Monday, July 15, 2013

Adventures Past #3: "Eastward Ho!"

# "Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land... Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion!" # - Billy Joel

10 years ago I was fortunate enough to be able to take a 2-month break
from "my day job" at the time and embark on an epic trip around Europe...
My travelling companion was the person who little did I realise then
would one day become my wife,
and we were travelling with the Busabout network.
I wrote a collection of articles en route and sent them back home
to the Northern Cross newspaper via small net cafes all around Europe...
These are those scribbles from the humble pen
of a wannabe European correspondent...
(C.G.Allan, Summer 2013)

(Czech Republic to Munich - Tues 24th June to Fri 4th July, 2003)

Climbing the hills to the castle was a lasting memory...
We hit the Czech Republic on Tuesday the 24th of June after going through a check on the border with a guard who wanted to see all Canadian and Australian travel visas – apparently they can’t get into the country without one...

The first thing to get used to was the Czech currency – “Krone”.  £40 was about 1700 Krone!  It took me a while to get my head around this but I missed using the distinctive coins and notes once we moved on again.

The centre of city life in Prague
is the bustling Charles Bridge
I felt a bit under the weather on our first full day in Prague but we still went out into the city to do the touristy things and had a great time – it seems so safe here and there’s quite a laid back atmosphere as you walk around the old streets (apparently Prague was spared any bombing whatsoever during the War and it shows – the buildings are classical in every sense of the word!)

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