DSAE Day 8: Steppin outside the Euro Zone
May. 26th, 2013 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
albadgerI didn't even think of this -- the Czech Republic still has its own money! My Euros are worthless here! I may as well just trade them for pebbles.
Good day, first full day of Phase 2, no more opera, all about riding trains to cities and then staying in hotels when I get there. GREAT train ride today. Not the first half, from Leipzig to Dresden -- that's the southern edge of the "North German Plain" and it's as flat and dull as Nebraska (though a good bit wetter). I was hoping for some tourism during my 2-hour layover in Dresden, but the rain was so heavy I gave up & just lurked about the train station. I even had lunch, lord forgive me, at Burger King, as it was the only place I could get a table to write out postcards. Sandwich worse than our Burger Kings would dare offer, but at least I got a nice salad instead of their wrong-colored french fries.
The GREAT train ride is from Dresden to Prague. It goes up the Elbe/Vltava valley, which carves through the sandstone & basalt massifs that form the border between Germany and the Czech Republic, and it's stunning -- it's this river that Smetana wrote "the Moldau" about. The first train ride I've been on this whole time that was worth taking solely on its own.
It was still raining when I arrived in Prague (and still is), so I wasn't worried about taking in sights, just getting to the hotel & drying off -- but I was caught off guard by Wenceslas Square. Isn't a square, actually, it's a wide boulevard, with a VERY impressive buidling at the upper end, the Czech National Museum, which is totally Wow, and there's that huge equestrian statue of Wenceslas, flanked by other Bohemian saints (they're his Pips, in a way). It would be a breathtaking sight even if it didn't have all that amazing history. History added, it brought tears to my eyes. Hope I can get some postcards of it even with my decadent foreign currency.
Actually a lot of places here are happy to take their own korunas as well as Euros and Pounds (not dollars?), but truth is I'm too bushed to go shopping; I bought a ham & cheese baguette at the shop in the hotel lobby & am calling it a night. Got the alarm set early, so I aim to do some walking about before leaving the hotel & going back to the train station for the ride to Vienna.
Good day, first full day of Phase 2, no more opera, all about riding trains to cities and then staying in hotels when I get there. GREAT train ride today. Not the first half, from Leipzig to Dresden -- that's the southern edge of the "North German Plain" and it's as flat and dull as Nebraska (though a good bit wetter). I was hoping for some tourism during my 2-hour layover in Dresden, but the rain was so heavy I gave up & just lurked about the train station. I even had lunch, lord forgive me, at Burger King, as it was the only place I could get a table to write out postcards. Sandwich worse than our Burger Kings would dare offer, but at least I got a nice salad instead of their wrong-colored french fries.
The GREAT train ride is from Dresden to Prague. It goes up the Elbe/Vltava valley, which carves through the sandstone & basalt massifs that form the border between Germany and the Czech Republic, and it's stunning -- it's this river that Smetana wrote "the Moldau" about. The first train ride I've been on this whole time that was worth taking solely on its own.
It was still raining when I arrived in Prague (and still is), so I wasn't worried about taking in sights, just getting to the hotel & drying off -- but I was caught off guard by Wenceslas Square. Isn't a square, actually, it's a wide boulevard, with a VERY impressive buidling at the upper end, the Czech National Museum, which is totally Wow, and there's that huge equestrian statue of Wenceslas, flanked by other Bohemian saints (they're his Pips, in a way). It would be a breathtaking sight even if it didn't have all that amazing history. History added, it brought tears to my eyes. Hope I can get some postcards of it even with my decadent foreign currency.
Actually a lot of places here are happy to take their own korunas as well as Euros and Pounds (not dollars?), but truth is I'm too bushed to go shopping; I bought a ham & cheese baguette at the shop in the hotel lobby & am calling it a night. Got the alarm set early, so I aim to do some walking about before leaving the hotel & going back to the train station for the ride to Vienna.
