Kiwi-German Infusion: Prague

This post is a little late coming so I'm going to back-date it if I can remember how, so you'll never know...

Well we've been hanging out to visit some of the more eastern countries for a while now. We got our opportunity when we were in Munich on a Friday and needed to be in Nürnberg early on the following Monday.

First up we decided to head to Prague - the capital of the Czech Republic. It has a reasonable rep as a big tourist spot, and being tourists we can't very well miss it then, can we? We only have the German CD for our navigation system so we were prepared with a print out from good ol' mappy.com. Unfortunately I wasn't so prepared in other areas - I forgot my passport. In my defense I've been into several countries here in Europe without it, but I did actually know I needed it for the eastern countries so I just plain forgot.

Kerstin was all for flagging it and heading for Austria or somewhere that we didn't need it, but I decided that I was going to try and run it - hopefully they just wouldn't check... right?

We got to the border and they naturally checked it - but the good ol' prepared Germans were ever so kind and made me up a temporary one for the low low price of just €€25. It was cheaper than pulling out on the hotel we had booked there anyway, so was worth it.

We finally managed to get to Prague (after also having to buy the right to drive on their motorway - Germany lets anyone drive on theirs for free, but not the Czechs (or the French), they take all they can get).

We had heard a few bad things regarding the Eastern countries and considered putting the car into a car parking building to make sure, but the hotel woman hadn't heard of any problems in her area, so we just left it outside.

Next day we did the touristy wandering around - saw the Charles bridge and the castle up the top of the hill. They also do Christmas markets there, so we checked that out. The funniest thing was when the Astronomical clock was ready to do its thing on the hour - thousands of tourists pack around to see the great spectacle - all it is, is some puppet figures turning in a circle while a skeleton rings a bell - not really worth fighting the crowd to see...

On the Sunday we decided to try and drive closer to town because Kerstin had got a sore knee from walking the previous day. After winding our way around a bunch of narrow little streets, we 'apparently' went along a street that was only for trams, and got pulled over by the cops. It was immediately obvious that they were as crooked as a Chinese gymnast - grinning like school boys. I silently cursed the stupid EU lawmakers that decided it was a good idea to have a big 'D' on the numberplate to say that we were from a richer country and ripe for the picking.

We pulled over and he came up and told us that we had done the dirty deed but that he was going to be nice to us and lower the normal fee from 1000 Crowns to just 300. I again cursed under my breath because although we had 300 Crowns and it is only about €9, we were just about to get some lunch before leaving the country. I sneaked 200 Crowns out of my wallet and pushed them into Kerstin's worried hands, then held up my wallet to the cop and explained how I only had 100 Crowns. He wasn't about to show that he was that soft, so he ordered me to change some money. I wasn't about to do that, so I got out of the car to pressure him a bit. I nicely asked him to give me the ticket and said that then I would go to the Central Police station and pay there. Suddenly he didn't speak English anymore! Damn, how was I going to tell him! After a few minutes of stubbornly repeating myself and offering him the easy option of just taking the 100 Crowns, he accepted and we were on our way.

We ended up parking in the exact same parking spot again outside the hotel because we couldn't find anything else. We then walked into town and got some food and had a last quick look around.

On returning to our car, we noticed that the windows were down... and the radio/nav system was gone. After persuading Kerstin just earlier that morning that no one would dare doing anything that dumb during the middle of the day, boy did I look stupid. I can only assume that they saw it sitting there for the whole weekend and thought that no one would be around - not noticing that we had only been there 2 hours before.

Anyway, so then after having been screwed by the cops 1/2 hours earlier, we were forced to head to the cop station after all to file the theft. After 4 Hours of them doing as little as possible except driving me to where the car had been parked and then taking a photo of a random street on the way back to the station after realising that they had forgotten to take a photo of the scene, I walked out with a piece of paper in Czech.

By now I had resolved never again to step foot in the Czech Republic and cursed those damn helpful Germans for giving me a temporary Passport.

Anyway, that's enough of that sorry tale. Please don't ever visit Prague!

Here are some picture so you don't have visit to take them yourself...