Prague day 4: Monday - leaving a train to florence

I wake up, have a coffee and start to prepare for czeching(Ya Geddit???) out of casa Mowgli. This requires collecting together all my bits and pieces and making sure that my laptop is charged so that i can watch DVD's, work, and update my blog while on the longest train journey I've ever taken. I generally take the day quite slowly, taking advantage of the last time I'll have a stationary bed until tuesday night.

Once Mowgli has finally arisen, we head into town. I'm dropping my bags off at the station's left luggage and then we are going to kill some time in town, catch up on some email and get some food.

We know there's wifi in a little Dutch bar in town, so Mowgli takes his 15" Powerbook along. When we get into the bar, it's pretty dead, but it's playing some good music. We both catch up on various email and internet activities while we enjoy some pilsner's. The Dutch barman is very friendly and I show off my Dutch to him. He seems quite impressed and comments on how good my accent is.(He MUST want a tip)

Eventually, we're settled enough that we decide to just stay here and get food as well. We're talking to the Russian volleyball twins on MSN, and generally enjoying having nowhere to be. We're now the only people in the bar and Mowgli convinces the barman that we should just play grunge music. we get various ALice in chains, Soundgarden, screaming trees, PJ Harvey, Kyuss, Pearl jam, early REM. Generally a great mix. It's a good way to relax, and catch up on the stories of the weekend.

Soon, it's time for the Prague adventure to end. Adventures can't last for ever, and our livers probably need a rest too. We settle our bill and head off to the station, collect my baggage and find the platform.

This is my first time on a sleeper train, so I'm not really sure what to expect. When I get on my carriage, I have a littlr room to myself with a bad, a sink, and the greatest gift - a power connection to keep the Apple products alive. I say cheerio to Mwogli out of the window in film style goodbye - there's even steam coming out of the frint of the train making it look like an old movie. The next time we're together will be Christmas in Scotland, so we don't have too long to repair the livers before we assault another city.

Once I get on the train, I stick on a DVD, but the five pints of pilsner dictates that I'm out cold pretty soon. The conducter is going to wake me up, but I set my alarm for 5.30 anyway as I change in Vienna. I wake up about 5am. The train is crawling through Austria, and I can only see snow outside. It's all quite exciting.

When the border guard chaps my door, she seems quite surprised that a scotsman in boxer shorts with hair everywhere greets her with his passport - I doubt you're meant to dress in a tuxedo or something before you open the door at 5am.

I slept quite well, but given that it's 6am and my body isn't sure if it should be drinking or sleeping, so I'm a bit brain dead when I head into the bakers in Vienna station for some Bretzels, Cola light and Chocolate Croissants.

I find my place on the Vienna to Venice train, and feel bad at having to wake up to beautiful Czech girls too take my seat. I start out by trying to watch DVD's on the powerbook, but before long, I'm out cold just like the Czech girls. I doze on and off until about 10.30, when I wake up and I'm surrounded by snowy hills and fir trees. This must be the alps(Or as much of the alps as I'm seeing). I try to get some photos, but it's not really possible through the windows:





I head back into movie watching mode and while away the hours. I try to read some stuff for the conference, but I'm too brain dead. I'm not too bored, but I'm in a zone where I can't really think. I just want to vegetate - it feels a bit like a sunday.

When the Italian border guard get on the train, they glance at my passport and hand it back. The Czech girls get a much more rigorous check. He then returns with some colleagues and they ask the girls for their tickets, and check over them. One of the girls then launches at him in full colloquial Italian. Whatever she does in Italy, she's already learned to be a good Italian woman. Go Girl!!!

Before long, the girls have disembarked, and I commandeer their side of the carriage to use the power outlet to charge my powerbook.

I'm getting off to change train in Venice, so I'm ready to get off and board my final train of the journey. It's been pretty painless so far. I send a few text messages to try to ascertain if I know anyone who can tell me how far my station is from the watery bit of Venice, but I can't come up with any info. It's an open ticket, so I could head into venice for an hour, but given that I'm too brain dead to appreciatte it and it's pouring, I decide to just get on the 13:36 to Napoli and head to a bed in Firenze.

This trips much tougher. The train isn't luxurious, I've ran out of battery and films to watch, and no matter what I chose on my iPod, I just want to get to Florence and settle for the night.

My brother was in Prato last year, and I know that when we leave Prato, we can't be far away from Florence. It still seems to take an absolute age. My bags seem heavier, my back wants a flat surface or a thai massage and I could do with a beer(Or at least a diet coke)

When I get out and into the station, I get a little more energy. It;s a great bustling station with lots of little italian things. Everyone is running about, and it feels like a train station set in the 1930's.

I get outside, and it;s pouring. Lots of people offer to sell me an umbrella, but I decline and head to the taxi stand.....

......checkin.......find room..... lie down.......

I really need food. I've not had a straight meal since Mowgli cooked dinner two nights ago.

I wander aimlessly in the rain. I'm too tired to work out where I am. I should have got something in the station. I just assumed I could find a 24 hour spar and get a tub of pringles and a sandwich. Theres nothing about. There's restaurants where I can't tell the difference between full on candlelit dinner for two and one that'll give me a take away pizza. I did this in genoa. I'm not very good at Italy. I am too tired to eat, so just need to munch something, I couldn't hack sit down meal. You kind of need to ask for everything and go to the little man that sells pizza or the little man that sells pasta. You can't just go to Tesco's. I'm too used to modern life.....

After realising I've been almost staggering around for 40 minutes with only Nine Inch Nails downward spiral keeping me sanding, I find a little booth that sells pasta from a vending machine, along with crisps and various other munchie level food.

I take it back to the hotel and munch away - it is extremely uninspiring, but its enough to fill my belly before I collapse on the bed ready to go to a conference the next day.

My third country and language in as many days......

buona notte!!!!

Train to Prague

I get a slow start because the conference doesn't start until the afternoon. I use the time to find some postcards. What's more difficult is finding the yellow Deutsche Post sign to find some stamps/briefmarken. My German is coming back, and I don't have to use English in an of the shops.

Mellon Collie and the infinite sadness eventually fades - even though I listen to the last track about three times, just to float on that reverby spacey piano as I look around. The next choice was The Bends by Radiohead:



It's an album that sits in my iPod overlooked mostly, but every time I return to it, I remember how good it is. I didn't like that much of radio head after this. They got a bit experimental and forgot how to rock. I like what I hear of their new stuff, but The Bends just seems to be a more complete album, and the experimental guitars in it are just enough to keep it on edge.

The more of Liepzig I see, the more I realise I wasn't just unlucky when I was surrounded by building works.

After freezing my bollocks off writing postcards in a little park, I head along to the conference. It's got simultaneous translations in German, but only after I do my presentation. I suspect the Scottish accent may have been to much for them.

I head off at about 6pm to catch my train to the next leg of my November tour - Prague. This requires gettinga train from Leipzig to Dresden, and then Dresden to Prague. I leave the conference and kick straight into The Fragile:



It's a great album to be marching along the street to with heavy bags. Life doesn't seem so bad. You just worry that there's this manic look in your eye as you imagine you're Trent Reznor singing the lyrics.

I've left myself plenty of time to kill, so I can finally use the Deutsche bank in the station to buy stamps and post the postcards. After this, it's time to do as they do in Rome. Gluiwein:



Gluiwein stalls seem to be all over the streets here, and I get a cup for €1.50. They also sell something called Kreppelchen which seem to be deep fried balls of sweet pastry served with icing sugar. I stand and eat the local delicacies. The Gluiwein starts out disgusting, but once you get used to it it's a great warming winter drink. It would probably be described as being similar to mulled wine, but a closer comparison would be hot watered down buckfast.

It keeps me warm while I wait for the train. Soon, I'm trundling along to Drsden on one of Germany's best. Once the laptop is supplying me with entertainment and somewhere to distribute my travel thoughts, it's no time before I'm in Dresden. Now I realise why everyone got so excited about Leipzig station, because Dresden station is a dump. It couldn't have looked any worse in 1945. You actually have to climb through the building works to get to anywhere. I'm pretty glad I don't have to kill much time here.

The Dresden-Prague euro express arrives and I take my seat. This is a far different experience. This isn't the plush German trains that I've been on for the past few days. The Germans must save them for themselves. This looks much more like the grimey dirty trains from a country with a dodgy train infrastructure. It's actually making me homesick for the friday night Glasgow to Kilmarnock train I used to take home as a student. There's just less Glaswegian conversation. In fact the carriage is fair near empty.

When we cross the Polish border, we get the very serious looking Customs police. The only borders I've crossed in a train is Netherlands to Belgiium and Germany and Belgium to Paris. There's customs on the train, but they have never asked me for my passport. This time, I have 3 uniformed guys standing over me trying to work out find the 15 yr old kid in my passport under the aging years. They eventually realise it's me. Unfortunately they don't give me a stamp....... awwww. This European Union thing's playing havoc with the colourfulness of my passport.

I'm quite dissappointed(But not surprised) that it's dark outside. I don't mind missing German landscape(it doesn't feel that exotic), but I wouldn't mind getting a glimpse at what the Czech Republic looks like - still there's all weekend. All I do know is that we have travelled next to a river for quite some time, either that or we're travelling down the coast. Maybe I need to install an atlas on my powerbook.

Eventually, the train trundles into Prague Holesivce station. It's late, dark and every commuter seems as devoid of life as I am.

I get off, and realise it really is cold. Colder than Leipzig. Mowgli is there to greet me which picks me up, then it's off to catch the metro. As soon as we're on the metro, I really feel like I'm travelling again. The langauge can only be compared to Polish in it's otherwordly-ness, From a metro it's onto an old trundly tram to get to Mowgli's digs.

He stays on the north of town at the University where he's working. It's after 11pm now, so I dump my bags, and then we head back out for another tram to head into town and enjoy a Pilsner.

The Prague public transport system is pretty goo. I don't fancy our chances of public transport like this after midnight in Glasgow or Amsterdam.

We get off at Museum which is on Wenceslas Square. Immediately I see how beautiful prague is. The National Museum at the end of Wenceslas Square is the first thing I see:



From here we head down to a couple of Mowgli's locals. We start off in a bar in Lucerna Passage, which is one of Prague's Art Noveau arcades:



We barely have our first sip of beer before a very drunk Irishman joins us and starts to drunkenly talk about music. He tells us that he's obsessed with a scottish band who had two hit singles in the early nineties, had black and white arty videos and who he listened to when he was camping in Munich in 1992. We rattle off a few names but none satisfy him. I'll google when I'm bored one afternoon and email him.

His parting gift is 2 pints, two vodka and red bulls and two gin and tonics. We learn a lot about Czech bar staff when he does this. The Czech's don't like to be hollered at, or dictated to, and he seems to have seen drunken english speakers before. Irish or not, to him it's another drunk Brit - it's written all over his face. Mowgli apologises for him in Czech and he seems to think a little more of us.

We enjoy the pints, and have a vodka and red bull each, but return the gin and tonics untouched to the bar.

From here we head down through the centre of Prague. I get photos of the old town square, and generally, we enjoy having a wander around a great city of winding roads:











We head to club Mowgli know, but when we get to the bar, it appears to be closed or closing. Eventually after donnering around for a while more, we find a little cuban bar which looks like it has some atmosphere. We sit in here for a little while and enjoy some more of the wonderfully smooth Czech pilsner. It's now the early hours of the morning, and I've seen enough Prague considering I only arrived at about 10.30pm.

After a Gyros Kebab, We head back to Wenceslas square to get a night tram. It's approaching 4am, yet we can still get a tram to Mowgli's house in the outskirts.

When we get on the tram, I'm surprised how busy it is. What's even more surprising is lthe amount of drunks who are outcold on the seats. They are completely unaware of where the tram is on it's route:





What's great is that we are going to the last stop. So we get to watch what we now call dawn of the dead. This is where, the tram stops out near Mowgli's house in the middle of nowhere and the sleeping drunks get slapped awake by the driver. They then exit the tram and wander about like zombies. They have no idea where they are, where they are going or how to get there. They then wander off in different directions, or get on another tram - no doubt doing the same at the end stop of that tram.

With that hilarity. We head off to bed.......

Back on the road - Train to leipzig

And so it is, after a wild weekend, the Hugo Boss shirts are in the bag ready for another stint of meetings and conferences, only this time they are joined by the trusty kilt for a bit of fun time in between. This time, I'm heading across from Amsterdam to Leipzig. It will be my first time in formerly east Germany, so I get to clock off another country, and hopefully be a little closer to the interesting traveling in Poland and Bulgaria.

As soon as I hit the road again, the iPod is turned on, and on recommendation of the Space Cadet, I choose Mogwai:



Although Mogwai are scottish, I've never actually listened to them. Music for me has always been about escapism. The further away it is from real life, the easier it is to escape to. This makes me a snob to British music, and even more to scottish music, there's very few british bands that really turn me on. There's the obvious exceptions of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Who, but they are in the past, so again it's far away, just not geographically. Scottish music, while wonderful and all the rest, is even worse. Too close to home I think. Maybe I'd feel the same way about Grunge if I grew up in Seattle. Anyway. For this reason, I've never listened to Mogwai. They were always compared to Pink Floyd, which I heard as British modern band which sound a bit like pink floyd, which then in my head becomes the most Pink Floydy that Oasis could sound - not enough to get me to the record shop.

So I'm grooving along to the subtle tones and colours of Mogwai. I'm amazed how much the project the same mood as sigur ros. The ultimate in martian music which can only be escapism. How can some boys from Glasgow seem so far away.

спасибо

Anyway.....

1st class trains let me plugin the laptop and get some work done, watch some movies and update the blog.

This makes the journey fly by, and eventually, I have my stopover in Minden:



I have no idea where this is, but I learn here, that it's an extremely cold day, and that Minden doesn't have much to offer the traveller spending 45 minutes there.

Chug Chug, and I'm back on an efficient German ICE headed for Leipzig It's getting late now, and my wild weekend, coupled with bad german coffee means that I'm getting to the stage that watching movies is the only thing left that my brain can handle.

Eventually, Leipzig arrives to surround the train. I get off and find that the rumours are true, Leipzig has a very large train station; It's not so mcuh that the triain station is large but more that there is a sprawling shopping centre in the middle of it.

In my first German in god knows how long, I manage to negotiate directions from a Taxi driver as to how to walk to my hotel. Luckily it's just round the corner. By now, I'm listening to one of my travelling playlists. It's quite simple. It starts with the first disc of Mellon Collie and the infinite sadness and continues with the second disc. I really reckon this album could get you through just about anything.

I arrive at the hotel, and the staff are pretty friendly. The give me a map and give me directions to the must see areas of Leipzig. After a quick baggage drop off and a freshen up, I head out to discover Leipzig. First impression is that it's cold and dark, but as I move towards the centre, I can see that theres a sprawling shopping centre which makes its way through lots of little arcades. It's about 8pm now, so everything appears to be shut. The only signs of life are the Gluiwein huts which stand about in the streets. These always have a few people standing around warming their hands, mouths and chests on the sweet sickly alcohol:



I decline. The Hotel receptionist has pointed me to the area for nightlife, but drinking alone's never fun, and my liver could do with a few nights off before I go to Prague. It's a good job I wasn't looking for nightlife, cos there seems to be none of it around. Maybe I'm a little early. The Christmas stalls, huts and decorations are still around from what looks like a very busy Christmas shopping area. I get a few photos of the main attractions before heading back:

Bach:



Bach was musical director at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig and wrote many of his great works here. Unfortunatley, it's covered in scaffolding which detracts from it a little, but it's very dark and gothic at night:







I also climb some scaffolding to get a picture of a Goethe statue. He studied at Leipzig Uni:



The building works seem to take over everything, you can't get near most of the attractions. I later find out that it's because the money has come through for the German World cup, so they've started doing work links, rechts und centrum.

Maybe it's because I've lived wild over the weekend. I'm rather unimpressed. Dave Navarro recently said that he's lived such a debauched life, that the only sexually deviant things that could turn him on would have to be clearly illegal and immoral, like hiring a prostitute to kick vagrants while he watches. I'm feeling a little the same in Leipzig(Except toned down a few notches....

....and on that note; Gute Nacht!!!