The flight to Berlin went fairly well. I slept most of the way there and read for the rest of the time. However, when I got to Tegel Airport in Berlin, things started to go badly. I waited for about 45 minutes for my bags and only got one of them. My other bag (with all of my clothes) somehow found its way to Paris. Alisa, the girl sitting next to me on the plane, was kind enough to stay with me while I waited and then helped me deal with the guy at the lost and found desk. She was from Toronto and had been living in Berlin and teaching English for the past nine months. She had been home for the holidays and, thankfully, ended up on the same flight as me. She was able to talk to the guy at the lost and found and get him to send my luggage to Prague once it arrived in Berlin. She said you have to be forceful with the Germans and tell them what you want otherwise they will not help you. Again, I am very thankful she was there to help because I tend to be a little too nice sometimes.
While I was waiting for my luggage and then dealing with the lost and found guy, CH had been sitting and waiting for me. His flight arrived about an hour before mine and our plan was to meet up somewhere near an exit at the airport. Once I got the luggage situation straightened out, I found him wandering the airport halls.
The following is a very special guest blog spot by Mr. CH himself:
CH speaking. I started my journey with one full hour of sleep and arrived at John Wayne Airport after a night of last minute packing. My first connect flight to New Jersey was relatively comfortable as I had an entire row to myself. I was able to put my feet up, kick back, and relax. My connecting flight to Germany was a different story. There was a couple sitting next to me who would not stop making out, and two rows back, there were two babies that cried throughout the entire flight. When I arrived in Germany I was able to claim my baggage and get out of customs relatively easily. The customs officer inspected my passport for quite some time, flipping through the blank pages over and over. I guess that is partly my fault and can be an excuse for me to look into filling up my passport with more trips/stamps from other countries. So that in the future, I do not get the same weird looks from the customs officer. Being the smart MBA student that I am, I figured I did not need to write down Brett’s flight number, and that I could find it on the big board when I arrived. For some reason, the big board left out that information and I had to get it from the information desk. It turns out Brett’s flight arrived early and nearly 40 minutes had gone by since his plane landed. I searched the gate area for Mr. Pearce but he was nowhere to be found. I began doing what I do best, thinking of the worst possible outcome. So I began asking myself what should I do if I did not find Brett in the next hour or two? What happens if he could not find me either and thought I would naturally think to meet him at the hotel in Prague? Would Brett really leave me??? Luckily, I found Brett and he met a fellow English speaker on his flight that helped us in purchasing our bus ticket to the train station. Brett will now continue to entertain you further with more pictures and stories detailing the rest of our day.
Brett speaking again. CH and I found our way onto the bus and so did an attractive German girl. CH gave me the “wow, did you see her?” look. I nodded and proceeded to forget about my luggage for the rest of the ride to the train station. The bus ride lasted for about 20 minutes and ended for us at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof station. The station was just recently built and was quite spectacular.
Link to Berlin Hauptbahnhof Station...
http://www.hbf-berlin.de/site/berlin__hauptbahnhof/en/start.html
We made it to the station abou
t 15 minutes before the first train to Prague left for the day but we hadn’t purchased our tickets for the train yet. The person at the information desk informed us where the ticket booth was but we couldn’t find it. The location remained a mystery to us until after the train left. Basically the ticket booth was right in front of us the whole time but neither of us saw it. When we did find it we were able to purchase tickets for the next train that was set to leave two hours later. In the meantime we perused a few shops (the train station is more like a mall than anything else, not unlike the Gare Du Nord in Paris) and had some lunch.
The train ride to Prague went smoothly aside from a few minor details. The seating arrangements for the first part of our trip were a little odd. We were with three other people sitting around a table. It was a bit cramped, but CH didn’t seem to mind. There was a middle-aged German woman next to him who fell asleep and her head kept drifting toward his shoulder. Unfortunately for him she got off at the station in Dresden. Fortunately for the two of us though an older German man informed us that we had to switch train cars before the train left the station because they would be disconnecting our car and leaving it behind. From the train station Dresden looked to be a pretty cool city and had we not been told to switch cars we probably could have found something to do. Brad, however, would have been stuck in Prague, alone, wondering where we were.
About an hour later another disaster was averted when CH and the ticket inspector convinced me not to get off at the train station about an hour north of Prague. I remembered seeing the names of two train stations in Prague while I was researching the city and I thought we had stopped at one of them.
We finally arrived at the Holesnovice train station in Prague at about 7:30PM. At night the Holesnovice station isn’t the most comfortable place to be. It’s the smaller station in the city (think of it as Chicago Midway Airport but not as nice) and consequently gets less attention than Hlavni Nadrazi (it’s nicer older brother). The two of us played it cool though and found our way to a cab. We showed the driver the address for the hotel and he took us there. After 30 hours of traveling we were finally at our destination. Dinner, a shower and sleep capped off the night.
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