zip and strap breaking, so I found a new one at one of the stores there to replace it as well as some earrings for our New Year's Eve pub crawl.

We didn't shop around for too long, though, because our big New Year's Eve night was coming up and we wanted to get as much sleep in as we could in advance. It feels impossible to ever get enough sleep on Contiki, for some reason. I never seem to wake up fully refreshed. But we were sure going to try!

Eurotrip Day 16: Twinkle twinkle little crystal

I had three main goals for my day in Vienna. One was to find a post office to send all the postcards that had been collecting in my handbag since we entered Italy and found that post offices there don't open at all during the Christmas period. The second was to get some cough syrup from a pharmacy since my stupid cough had kept me up all night again. And the final, maybe most important, was to get something sparkly from the Swarovski flagship store in Kartnerstrasse.

My alarm was set half an hour later that morning, since Nicole and I were getting increasingly efficient at getting ready to leave in the morning. Despite that, we still had plenty of time to linger over the enormous buffet breakfast under the pyramid of the hotel. Absolutely everything was available to eat, from pastries and breads, to bacon and eggs, cereals, fruit, cold meats and cheeses, and so the list went on. I was actually getting somewhat tired of eating (apparently it's possible) so I just had some bacon and some frittata with my orange juice. I snuck some oranges to snack on later, since we probably aren't even getting two out of our five a day at this point.

We headed into town with a half empty bus again. It had been pretty empty the night before as well when we'd gone on our walking tour. The allure of the heated indoor swimming pool and naked sauna were obviously proving to be too tempting for most people. Also, of course, by taking the tram into town, those that missed the bus could sleep later.

Sleeping late wasn't an option for me, though. Mostly because I didn't want to waste money on public transportation or miss out on anything that was included in our tour. Also, I wasn't sleeping through anyway, thanks to my stupid cough. On top of that, I had my list of things to do that day!

Before we got off the bus, Joey gave us a quick driving tour around the city, and Jen gave us a bit more history. She pointed out the world's oldest Ferris wheel for us and showed us where the old Jewish section of the city was before World War II. We actually spotted quite a few Jewish people heading back that way from the synagogues, so it seems to still be home to at least some brave souls. There are a lot of Jewish memorials around the city but especially in that area.

When the coach finally dropped us off, our first stop was the Swarovski flagship store, where even their toilets are covered in crystals. Yvette, one of the other South Africans, who had been dying to get herself something sparkly from the home of the famous jewelry brand. We headed down to the bottom floor where the first thing I saw was binoculars, of all things. That is something I didn't know Swarovski made! Very plain, non crystal covered binoculars.

There was also jewelry, of course, and lots of it! On the bottom floor, it was beautifully displayed behind glass and you needed the sales assistant to take it out for you if you'd like to try it on. On the upper floor, though, the jewelry was hanging on display racks the way they present cosmetic jewelry in clothing stores, making it seem like cheaper options. Some of that jewelry was cheaper, but a lot of it was just as expensive as some of the stuff that they had tucked away behind glass on the lower level. Anyway, we did some serious damage to my credit card there, walking away with earrings and a ring each. Swarovski even gave us a small thank you gift as we left.

I'd hoped that we'd get to a pharmacy or post office after that, but we kept getting distracted by the sales being advertised along the shopping street. Since it was the weekend, I was worried the post office would close early, so I left Nicole to browse a store while I quickly headed to get some stamps. Quickly is not the right word. The post office was a lot further than it seemed, and once there, I needed to stand in quite a queue before I was served. I rushed back through the immensely crowded streets, but by the time I got back to the store, Nicole had been waiting over half an hour for me. She was NOT impressed!

I made it up to her by taking her to Burger King for lunch, one of the few places in Vienna that sold food we could still afford. On our way, I noticed that the pharmacies had started closing, so I left her at the fast food place while I quickly ran to get cough syrup. Luckily, the lady at the chemist knew exactly what I needed, but she didn't give me instructions and I didn't think to ask. It's only when I was back with Nicole and wanting to take some medication that I realised the dosage had been written in German! I did what I could to figure it out and hoped for the best.

After lunch, we headed back to the bus where we met up with the members of our tour that would be joining us for our visit to the schnapps museum. There, we were met by one of the gentlemen of the family that are one of the oldest schnapps producers in Europe. Back during the days of the Hapsburg Empire, they were the sole suppliers of Schnapps to the palace. Nowadays, they are visited by prestigious guests and celebrities, as well as by us lowly tour groups.

The tour began with the youngest generation of the family, Frederick, who is only in his 20s, in one of the oldest working offices in the country. Tv and movie producers often use the office as a set when filming period pieces. In an adjacent room, we were shown how schnapps is made and the lowdown of what they have available. We were each allowed to try three samples.

The first one I tried was distilled with chillies that they call rocket fuel, which is disguised by the high sugar content, making it potent! It's supposed to take away your cough, which it didn't in my case. Apparently, though, if it doesn't work the first time, you are encouraged to try again. And again. And again... The next one I tried was absinth, which no longer has much of the hallucinogenic compound wormwood in it, making it a lot less fun to drink than I'm sure it was back in the day when it was killing people. Now it's just awful. Bleh. The last is a liquor, of which I bought a bottle, that has 24 carat gold flakes in it, so you become worth more with every sip!

The Aussies were amused that Nicole and I sipped our tasters rather than shooting them. The reason we do this is pretty simple: it's too yummy to rush. We savor it instead. We did shoot the absinth, though, because that was not the least bit yummy. Shooting, in our case, is for the unpalatable stuff. The Aussies love to shoot, though. At some bars we've been to where they gave us very sweet and not particularly alcoholic shots (tasted like cordial), they'd shoot them back without a second thought. I think the bars that serve you these (seemingly) low alcohol shots are probably counting on you not to bother tasting it.

Needless to say, we were all feeling pretty jolly as we boarded the bus to head back home. Nicole and I had a quiet evening planned so that I could catch up my blogging and photo uploads while she watched some super entertaining German tv (the latter was sarcasm - tv is far less entertaining in other languages, even after you have been drinking schnapps). For dinner, we headed to the McDonalds across the road, which may cost more than it does in South Africa but is a LOT cheaper than anything else you can buy to eat in Austria! I'm so over fast food now, though. It's a pity local cuisine in Vienna is so pricey! We have been able to buy clothing for less money than our meals have cost!

While everyone else was off to dine in the gorgeous town hall, which looks like a castle from a Disney fairytale, and listen to a Mozart concert in the heart of Vienna, Nicole and I took the opportunity to get to bed early and catch up on some sleep. I swallowed my meds with a big swig of cough syrup to ensure a peaceful night for a change!