On the Road Again.

We are well into the segment of our trip where we will be on the road a lot, traveling to a new city every few days.

I guess this means we should stop terrorizing our rooms.

Almost as soon as we check in to a new place, we unpack everything in our backpacks and make a huge mess.

This has got to stop.

Luckily, we only have our two backpacks and no other luggage; otherwise, things would get seriously out of hand.

Anyways, so we took an overnight train to Prague from Krakow and opted to stick with the regular seats, which are included with our rail passes, rather than shelling out another 45 złoty to upgrade to a sleeper car. We made reservations for seats on this train even though with a rail pass we technically didn't need to, but I have this compulsion to plan everything out as much a possible and a big aversion to leaving things to chance. And it's a good thing I did, because apparently Saturday night is THE night to head to Prague.

Our train was packed to the brim. Every six-person compartment was full and those with rail passes but no reservations (and thus likely no seat) were resigned to camping out in the hallway (which is definitely a fire hazard and would definitely not be allowed in the States) which made it very, very difficult anytime anyone had to go to the bathroom. Our car had probably twice as many people as there were seats.

Hightlights of our ten-hour train ride to the Czech Republic include watching three kids from Singapore get kicked out of our compartment because they didn't have reservations, talking for hours with a guy from Hong Kong who has lived in England for the last ten years about our current travel plans, trying to fall asleep in an upright seats next to five other people, four of whom were NOT my husband and therefore off-limits for trying to snuggle, waiting for some Polish guy in the hallway to get off his cell phone so we could ask him how to pronounce Polish goalkeeper Szczesny's name (which is not "Shezz-nee", as all of us in the Ebglish-speaking world have been led to believe by the British commentators - alas, we all fell asleep and never learned how to properly say it), and waking up at six in the morning to find that someone had come into our compartment while we were all sleeping and taken all the money out of the purse of the Czech girl sitting by the door. That last part was a little disconcerting because NONE OF US woke up! Good thing I'm so paranoid that I slept with my purse on the seat behind me (as uncomfortable as it was).

Overall, it was exactly what I expected European rail travel to be.

I will take a train full of people with oversized backpacks doing the same thing we are over screaming babies any day.

And now, Praha!!!