Getting to Prague

So yeah I went to Prague this past weekend, but I swear I have some of the worst luck traveling. So I will warn you don’t travel with me, because maybe not everything, but a lot of things will go wrong. Well the first thing it was kind of my friend and mine’s fault. We were late to the bus, but I mean we had class and our professor did not let us out early enough, so we ended up running to the bus station and when we got there we just saw the bus go by. My friend tried to get her roommate to tell the bus driver to wait for us like two minutes, but it wasn’t until later (yesterday) that we found out from her roommate that the bus driver didn’t speak English. Yeah, that could be a reason why the bus driver did not wait, or understand my friend when she was yelling at him or her over the phone. Then we could either take the next bus to Prague or try to see when the train left.

We decided to check out the train tickets and they were 60 Euros per person just one way, but with the discount they told us 21 Euros. Lucky me I forgot my discount card at the dorm. We got the time tables for when the next train as leaving to Prague and there was one in 48 minutes and then another in like 2 hours. So we decided to go check out the bus station and see our options there. We both knew from the internet that the next bus was sold out and that the next available one was at like 6 pm which meant we were going to get to Prague at 11 pm. We walked around for a bit and found the place we were supposed to wait for the bus but no bus station, so we were just like screw it let’s take the train.We were at Pratestern (U2 Purple). The plan was that my friend would head out to the U Bahn stop Landstrasse in Simmering, which is a Ubahn (like the subway) stop on the U3 line (Orange), and I would go back to the dorm (Heilegenstadt stop) and get my card. We had less than two hours to do this. So I came back, got my card, and left. Finally, I get to the station meet up my friend and we both headed to Simmering. We get to Simmering and we can’t buy our tickets on the automatic ticket thing, because Prague is not listed as one of the destinations. Then we talk to a lady and she tells us to head back to Landstrasse where someone can help us, so we head back and by this time we had like an hour before the next train left. We get to Landstrasse and find the ticket place and buy our tickets, which were 20 Euros more expensive than we were told, but by this time we were like whatever let’s just go. We went back to Simmering and bought food, because both of us hadn’t had time to eat that day. My friend had had chocolate and I had had a granola bar and a pear. We finally get on the train and head to Prague. Yay!!!

Now for part 2! We get to Prague, which is a really pretty city seriously. If anyone comes to Europe they have to come to Prague. We find our way to our hostel, which we missed along the way because we were distracted by the pretty architecture, and my friend checks in and everything is fine. Then I try to check in and I wrote down the confirmation number, but the lady there said that that’s useless and that she needs a name. I give her my name and she said that I wasn’t on there. I write down my name and she said, “Nope you are not on here and there is no more room.” I was like, “What?” I told the lady that I got a confirmation email, that where was I supposed to stay, and that if there was someone else I could speak too. She told me that it was not her fault and that I had to talk to the people where I booked it from. She was telling me to go stay in a hotel, or somewhere else. I was telling her if I could get my deposit back then. There were people there waiting to get checked in so she told me to wait, and in the mean time I went on one of the computers and pulled out the confirmation email. Other people had some problems too. There were some very nice Brazilians there who were having some trouble too. She was talking on the phone to someone and she got the Brazilians checked in. I sent her my confirmation email and then she said my name appeared and I got a room. The room I got was really nice! (Picture on top: My bed!) So in the end things worked out.

On the way back we got on the bus and my friend somehow had printed out my confirmation email for the bus on the way back, so she didn’t have hers and the person check in us in told us that if she couldn’t find her confirmation letter then it wasn’t valid. At this point I was like why? Why? Why? Why? Thank whatever deity exists up there, for the IPhone and Wi-Fi, because that enabled my friend to find her confirmation ticket!

Apart from all this Prague was great. We walked around all day and say all the cites, which included castles and churches. There is also this really cool clock there. I’m too lazy to keep writing I’ll put up another post, which says what we did in Prague.