Auf Wiedersehen Deutschland, Dobrý den, Česká republika

Today was one of those days that tests your endurance, patience, and faith as a traveller.....

After checking out of the Bamberg B&B and enjoying a leisurely walk to the train station we arrived and were greeted with a "wee" bit of confusion.  It seems as far as we can tell through the language barrier that the part of our journey to Prague that was to take place on a private carrier was no longer available, quite possibly due to the economic demise of the company....  our revised itinerary found us madly dashing from platform to platform as we entered and exited not one, nor two, not even three, but 4 separate trains in order to get to Prague. Add into this a lack of air conditioning and one conductor who casually mentioned that we didn't have a ticket for our Dresden to Prague leg (at least he couldn't find it in our many papers).  It turned out we did have a ticket that counted for the leg, but this leg happened to be missing its normal dining car; we had banked on at least getting a meal during this last leg, oh well, Pringles to the rescue!  We were amused during the Dresden-Prague leg by the train crew puzzling over the circuit breaker board trying to get the AC to work, but only succeeding in eliminating the lighting which had a rather eerie effect while travelling through tunnels...

So we are now in Prague, and after much puzzlement over the transit info board we embarked on our overland trek to the hotel through many different neighbourhoods.  The girls were troopers today and Hana even managed to find humour in it all by sketching a cartoon of daddy sorting through and stressing over reams of train tickets;  to be posted soon....  and some pics tomorrow......