Catch Up - Tuesday 2nd September

We had quite a slow start to the day, making sure we ate a proper breakfast. Dan had ditched his crutches on the last day in Prague and today we decided to walk to Schönbrunn Palace. It was, of course, drizzling, so mackintoshed and umbrella-brandishing, we trekked down Mariahilferstraße to the palace, via a supernarket for buying lunch. Having eaten breakfast an hour earlier than the others, Lucy and Siân were so hungry they had to stop and eat some bread and cheese on the way.

 

The palace, on the outside, was how you'd expect it to be. Painted a sunny (unlike the weather) shade of yellow and decorated with white flourishes, it was quite imposing. We ate lunch then bought tickets for the Imperial Tour - a walk through forty of the palace's 1400 rooms. As we were under nineteen, this cost less than €10 (Austria loves sharing culture with under nineteens, it seems). We were given audio guides, which explained the purpose of the rooms and described the major characters of the Austrian imperial family. As it focused on the 18th and 20th centuries, we got rather confused by the chronology. We also struggled to remember who was who, especially as one Empress had over six daughters called Maria.

The rooms themselves were amazing. There were bedrooms and dressing rooms and living rooms and offices and bathrooms and children's rooms and rooms for playing cards in and rooms for meeting people in and rooms with no purpose except looking pretty. We were especially impressed with the Grand Hall, a huge white and gold ballroom with magnificent painted ceilings. We also passed through a room where Mozart had played his first concert aged six, and Siân fangirled.

 

In spite of the rain, we took a stroll through the gardens. There were some nice fountains, fake ruins and a very posh summer house, all of which we couldn't help commenting would have been nicer in dry weather. 

When we returned to the hostel, Mitch and Lucy cooked our first properly self-catered meal, bean fajitas, and we went to bed.

Catch Up - Monday 1st September

We caught a train at 10:48 which took almost five hours and went directly to Vienna. We had a bit of a walk at the other end, and were so tired by the time we arrived at the hostel. We "cooked"/heated up our emergency Pasta 'N' Sauce, did some washing and Lucy, Mitch and Siân bought a cup of tea from reception. This was their first proper cup of tea in over two weeks, and the receptionist laughed at their stereotypically British glee.

 

After this, we went to bed. The bunkbeds were comfortable but had no ladders - this will be significant later.

Catch Up - Sunday 31st August

Once you've done the Old Town in Prague, there isn't much else to do. Our third day was wet and miserable, but we wanted to visit the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn so we hurried down to the centre to look around before early Sunday closing. It was lovely inside but all the churches we have visited have begun to merge together in our memories!

 

We spent a long time hunting down Lidl in the pouring rain, then bought and ate lunch. There is a park on a hill overlooking Prague, so we climbed that and walked around. We'd all bought unusual Milka flavours so here we ate them. Never try peanut and pear flavoured chocolate. It is a sin.

After a little more souvenir shopping, we went back to the hostel, eating at the on-site restaurant.

Catch Up - Friday 29th August

We caught a tram to the Old Town, and were pleasantly surprised at the historic beauty of Prague's buildings. Mostly in the Rococo style, many are painted pastel shades and have white sculpted fruit, flowers and faces above windows and doors. 

When we arrived in the centre, we found a market, and spent some time looking around the stalls. Lucy bought earrings; Siân bought a brooch; Dan bought some crisps on a stick. 

We then decided to walk to the Old Town Square, which meant an amble through winding cobbled lanes, walking past expensive designer shops and passing some more amazing buildings.

The Old Town Square is vast, and dominated by the Town Hall with its famous astronomical clock. We signed up to a walking tour of Old Prague, with the guide promising that she'd wait for Hopalong Dan, then went to watch the hourly clock show. At 2pm, wooden statuettes of the twelve apostles waved their way past a small window above the clock faces; a figurine of a skeleton rang a bell to signal the death of three sins, which were nearby and shaking their heads; a golden cockerel nodded; and a real bugler played a fanfare from the top of the tower. 

The clock faces too are impressive, telling the time in modern, Byzantine and old Bohemian formats, showing the phase of the moon and the current sign of the zodiac as well as informing the reader of which saint's day it is. 

After the clock show, we joined the tour guide for the free walking tour. She took us all around the Old Town, past numerous churches, through the Jewish Quarter and back via a theatre and the Powder Tower. What she told us about each site was incredibly interesting, and we'd never have found out so much about what we were passing otherwise. A particular highlight of the tour was St. James' Church, which has a modest façade concealing a magnificent Baroque interior, decorated with gold plated carvings and statues. 

Enticed by the prospect of more Mexican food, we once again ate at 7 Tacos. That evening, Dan stayed in the room whilst the others went down to the common room. They met a Serbian woman, an Austrian man and three fellow Brits of the same age, with whom they played pool. Nobody was very good, drawing the games out, and after playing at chatting, Lucy, Mitch and Siân went to bed at half one.

Apologies

Hi guys,

I just wanted to apologise for the lack of posting on here! Although all posts are from Mitch's account, I write most of them and I've let myself get rather behind. I am sorry, and I'll try and get the rest of the trip online ASAP!

All my best,

Siân xx

Catch Up - Saturday 30th August

Saturday we dedicated to visiting Prague Castle. I use "castle" in the very loosest sense of the term - forget any image of turrets and ramparts, this is a hotchpotch of miscellaneous buildings with no defensive purpose at all. 

Situated atop a hill, the castle was quite far from the hostel, so we took another tram and walked up the steep incline, stopping partway up for Lucy, Mitch and Dan to eat lunch in a café. 

The views from the crest of the hill were fantastic, and we were greeted at the doors to the castle by the straight-faced Czech equivalents of the Queen's grenadiers, the blue-uniformed Castle Guards. 

We bought tickets just as the heavens opened, hailed by thunder and lightning. Hurrying across the square, we entered the cathedral, a huge, ornate, grandiose structure. We wandered around, admiring the statues and paintings, until the rain subsided. The building was just as impressive from the outside, and we walked to the Great Hall which faced it. On the outside, this looked like an 18th century house, but the internal walls were clearly hundreds of years older, and the family tree painted on the ceiling traced the Royal family back for centuries. We wandered the towers and halls before moving to another courtyard, where we sat on the wall of a fountain in the increasingly warmer sun. 

We also visited the basilica, a small Catholic building with an adjoining hall sporting a beautiful painted ceiling. If you stood in the centre, you could look up through a window straight above you, surrounded by painted cherubs and flowers. Round the corner from here was the former home of the royal alchemists, Golden Lane, and the Rosenburg Palace which used to house the Institute of Gentlewomen. After perusing these, and the dungeon prisons, we decided to walk back to the centre to eat. On our way back down the hill, we found a nice Italian restaurant for tea. 

We had booked ourselves in (excitedly by Dan and Lucy, and begrudgingly by Mitch and Siân) for a pub crawl, so at quarter to eight we made our way to the meeting point for that. The first hour was unlimited beer, absinthe, wine and vodka shooters in a small, underground bar called Chapeau Rouge. It was roughly the temperature of Satan's sauna, and with 90% of the eighty pub-crawlers being male, there was enough testosterone in the room to start a third world war. We quickly decided to drop out after the Power Hour, and to attempt to skip a few bars for the ice bar in "Europe's Biggest Nightclub" Karlovy Lazne. The bouncers said we couldn't get in until midnight, so we bought pastries, took a walk, and turned in early.

Catch Up - Thursday 28th August

For reasons of ease and practicality, we decided to get a later train than initially planned, leaving at 10:46 for Prague. Scheduling in plenty of time for Dan to hobble along, Mitch carrying his bag, we left early for Berlin Hautbahnhof train station. 

After much struggling on a very busy train where most of the seats were reserved, we found our way into a compartment where an Asian couple were taking up two thirds of the space with their luggage. We squeezed in and settled down for the journey. 

The train took such a picturesque route, hugging a river and winding through a mountain range past quaint villages. Siân spent most of the journey standing in the corridor looking out of the window. 

Once arrived in Prague, we took a metro and a tram then walked a little way to the hostel. It was clean and well-equipped, although, as in every other hostel, the promised kitchen didn't materialise. There were four other beds in our room, the inhabitants of which changed daily. 

That evening, we ate at a nearby Mexican restaurant, 7 Tacos, which was both cheap and incredibly cheerful.

Catch Up - Wednesday 27th August

27.08.14 - the date is etched into our skulls. The memory of this day will haunt us for years to come. We won't forget. 

Imagine for me a flight of stairs. Wooden - the colour of mahogany, but undoubtedly something much cheaper. The walls are a buttery yellow. There is a runner down the centre of the stairs. Burnt sienna. Mitch and Lucy walk ahead; Dan and Siân follow behind. Our room is on the third floor, and we have already walked down two and a half flights of stairs without incident. But there it is, on the horizon... That fateful step... The Last Stair. 

Lucy and Mitch cross it, blessed by the gods. Dan is not so lucky. Something happens - he isn't concentrating, arrogant in his ability to walk down stairs. Perhaps he misses a stair. Perhaps he thinks there is an extra stair. Whatever happens, he goes one way, and his ankle goes another. 

"It was like something in a film," recalls Siân Collins, 18, sole eyewitness to the accident. "For a split second, it was comical - his hair did a sassy flick, and he floated. Then suddenly it wasn't funny any more." 

Dan lay on the ground, moaning and cussing. Lucy and Mitch came back, and a herd of receptionists stampeded towards the scene. For a long time, Dan didn't get up. 

"I was all ready to laugh at him for being on the floor, but when he didn't get up, I realised it was serious," says Lucy Morris, student. 

Images of A&E and flights home flashed before Siân' s eyes, and (mortifyingly) she almost fainted. 

After a short eternity, Dan got up, claiming he felt better, and hobbled to the hostel living room. Mitch, Lucy and Siân continued the journey to the supermarket for food, returning to instruct Dan to put ice back on his ankle. 

Having sat for a while, Dan came to the realisation that he wouldn't be able to walk on this foot, and the decision was made to take him to a doctor. 

"It wasn't until this point that I realised it was serious," admits resident German speaker Mitchell Darbon. 

A-Level German does not prepare one for the reality of an orthopaedic specialist's waiting room, and although he can fluently and accurately discuss the integration of Turkish immigrants into German society, Mitch struggled to explain to one that Dan had fallen from a stair and had a suspected sprained ankle. 

An arduous two hours followed, and after meeting a lovely German doctor and visiting both a pharmacy and a shop for orthopaedic devices, Dan emerged on crutches, bandaged foot in a support brace, brandishing a box of pills. 

All plans cancelled for the day, we returned to the hostel and remained there for the rest of the day. Lucy and Mitch went souvenir shopping, whilst Siân packed her things. Upon their return, all two-legged indivuals went to the supermarket, where they purchased bottled beer (and a soft drink for the teetotaller). At between 39 and 79 cents for a pint, they bought a range, plus pizza for tea, and back at the room they recreated a bar. We did a pub quiz with Siân as QM (Dan won) and we went to sleep.

Catch Up - Tuesday 26th August

We left quite late on this day, and having bought lunch from the local supermarket, we decided to find a park on the route to the day's attractions in which to eat our lunch. The hostel's locality was less than savoury so the "park" we ended up in (arguably a grass verge) was about as alluring as Bristol's Castle Park at night. Dan soon became acquainted with the toughest gang on the block - tiny, striped and ready to sting without warning. 

From here, we walked to Checkpoint Charlie. The famed sign announcing one's departure from the American quarter greeted us, and we queued up for the museum. Once inside, we found ourselves a little disappointed. The curators had essentially cut up a textbook and plastered it to the walls - there was so much writing that we soon gave up on reading everything. The content was really interesting, but the layout let it down. Nonetheless, we spent an hour and a half looking around until Dan reached the point where he was napping in a corner. 

The strain of this visit, the closest thing to study we've partaken in for months, called for refreshment. After disdaining a wasp-infested bakery, we sat down in McDonald's for a frappé/McFlurry/full meal. 

We could see the Berlin TV Tower from the McDonald's, so we followed its direction, taking a detour along the way to a square with green-domed buildings and a fountain. Here, we watched some string-playing buskers play a suite of German classical museum, because we're classy and cultured like that. 

We walked past lots of old buildings on our way to the tower, and Mitch bought some wurst. At the tower, we bought a ticket to the top, but had a two hour wait so we bought some Hotcha-esque takeaway Chinese food. Dan was in his element. We also paid the princely price of €1 to use the metro public toilets, but were fascinated by the self-cleaning toilet seats and automated taps, soap dispensers and anti-bacterial hand sprayers. 

It was soon time to scale the building in Europe's fastest lift. The lift operator looked much like the butler from Aristocrats, and, surprise surprise, it didn't take long to reach the top. 

Windows look out over every direction, and panels under the view describe the area to be seen. Siânwent round reading every piece of information (probably having withdrawal symptoms from books, poor lass) whilst the other three looked at the world outside. On the whole, we all had a nice time up there, and as it started to get dark, we began our walk back to the hostel. 

Along the way, Mitch tried on Siân's glasses and found the whole world to be in sharper focus. From this point, every time there was anything distanced to be seen, the spectacles went between the two so everyone could benefit from the view...

Catch Up - Monday 25th August

Having bought breakfast, and, for Lucy and Siân, lunch, we walked northwards to the Tiergarten. Literally translated as "animal garden", this leafy urban park gets its name from the menagerie that once existed in the grounds, now a little zoo. 

Winding through the woods there is a path, mostly frequented by cyclists and dogwalkers. We followed this path through the trees, past tranquil pools speckled with lily pads, and into the formal gardens. Statues of a Kaiser and his wife stand sentinel at the gates to these, which are landscaped in a traditional English style. We meandered up to the centre of the park, where the Victory Column towers above the trees. Dan and Mitch bought wurst and we ate lunch by a playground, where Dan was plagued by a wasp. It was hilarious. 

Following this, we walked down the boulevard to the Brandenburg Gate. Mitch was pleased because the last time he went it was raining, so this time he got to see it in its full, bone-dry glory. It was very busy in that area, and soon we moved to the cheerfully-named Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This is more of a metaphor than anything, as the dozens of uniform concrete blocks represent the loss of identity for European Jews in the 20th century, and the uneven floor symbolises how normality was redefined. It's not especially pretty, but it's interesting to walk in and out of the blocks, some of which are waist-high whilst others are about 10ft tall. Dan bought some more currywurst and was plagued by another wasp. Still hilarious. 

We'd seen on our map that there was a nearby memorial to the victims of homophobia during the war, so we went to see that. This too was a concrete block, but it had a little window in it which looked through to a black and white projection of homosexual couples kissing. We watched this film for a while, then went to sit by some nearby rocks, which were in clusters to represent five continents, which have corresponding rock clusters in the respective continents. They're big on metaphor in Germany. Here, Lucy tried to stop Mitch from making silly noises, and Dan fell asleep. 

We had a visit to the Reichstag booked in for five o' clock, and by now it was about time to go over there. Mitch and Dan bought some wurst and we went to the security check for the parliament building. A lift with a somewhat grumpy German operator in took us up to the roof, where there is a glass dome shaped something like a beehive. We meandered around the circumference of the dome up to the top, where we could see all across the rooftops of Berlin. After walking around the 'what Mitch thought was a café'; we decided we had enough and wandered back down the opposite spiral to the bottom. 

After all that exercise we thought that we deserved a rest, so we sat on the grass infront of the Reichstag. Soon we realised what a good idea this has been, as, through the throng of tourists, much to our disbelief, wove a man of great poise and elegance. Hip-hop beats blasted out of his what-appeared-to-be speaker-bum-bag, accompanied by some rather flamboyant arm dancing, filling our hearts with joy. What could be the meaning of this? A new form of sport designed for those of aged years? A protest? Whatever it was, it was fabulous! 

After enjoying the spectacle of this charming German athlete, we went back to the hostel for our evening plans. Scouting out another family run business, we decided on a Lebanese place for tea, then, back at the hostel, settled in for the night. 

Catch Up - Sunday 24th August

Somewhat ambitiously, we got up at 8:45am for a 10:25am train. This left us really rather rushed through breakfast and we had to hurry to the metro station to get the underground to Bruxelles-Midi train station.  We managed to get into a carriage, although being an intercity ("IC") train it was super busty. We're living life on the edge, employing the risky strategy of not making train reservations. This can be problematic and could leave us seatless if I goes wrong!

When we crossed the Belgian-German border, Mitch got especially excited and kept shouting "Deutschland! Deutschland!"  We changed trains at Cologne, grabbing some food at the station, and arrived in Berlin in the afternoon.

The U-Bahn underground was too tricky to comprehend so we walked to hostel. When a woman stopped to offer us directions, we weren't exactly filled with confidence when she said "that's far away", especially as at this point we'd already walked for twenty minutes. Our bags were heavy, and it was a relief to find The Grand Hostel (Templehofer Ufer 14), and extra satisfying when we got a free welcome drink.

The room was the only one on our trip to not have bunk beds, which we made the most of. The showers were separate, and shared, as was the loo, but we're pros at this by now. 

As German supermarkets close on Sundays, we patrolled the local district for an eatery, eventually picking a Sri Lankan/Indian restaurant where we enjoyed a good curry before turning in for the night.