What a whirlwind week!

I'm in Cambridge now, visiting Rachel, a friend from ASU who's a grad student at King's College. The past week has been such a whirlwind - France, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria and Italy. I'm exhausted, but finally have a few moments to catch my breath and post some pictures. It'll take a while to recount my adventures, so I'll try to post mainly photographs and update the narrative in installments...

Last Friday, I left for Prague with four friends - Rachel from England, Isabelle and Lina from Sweden and Jeff from Michigan. We rented a Hertz car and were going to drive straight through... until the rental agent informed us that Hertz cars weren't allowed to be driven through the Czech Republic. Blast. After some hesitation, we resolved to get as close as we could, and then figure out border-crossing logistics. We spent the night in a hotel called "Golden Nugget" an hour away from Nuremburg. For 125 euros we received a penthouse suite with five bedrooms, two bathrooms and a living room. The owner was quite enamored with the American West; cowboys and Indians were everywhere, including some depictions that probably would have invited lawsuits and outrage back in the States. The breakfast room had two flags: the American flag and the Confederate flag. Breakfast was absolutely delicious and by far the best morning meal I've had yet in Europe. Scrambled eggs with ham, fresh fruit, yogurt, orange juice and sausages. Salmon and various cheeses were also available. We arrived in Nuremburg in the early afternoon and were dismayed to find out that the train wouldn't leave for several more hours, was horribly slow and horrendously expensive. We briefly considered renting another car (cheaper than the train!) but opted to continue to the border after spying a border town called Schirding along the rail route. We snacked at Subway, then raced to Schirding, only getting lost twice.

I think the population of Schirding quintupled once we arrived at 3:22pm. There was no car park, only a long stretch of pavement next to the most basic train "station" you've ever seen. We parked the car, grabbed our bags and leapt aboard at 3:23pm. Talk about breathless. We had no tickets but the immigration officials didn't appear to mind; we received a departure stamp from the German authority and an arrival stamp from the Czech one. There was no way to divine where exactly the train was headed, but we managed to learn (without knowing any German or Czech) that it was only a shuttle between Schirding and Cheb, the nearest Czech border town. Once we arrived in Cheb, we had to buy tickets to Prague ('Praha' in Czech). They were only 108 Czech Krona - around $4 - apiece. The train through the Czech Republic was so interesting. The cities looked relatively prosperous, but the countryside was full of tiny cottages and ancient Soviet infrastructure. We arrived in Prague at 7:45pm, thrilled, excited and absolutely clueless about where we were going to sleep.