We got up today with grand ambitions to make it to Kutna Hora and tour the St. Barbara Cathedral and Ossuary (bone-church). These were two of my favorites when MOB and I visited Pete in Prague years ago. We got directions from our concierge who was genuinely helpful most of our time in Prague, but after 3 hours looking for highway 56 we found ourselves back where we started. We are really missing TomTom now (which did not provide maps for the Czech Republic).
We’re off to Munich after a lunch-time stop at Karlstein Castle outside of Prague. This was the summer home of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV which was rebuilt as a very effective tourist trap. We had to hike up the mountain/hill that the castle was built on taking breaks along the way. At one stop, we were entertained by a woman who parked her car in the middle of a steep uphill one-way road to block her boyfriend/husband who was driving a horse drawn carriage with a young blond at his side (we think she was the cause of the disturbance). This must have been a regular occurrence because many of the townspeople stopped to watch. When a polize officer finally got up from his beirgarten lunch and walked over to them, he merely asked the woman to move her car aside so he could drive past. As soon as she moved her car the man whipped his horses past her and she was left chasing them down the street, pulling on the horse’s reins trying to try to stop the cart. Ah Czechs, they’re the best!
The castle was pretty cool, but we were forced to take a guided tour which was rather cheesy. Just as we were about to begin it started to rain on us (in the middle of a sunny day). We even got thunder and lightening. Very gothic! The tour was a bit of a bust since most of the good stuff had been plundered by various raiders years ago and it turns out most of the castle had been rebuilt less than 100 years ago. After that we walked back down and were back on the road to Munich.
LOL!!!! LOL!!! This is so funny; I’m having a hard time writing it. Carla just got pulled over by the polize on the German Autobahn (seemingly impossible given that there are absolutely no speed limits on the Autobahn!). As you can guess we are ok since I wouldn’t be laughing (or writing) if they had impounded our car and sent us to the German Guantanamo for interrogation. Carla took over driving after our lunchtime stop at Karlstein Castle and set us on cruise control to Munich at about 130 (that’s km/hr not miles which is only about 80 mph). She noticed a tan Audi A8 was on our butt and would repeatedly pull along side us, check us out, pass us, pull ahead, and then slow down. She thought it was just two sketchy German guys trying to peep at her hormone enhanced frauleine bosom…just annoying. Just as she mentioned something to me, the other car pulled ahead of us and its taillights started flashing blue and a red LED sign popped up across the rear dashboard with the word “POLIZE!” (very James bond since the sign literally popped up out of the rear dash). We pulled over and said guten tach in our best accents (hers much better than mine). They took our passports, called them in on CB radio and apparently approved us, letting us go with a simple “auf wiedersehen”. We’re guessing that they were randomly checking us out because of our bright red European Delivery license plates (figuring we might have stolen the car in Prague from some sucker tourists). Little did they know that we were in fact sucker touristas ourselves! (later we found out they pulled over other Americans and searched their cars – I guess we should consider ourselves lucky since we weren’t searched). I think it is Carla’s maiden name that got us off J
We followed our polize stop up with dinner in a small German town called Wackersdorf, yes, Wackersdorf. After some dirty looks from the locals as we took pictures of their town welcome sign, we sat down to enjoy tasty meals (Wiener Schnitzel & Steak) in a quaint German Beirgarten called Rathausstuben. There the waitresses wore traditional “dirndl” dresses and along with the chef taught us how to say “very good” in German (“sere good”).
We made it to Munchen (Munich) with no more trouble from the fuzz and arrived at our Sheraton Four Points hotel which was quite the fall-off from the Westin Grand Berlin or Marriott Prague. As I am writing, we are sitting in a room with no air conditioning (a la our Italian family vacation years ago when century-long temperature records were broken) and our sliding glass door open to cool us down (reminding Carla of her parent’s stay in Paris when their hotel room was broken into). I’m off to bed, right after I close the window…
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