On a mission - Prague, Czech Republic
2 Stars This place was Poor visited Aug 28, 2005
The reason we suddenly decided to take a detour into Prague was a) because Nicola offered to drive us as far as Wroclaw, and, more importantly, b) because Kate's backback, stolen the previous year in Prague, was being kept for her by a friend there. We didn't have any contact details for this friend, but thought we'd have a better chance of tracking him down if we were in the same country. We didn't manage to find him, but we did find a phone number, and leave a message on an answering machine. In retrospect we probably could have done that without going there. We arrived late at night, and the truck dropped us at a tram stop, which was handy. Even at nearly midnight, we managed to get to a campsite by public transport, and didn't get too lost, even with only the sketchy lonely planet map to help. As both of us had been to Prague before, and didn't particularly feel the need to see much, we only spent one day ambling about town and trying to find contact details for Kate's acquaintance, then left late that afternoon. Kate had hitched out of prague the year before (travelling extremely lightly after having everything stolen) and so we went to the same place of the highway she had, only to find it was now all being reconstructed and was impossible to get to. We found a way down to it eventually, and stood at a place that seemed safe enough to stop, and failed to get a lift. We found a few others also trying unsucessfully to get lifts, and decided to walk a bit to find a better spot. After what felt like hours, we tried a petrol station we could see not too far off. We eventually were offered a lift about 5 or 10k down the road, which we accepted gratefully. As we were driving, we noticed lots of hitchers on the highway, and one group seemed to have a white car parked next to them. We were dropped outside another petrol station, and stood on the road to try our luck. We hadn't been there even 10 minutes when a white car came and parked next to us, too. It said "Policie" on it. They told us off for standing on a freeway, which was apparently illegal. We explained we were sorry, but didn't have any other way to leave, and we were trying to leave as fast as we could. They fined us about $30 each (or something) and told us to go to any Czech police station to pay it. And to stop standing on the road. We retreated to the petrol station, figuring we'd just ask someone for a ride there. Turned out to be the least well patronised petrol station in all of europe. We were there about 2 hours, I think, during which time there were about 2 cars. It was getting dark, and I was off scouting tent spots for the night, and admiring the sunset, when a couple came to use the petrol station's car vaccuum. As they were nearly finished I went to beg them for a lift, explaining that we were stranded here, and need to be anywhere else but here. They were nice enough to take us about 30km down the road, to a big road side restaurant. We were only there 5 minutes before we accosted a young guy walking back to his nice car with german plates, and asked for a lift. He was going to Vienna, more or less, and, although we were aiming for Bratislava, we knew they were only an hour or so apart, so it was good enough! And that's how we finally managed to leave the Czech Republic.