October 2, 2015

 

 

Prague in the Rearview

Not much to do this morning but get packed up and ready to leave.  We manage to make sure we get enough to eat in case we are held hostage for about a week.  John has no luck looking for the plum cake he fell in love with earlier in the week.  Our buffet is a pretty good, certainly not unusual European breakfast, but sure enough there is a Japanese lady shooting a video of it.  Make them stop.

We think we should leave by 10:30 to have plenty of time to catch our 11:42 train but we are standing around looking at each other at 10:15 which means it is time to go.  The manager is in the lobby when we leave and we take a moment to compliment him on the staff.  Everyone from front desk to housekeeping to breakfast has been first-rate.  When we get checked out we try for an Uber cab and think we have one when we lose the connection.  John goes outside to try again just in time to see her pulling up.  What took you so long?  She is patient while we lug luggage down the few stairs from the lobby and then she decides to help out.  She has been an Uber person for a couple months and has been working hard during that time to learn English.  She works days and her husband works nights and she loves it.

It takes about the same amount of time to Uber to the train station that it took us to walk yesterday so our new Uber driver may not have the route down quite yet.  It is still less than $5 when we get the bill so she wasn’t being piggy about it.  She has some sort of confrontation with a cop when she pulls up at the station but she ignores him while getting our luggage out of the trunk.  She says “bye-bye” to us before starting in on him and they’re still going at it as we go into the terminal.  Wish we spoke the language.

Our platform number hasn’t been posted yet but we have scouted them out and know how to move once we see it.  We have 300CZK (about $12) left and Mary is determined to spend it.  John guards the luggage while she goes in search of a lunch for on the train.  The platform is posted as Mary returns with 2 sandwiches and 2 “original Budweisers” for our picnic later.

We have reserved first class seating on the train and while each compartment has 6 seats ours are the only ones pre-reserved in ours.  Other folks with first class tickets could still join us but we cover the compartment with our bags and legs so we look full and then slam the door. We don’t like to be unsociable but after our last cramped train trip we feel the universe owes us some space on this one.

Compared to our last train trip this is a breeze and in fact enjoyable.  It is a pretty day as we travel through some changing terrain in eastern Bohemia and into Moravia.  We go from rolling farm land into higher hills and forests and then back into flat farms.  As we pass south of Brno there are vineyards, obviously the source of our Moravian wines of the last few nights.

We’re a half hour late pulling into Bratislava for no reason that was apparent to us.  We try for an Uber but no cars are available.  We can call for a cab and pay 6 euros for the ride to our apartment but, recognizing there will be communication issues we opt to pay 10 to the cab at the station.

We have a one-bedroom apartment here and our host, Josef Zeman is waiting for us.  We’re in sort of an industrial (read communist) apartment building and down a level from the street.  There are plenty of windows on one side however so we’ll be fine.  Josef is a computer security worker who spends part of each year in San Diego.  For us that means the he speaks very good English and the Wi-fi is the best we’ve had so far.  He gives us the routine of how to work all the stuff and where to go and where to eat.

The fun things will have to wait until tomorrow.  Mary throws in a load of wash and we go out to the Tesco store for some groceries for breakfast and some crackers and cheese for our dinner tonight.  We have CNN on the TV and not much else although there are a lot of old American movie DVDs. We opt for CNN, our crackers and cheese, some bad Slovak wine and the continued use of the washing machine. Sightseeing will start tomorrow.

What did we learn today? When Uber lists their presence in cities of the world that doesn’t mean they really have a presence—maybe they have a driver or two.