Eerie Eastern Europeans & Dashing Danes

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Of all the places we have been to on this trip, Prague has probably been the one to elicit the 'oh my gosh, you'll LOVE it there' response with the greatest frequency. It is, as far as cities go, the It City (or one of them ... anyone read how Sydney has been voted the number 1 city by the Conde Nast Traveller magazine?). The two words that cropped up time and time again, were 'cheap' (music to the budget travellers ears) and 'beautiful' and so the expectation bar was set rather high.

When I wrote earlier of certain themes of the trip, like late night welcomes and freak weather, I neglected to mention a third, rather significant one - The Staying in a Ghetto Theme. As our cab cheerfully sailed out of the city and continued on, showing no signs of stopping at any point, it seemed we had done it again. Later, as a homeless alcoholic pressed me up against the freezer in the miniscule grocery store behind our apartment, regaling with me tales of his alleged stint in Australia and calling me baby every second word, it became patently clear that we had.

Ghetto aside, our apartment was brilliant, and a welcome respite from hostels. There is nothing quite like having your own space to return to at the end of the day, and a bathroom not occupied by 30 other grubby backpackers, or a kitchen not vulnerable to the sticky fingers of sangria thieves. We even had cable which, admittedly, was all in czech with the exception of MTV Austria - but the tentacles of American MTV reach far and wide, and so the whole world can be privy to such gems as Date My Mom. Including English deprived Australians in Prague.

Of course, Prague is beautiful. Cobbled streets lined with tiny stores, winding their way to St Christopher's bridge, quaint cafes in the historic city centre, watched over by the astronomical clock, ... the city is a postcard, no matter what angle you look at it. And then there is Prague Castle where the guards will laugh if you try hard enough and are not averse to self takes (see photo album). Prague turned on its lone sunny day for our visit to the castle - Autumn was eveywhere, in the clear sky, in the leaves we tried to catch from the balcony and in the colours of the garden overlooking the city.

The constant refrain of how cheap Prague is, finally came to fruition when we went out for some traditional Czech cuisine to farewell Gee. And when I say traditional, I mean within the realms of good tatse - no roasted pig's knee was consumed. For AUD$20 each, we all had an American sized main meal, 3 bottles of wine between us and an assortment of czech spirits that were, in a word, our unravelling. As we filed out of the restaurant, throats burnt from various vile concoctions the waiter (in a perturbingly knowing fashion) saw fit to serve us, said waiter had the temerity (granted we were inexplicably shaking his hand at this point and promising to return) to say we 'didn't drink like Czech people'. Perhaps that could be because we still have our throat linings, whereas Czech babies have their's stripped at birth.

As a sidenote, Eastern Europeans have revealed themselves to be the strangest race of people encountered so far. There is something intrinsically eerie about them all (ok, ok, since watching Hostel I am completely bias) however the homeless man in the grocery store only preceeded other, more bizarre encounters. One more notable one occurred when we were walking towards the old square, on a bitingly chilly day, arms wrapped around ourselves, heads down against the rain. Suddenly, a dapperly dressed gentleman, perhaps in his early 50s, was upon me, bundling me up in his coat and ferrying me to the shelter of a nearby cafe before I even had time to draw breath. Like the homeless man before him, his term of endearment choice was 'baby' and so I found myself being addressed in feverishly intimate tones, 'isn't it cold baby, or are you cold baby? Would you like a massage?' Satie, my walking companion at the time, did not bat an eyelash. Merely drifted away so as to give enough distance to suggest no prior knowledge of who I was. She watched on, with the same perverted interest as everyone else, as I wrestled free from his binding coat and politely declined the massage offer.

We farewelled Gee, in an emotional display, the next evening. She boarded a rickety train at our local station (without a doubt a location for a Hostel scene)and sailed out of view, Frankfurt bound. We were not to know that hours later we would fly into Frankfurt in an unplanned detour and be strolling the halls of Frankfurt airport simultaneously. So close, yet so far away.

This unplanned detour to Frankfurt airport was all part of the most ridiculous of Travel Days to occur thus far. More ridiculous than Seattle-New York via Vegas, arriving at 3am. Nearly on par with Rome-Santorini via Athens, arriving at 6.30am (although nowhere near as torturous). But, it was only a matter of time before we ran into some form of airport trouble, it had all been going far too smoothly with our tickets. Upon arrival at Prague airport (lovely, and in our top 5 favourite airports) at 1.30pm, for our scheduled 3pm flight, we found said flight to be missing from the departures board. Futher investigation revealed it to be, inexplicably, cancelled. And so we were put on a 5.30pm flight to Frankfurt. Hello four hours to kill. At 6.30pm, we landed in Frankfurt airport for the third time to find our flight to Copenhagen had been delayed. Douse self in Sarah Jessica Parker's new fragrance to pass the time. 8pm, board plane to Copenhagen, which proceeds to taxi for half an hour, before we finally take off and land in Copenhagen at 10pm. Three countries in one day. No, make three countries in 4.5 hours.

We arrived at our hostel in Copenhagen at 11.30 to find Satie's booking (separate to ours due to her earlier departure) had been cancelled. Half an hour later, some other poor, late soul's bed was cancelled, and Satie was checked into a dorm of 9. Eight of them were 19 year old male backpackers. The floor was sticky and a bucket sat by one of the bunks, in preparation. Satie partied by proxy that night.

The next morning the papers bore news of Scandinavian Airlines having to ground a whole fleet of the planes we were scheduled to catch from Prague to Copenhagen, following a crash landing where a propeller had sliced through the plane taking out 3 rows of seats. And presumably the people sitting in them.

It has to be said, Denmark is the over achiever of countries. They are beautiful. Eternally happy. Enjoy a high standard of living (and inflict the consequences of this wealth on the not so wealthy tourists) are environmentally conscious, incredibly polite, so well dressed as to induce inferiority complexes in the non Danish mortals and prance around in aforementioned good fashion, pushing prams containing insanely beautiful children. I am even going to go so far as to say Denmark is one giant science experiment that has been successfully kept under wraps and Copenhagen will soon, in a sudden and peaceful movement, take over the world. We found ourselves longing for Germany where at least they were open about their attempts at racial engineering.

We farewelled Satie in Copenhagen, another loss to our troops, leaving just Dee and I. Our final full day was spent in Tivoli Gardens where we momentarily lost each other and it seemed Satie would be farewelling herself from Copenhagen, and our last supper was pizza and red wine. We may have been in Copenhagen, but our taste buds were in Italy. We put Satie and her backpack on the 9.33am bus the following morning. The Trio had been broken. It was time for Dee and I to continue on alone.

And when I say alone, I mean with our German family, who we set out to reunite with the following day. Once again, we found ourselves in Copenhagen airport, killing time by running around frantically changing flight schedules following the snap decision to extend our 3 week stint in Münster to a month. This may have had something to do with our bags being 6 kg over the limit and us not having to pay for this if we were spending a month in Germany ... that, and where better to spend a month than in beautiful Münster?

Again, our flight was delayed, thank God Copenhagen airport is, fittingly, superb (number 1 on the list of faves) with endless food and shopping options. If we had any kroner, which we didn't, except for the 15 we had received selling our souls on the street (non Danish souls do not sell as well as pure Danish souls). In Berlin it was delayed again and, finally, delirious and ready to jump off the next plane we had to get on, we arrived in Münster.

All was right in the world again.