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Czechoslovakia
September, 2003

Well, I have been pretty busy of late and have not had much of a chance to sit down and write about our trip to the Czech Republic- but I have a few minutes now so I will write what I can and come back to it later.

We planned to go to Czech for 3 days with my friend Jennifer Brewster and her 3 kids. (We went to Chimesee and Salzburg with them in June). We wanted to go to Karlovy Vary (the American women here say it is a crystal shopping mecca) and then spend a day in Prague . The idea was just to get a taste of Czech, as we planned to come back with our husbands someday. We were excited, because Karlovy Vary is only a 3-3 ½ hour trip. Not far at all.

Our trip to Poland to buy pottery was a success so we were really psyched about going to Czech. At first we planned to go the end of July but two sick children prevented it, so we rescheduled for the beginning of August. We had to reschedule it a third time, for the week of August 18. My Babcia always believed in signs, and boy, that should have been my first clue that this trip would not go as we had planned.

Anyone who knows me knows I am rarely on time for anything, despite my often, manic efforts to be punctual. So of course, we got a later start than we had anticipated, arriving at JB's house at about 8:30 a.m. instead of the proposed 7:30 .

We loaded the kids and paraphernalia into the van and headed out- in the wrong direction. About 2 miles down the road, Jennifer asked me if I needed gas coupons- I only had a few so we turned around and she raided her car. We set off again. In the wrong direction.

I headed toward B19 and figured I would pick up Autobahn 3 (A3) off of B19, forgetting the fact that I could pick it up in Kist, just one town over from JB's house and also forgetting that the exit ramps to A3 at B19 were under construction and inaccessible. Great. So we drove for 30 minutes to get to that point, and then had to drive around for another 30 minutes seeking an alternate entrance to A3. Finally! 10 a.m and we are on our way! Or so we thought.

We were not even out of Würzburg yet when we hit a stau, that's German for TRAFFIC JAM. Surely it would clear up soon? Usually you move, albeit very slowly until you get past the construction or accident or shoe on the side of the road that has held everyone's attention so completely. Not today. This stau stretched on for as far as the eye could see. Remember I told you about the “exit every 20 miles” thing? Yeah, well you are stuck and you cannot get off and re route yourself.

Eleven a.m. Finally we creep past an exit, get off and head for a different autobahn.

Shouldn't we actually be in Czech by now?

After driving for about an hour, I am about to pee my pants so we stop at one of the rest stops. The rest stops in Germany are so disgusting. It never fails to baffle me. The Germans are sticklers for cleanliness. Any time, on any given day, regardless of the weather, you will see some German outside, cleaning or sweeping or shoveling or something. Yet their rest stops are… how shall I say…? Putrid. They stink and are filthy and once, on our Poland trip in July, we went into one that had dog crap in the middle of the floor. Yuck. Go figure.

Anyway, out of desperation, we pull into a rest stop (instead of a rest plaza where there is gas, restaurant and clean pay-to-get-in bathrooms), and Emily exclaims “Yuck Mom, it stinks like pee.” (we aren't out of the car yet). But alas- it's not the rest stop that smells… it's Anabelle- who has drifted to sleep and peed herself a lullaby.

Of course she was wearing a dress that day, so her entire car seat was SOAKED in PEE! Did I mention that it was SOAKED in PEE?? Ok, I changed Anabelle's clothes and lined her seat with plastic grocery bags and Jennifer's sweater. Sigh. We are still about 1-1 ½ hours away from the border… I am not sure why, but we drive on.

We know we will need gas in Czech but we look at our ever reliable Esso map to find the nearest Esso to refuel before we hit the border. The map shows a town extremely close to the border that has an Esso. It looks like we will pass right by the town and will only have to detour a few miles into it. It is a little past 1 p.m.

I recently discovered, after driving aimlessly on many occasions, that the back of the book has a listing of the Esso's by town with their addresses. Now this Esso was on the map itself, and for a moment, we found it a little odd that it was not listed in the back of the book, but we figured, hey, it's pictured on the map, so we're good to go.

Fast forward. It is now about 2:30 , we are at an ARAL gas station, paying in Euro to top off the gas tank because after driving aimlessly all around the dumb town for over an hour we discovered we would never, EVER find the ESSO. IF it even exists in anyone's reality besides the mapmaker's.

We continue on and hit the border with no (further) problems. It's kind of exciting now that we seem so close. We drive toward Karlovy Vary on a two lane highway (of sorts).

It is pleasant enough at first, until we get into urban areas. I am not sure what I expected, but boy-o, is Czech ugly.

We pass a woman standing in the middle of **nowhere**. Jennifer and I look at each other and kind of laugh. We realize exactly WHY she is standing in the middle of nowhere. As we reach the city limits, we pass a few more ladies, who are definitely NOT waiting for the bus. All in all, I counted 8 ladies, yes I use that term loosely, (no pun inteneded). Not what I expected to see. Did I mention how UGLY it is here?

We get into Karlovy Vary . It is... just… ugly. Dirty, run down, graffiti, grey and dismal. It just looks like someone started to paint a picture and then smeared the colors into an angry blur of grey and brown. Everywhere looks like the bad side of town.

We are following directions to a parking lot near the “great crystal stores", but we miss our turn off because it appears suddenly out of the gloom. Great. We wind around and around and finally find the street we were supposed to turn on (we think), but it appears to be the correct one because when we turn at the light we see a parking lot as per the directions. We will later discover that it was not.

Ok, now think back for a moment to see if I have mentioned stopping at an ATM at any time during this excursion? If you answered “no” you win the prize. ATM's are fairly numerous in Germany and it did not occur to us that we would have difficulty finding one in Czech. Well in order to park in the lot you have to pay- before you leave your car. In Czech koruna of course. Sigh.

So Jennifer waits with the kids, except Margaret who will not let me go, and I trudge off looking for an ATM in the general direction that the man-who-watches-the-lot-but-doesn't-speak-a-single-syllable-of-English-or-German-waves me off to. After about 10 minutes, I see nothing resembling a bank or ATM so I go back.

We go back to the car, I think Margaret needed a diaper change and Emily and I set off again. We go two blocks further and find a bank. Yeah!! I withdraw 2000 Czech koruna - and get two 1000 koruna bills… great, except I need coins, more specifically something in the range of like….1 koruna… for the parking meter. UGH!! I go INTO the bank and with some broken German, a lot of English and a healthy smattering of pantomime; I manage to make the teller understand that I need change!

Meanwhile back at the parking lot…. We finally get our parking meter ticket (this is over an hour since we arrived) and we go wandering. We see one or two small shops that are selling garnet jewelry but where are the crystal shops? Where are the chandelier shops? Where are the jewelry stores?

Now its dinner time and the kids are hungry so we find a restaurant, settle in and order 5 or 6 dishes off the menu. The food was actually pretty good and awfully cheap; it cost us about 700 Kc for all of us to eat. (For reference 700 Czech koruna is about $25 USD)

Well at that point it was getting on into the day. We had no idea where all the shops were- obviously not the part of town that were in. So we decided to head to our pension. (accommodations), and try to swing back through Karlovy Vary on the way home.

We were staying at a pension about 20 minutes south of Prague and figured we were only about an hour away. We would have two choices, go south and then east on the “autobahn” or take what looked to us to be a perfectly direct route along a slightly lesser road. Guess which one we took?

We drive along and at first everything seems to be ok, until we come to a RR track. Now, the lights were on, but no gates were down. SO I came to a stop, looked both ways, and far down the track, maybe a half mile or more, we saw the train coming very slowly. No problem, I start to cross. Well, just then, the train apparently triggers the gates and here I am smack dab in the middle! I step on the gas and the car is- for the longest 2 seconds of my life- stuck on the tracks with the second gate seemingly inches from the roof of the van. Well, since I am writing this and you are reading this, obviously I did not get stuck on the tracks and in truth the train was still no where near us. But as I drove off Jennifer and I looked at each other and said so THAT'S how people get stuck on railroad tracks!

I wish I could say the rest of our day was uneventful…. But it was not. We followed the signs as best we could. But let me make note again that Czech is a very poor country. This means the road signs are tiny, intelligible (even if we could read Czech) and 9 out of 10 times hidden by some roadside obstruction, like bushes or tree branches or spray paint.

Several times we had to turn around and circle back to try and read a sign. At one point we followed the signs toward the town we needed- turned right….. turned right again….

turned right again… and turned right back onto the road we started on!

Since the signs also pointed toward Prague so we decided to head up to Prague and backtrack back south. Foolish humans that we are- we had not yet realized we were trapped in the Matrix where REALITY could be manipulated at will- only not according to our will!!

We found Prague , and the “autobahn” road we need to head back south- or so we thought. So we are driving merrily along when suddenly the road ends… winds around a hill and BAM! we are no longer on the autobahn, but at a T intersection. Huh?.

Our map says we need something like road 116, but the sign at the intersection points right and left for roads 115 ad 117 or something. We circle back around to see if we have missed a directional sign or if nothing else to find out what town we were in. Nothing.

I find a grocery store and pregnant Jennifer gets out and tries to ask a woman directions, but unfortunately the woman flees (in apparent terror) from the waddling pregnant woman and no one in the store was gracious enough to try to point us in the right direction.

We needed gas so I stopped at a gas station and went inside where I asked the guy (in German) if he spoke English. He said “No, just Czech”…. in English… Hmmmm?

I ask him for directions to the bathroom and when I got back to the car, I told Jennifer that maybe she could get the Czech-guy-who-speaks-no-English to speak English to her and give us directions. Maybe he would feel sorry for a pregnant woman. In hindsight we should have brought all six kids inside with us, they would have been happy to get rid of us.

Well Jennifer found a better road map at the gas station and bought it. We now believe we know the right way to go. As we leave the gas station, the sky suddenly (suddenly) gets very dark. Yes, night is falling, but so is rain. We make our way to the “autobahn,” only turning around twice to read a sign, thankfully right before the wind blew it over, and finally we were on our way.

The rain is pounding, and the wipers on full speed do nothing to remove the rain from the windshield. I can only see a few feet in front of me, and as we travel down the one lane highway, (the rest of the lanes are blocked due to construction), I try to keep the car in the lane, despite the wind that is seeking to shove us into the guard rail and at the same time avoid the tree branches that are falling onto the road.

Finally, we get off at our exit!! We carefully follow the directions that Stan, the owner of the pension gave us. We get to the village right before his and are stumped again as there are no more signs. We turn around and take several side streets before we find the right way and (FINALLY!) pull into the driveway! What a relief!

The pension was quite nice and Stan and his wife were very kind. We occupied 2 of the 3 bedrooms and had our own kitchen, not that we were prepared to cook anything.

One bedroom was quite large and had two large king beds. Emily and Ben decided they would share one of those beds and Anabelle and I would take the smaller room with the (one) queen bed. Of course by the time morning came all my kids were squished in the bed with me.

The rooms were nice, although I am learning how picky and spoiled we Americans can be. We expect certain things from our accommodations when we travel… take bathrooms for example… most of us would insist on a shower. But interestingly enough, even in my house which has 3 bathrooms, I have only one shower. Bathtubs are more common here in Europe apparently.

So the bathroom in our room had a sliding door, and a tiny (let me emphasize tiny), sink that was directly across from the bathtub. There was about an 8-inch path between the two. The tub was stuck under the sloping roof so even Anabelle could not stand in the tub. Toilet? Oh yeah, that was on the far side of the bathroom, wedged next to the hot water heater. You pretty much had to climb over the tub to get to it.

Ok, so next morning, Day 2. We have a lovely breakfast brought up by Stan. We are certain that the previous day was a fluke and are determined to have a good day in Prague . Stan helped us load all six car seats into his 8 passenger van and planned to drive us to Prague (for a fee). It was better than driving ourselves and dealing with parking and car thieves etc. He drops us off at the Church of Mary of Loreta, and we arrange to meet with him at 5pm .

Well… no sooner do we see his taillights disappear in the rain, when I notice that one of the tires on Jennifer's jogging stroller is flat! Not a tragedy, but not a promising start to the day. The stroller is ok to push, so long as you are going straight, but you have to wrench it to get it to turn left or right. Ok, we are still optimistic at this point, so we head off into the church with Jennifer shoving the stroller and the wheel making a fl-ump, fl-hump, fl-ump noise!

Here of course is where the fun continued. We paid the entrance fee and herded all six children inside the Church of Mary of the Loreta. To see... the Loreta of course. The Loreta is a Montrance, a Catholic religious artifact.

Well, we find ourselves in a courtyard, and the church surrounds it like a big “O”- you cannot actually go inside the church. The walkway around the courtyard has arched ceilings that are covered with beautiful religious paintings.

Jennifer and I pause to take a photo when suddenly the woman attending the door rushes at us yelling (yes, yelling) that we are not allowed to take photos and she told us we could not take photos and did we not read the signs that say no photos? I thought she would grab our cameras, throw them on the floor and stomp on them!

Jennifer and I apologized and said that we had not heard her say this and also in the confusion of shoving 4 kids and 2 strollers through the door we must have missed the sign behind us that said no photos, and since we did not have our superman glasses on we missed the one at the end of the corridor as well.

The rest of our visit to the Church was uneventful and we left and headed down the hill toward the Palace. The rain had stopped, though the air was still chilly. We tried to take some photos of the kids but they all had such miserable expressions and were more than reluctant to pose that it was not worth the effort.

We did manage to see part of the changing of the guard at the Palace which was neat, my kids and I climbed up on the fence right behind one of the guard huts. We saw the procession in and the procession out and the changing of the gate guards although not the entire thing. We missed that part in London last year too, seeing only the procession and not the actual ceremony. But it was still impressive.

The kids took a photo with a stoic faced young guard and once inside I chased down two guards so that Em could take a photo of Jennifer and me with them! Funny thing that you do not see in the photo is Margaret screaming at my knees to be picked up (although you can see in the faces of the guards that they think I must be a horrible mother to let her cry that way!)

We continue into the Palace grounds which is a complex of churches and Palace buildings, the largest being St. Vitus Cathedral. We went inside it and it was quite beautiful. As ugly and dismal Prague is, the architecture is breathtaking. It is a pity that it is all so filthy and abused.

We spent the rest of the afternoon dodging the HORDES of tour groups. August is prime travel month in Europe and we could barely shove the strollers down the cobbled streets because the throng of people was so thick.

We found a restaurant and took refuge in there. The food was good and cheap, and we emerged two hours later. We had less than two hours left until Stan came and got us so we crossed over to the other side of town walked along the river and attempted to venture into one of the squares in the Old Town to shop for crystal. As I said before, the crowd was horrible, so we gave up and headed over the beautiful Karlov Most Bridge ( Charles Bridge ). We found Stan, and on our way out of Prague he gave us driving tour. So ends our exciting visit to Prague … or so we thought.

To get back to the pension we apparently needed to be on the other side of the river. We crossed at some obscure unimportant bridge further down (or up?) the river and were winding our way through a village when suddenly we came to a police barricade and were waved over to the side. The officer came to the window and asked for Stan's papers. He did not even look at us.

I am not sure if it was because we were women, and therefore insignificant, or he knew what we were (tourists) and did not care. Anyway, he proceeded to get into an argument with Stan. When they made him get out of the van, Jennifer and I looked at each other and I said as calmly as possible, “I am not handing over our passports”. They were of course, the only identification for the children that we had. After about ten minutes of arguing and more paper shuffling, Stan got back into the van and we drove away.

Casually, so as not to sound, you know, FREAKED OUT, I asked him what the commotion was all about. He said that the police told him that since he did not live in that village, it was illegal for him to drive through it. Hmmm. Anyway, I am certain he had to bribe the officers. All I have to say is way to go! The civil service sure made a great impression on us!

Ok, Czech Republic , Day 3.

Stan gave us directions to a beautiful castle called Karlstejn. He said we had to park at the bottom of the hill, walk up through the village about 1 ½ km and we would be at the castle. Cars are not allowed through the village. He also gave us the names of some of the nice crystal shops in the village. Finally we were going to be able to shop!!

We get there and park in the parking lot with no problems. We get out and are immediately approached by a man asking if we want a ride to the castle. He says it costs 100Kc per person- 800 Kc total. We say it is too much and go over to one of the horse drawn wagons. That guy wants 150 Kc plus we have to wait another 10-15 minutes so we decide to walk. Just then the first guy comes back and says 400Kc for all of us. We agree and start to load the kids and my stroller into the van.

There are no car seats for the kids but we figure 1 ½ km is about one mile, we'd be ok. Emily and I struggle to buckle all of them in while the man impatiently turns on the car and starts to drive. Jennifer shouts at him as the doors are still open and we are not all quite in the car yet. Finally we get them all in and I take Margaret from Jennifer, (she cannot hold her on her lap as her pregnant stomach is in the way).

I buckle Margaret in with me as the man starts to drive off. After a couple minutes I finish and for about 30 seconds I look out the window and enjoy the passing countryside. With a chill, I suddenly realize that I am not seeing any “walkers” or any people for that matter. Just forest. I wonder where he is taking us and immediately have visions of being driven to a remote section of the Czech forest, robbed and left for dead. Again, as casually as I possible can, I ask the man “exactly HOW far is the castle?” And he replies that we must go over and around and come in from the other direction since we cannot go through the village. Oh. A few minutes later we pull up under the castle and Jennifer and I quickly haul the kids out (before paying the man lest he drive off with some of them in his haste), and then stand there breathing deeply and looking at each other with utter disbelief at how stupid we had just been. The van had no markings on it- nothing proclaiming it as a taxi service, yet since the parking lot was swarming with vans and horse drawn carriages, we assumed (correctly in this instance) that the man was indeed a taxi driver. We agreed to walk back down from the castle and gave thanks that our stupidity had not given us more than a few minutes of clammy fear and icy chills!

The castle was indeed beautiful and we decided to take a guided English speaking tour. It was supposed to be about 45 minutes. The tours usually go fairly quickly and we thought the kids would be ok. When I got to the window to pay the Czech woman with sparkly blue eyes shadow and glitter hairspray that held her wiry bleached hair into two stiff wings on either side of her head, she became a trifle annoyed with me because I told her she mischarged me for the children. For my insolence I was not given a map or brochure about the history of the castle. Furthermore, she told us we could take the stroller on the tour (a definite must for Margaret). Unfortunately was just an outright and malicious lie. The sneer on her lips when she said yes should have clued me in, but obviously we were missing all the signs (real or figurative) on this trip!

Ok, well, the tour was…. informative, we abandoned the stroller at the start of the tour, at the base of a steep set of stairs. I carried Margaret who was still attached to me most of the time. When our group entered a room, the guide would lock it behind us, and as the tour ahead of us exited the room we had just entered, they too would lock the door. So essentially, we were trapped until the tour was done.

We managed to keep the kids somewhat interested in the furnishings and talk of princes and princesses, blah, blah, blah. They were all quiet and not disruptive in the least. Well, except for occasional exclamations from Margaret, though her vocalizations were happy ones not crying ones.

For some reason though, we were getting lots of stern glances from the tour guide. Apparently Czech children do not make noise of any sort, which is probably why they grow up repressed and become dishonest police officers who harass innocent travelers for bribes. Hmmmm….

The tour ended and despite having the opportunity to explore some of the outer portions of the castle, we hustled the kids back out and down the hill to the village. On the way down we passed a man who would let you hold an owl for 1 Euro so I did and my kids were delighted. It was a heavy bird despite looking a bit scrawny.

Finally we went into a few shops and yes! I got some beautiful Bohemian Czech crystal. We bought the kids ice cream and fairly ran to the car. You would think that our trip would have ended there. But on the way out of Czech we narrowly missed getting pulled over by the Czech police at another barricade- this time on the autobahn!! They pulled over the car behind us!

We stopped at the first Esso we came to in Germany , and it was like being in Oz as opposed to Kansas ! Flowers, nice people, COLOR! I almost bent down and kissed the ground. Strangely enough, I still feel like a stranger, even in my own village and even after living here for over a year. We are an oddity and everything is so different from what I am used to. But the only thing I could think of sitting in that Esso parking lot was that it was good to be back in Germany . For the first time it felt comfortable- it felt like home!

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