Prague, Tezerin, Litomerice, Usti, Petrovice June 6-9

We didn't have any trouble with pick pockets, but right at noon, a women came up to beg from me. I told her no. I was craning my head to see the little figures that come out of the clock at noon. It was the crucial moment. Just as the clock struck noon, she rapped me on my chest, demanding money. It really pissed me off.

Prague has so many beautiful buildings that it looks like some kid got a lets-make-a-Medieval-city kit and just started plunking down buildings everywhere. There's no order to it. Here a castle, there a tower, there a gorgeous building. You can spend a lot of time just looking, and you probably won't see it all.

One night, we met up with a guy we had met over the Net, Geoff, a Silicon Valley dropout. He was pleased as punch to be living in Prague. He introduced us to another friend he had met over the net, a Ukrainian guy named Alex. Alex has studied in the U.S., and is about to go back for the summer for more English practice.

Alex told us about how Kiev recently started posting life-size cardboard cutouts of policemen on the highway, to get traffic to slow down. He says the campaign has been so successful, they are considering firing some policemen in favor of more cardboard cutouts.

Geoff is in that, I-just-quit-the-rat-race state of euphoria. I hope it lasts for a long time. Now he just works on his own projects, and trades stock over the Net. He says he's quite good at it. He even took us and Alex out to dinner at his favorite restaurant in Prague.

Geoff was so into his post rat-race life that he kept telling us we should just keep riding, and never go home. He was sort of like a siren, but instead of waving us ashore, he was waving us out to sea. But we don't have it in us. By the time we reached Prague, Eric and I had been on the road for about 25 months. We were starting to get so burned out that we really didn't deserve to see some of the beauties around us. We couldn't even look at most cathedrals, and we ran screaming from museums (except the human skeleton one we described in the last chapter, in Kutna Hora). So we were actually looking forward to coming home, and getting an apartment that we could come home to every night, and maybe getting a little bored in front of a television. I'm sure that sounds disgusting to most of our working readers. But I figure once we're home for a bit, we'll be more refreshed for future travels.

The only other people we met in Czech were in our hotel. Two days running in the breakfast room, we talked to two ethnic Chinese guys, one from Singapore and one from Holland. The guy from Singapore is an investment banker. He says he works 80 hours or more a week. I asked him if it was worth it. He said, No. I told him it doesn't cost that much to travel (he probably didn't believe me, since we were all staying in that same, $75 a night guest house. But it's rare for us to pay that much for a hotel). I told him "Don't forget to quit." He told me not to forget to get a job when Eric and I go back home.

The ride from Prague out of Czech was uneventful. We decided to stick with our original plan and head north to Dresden, instead of cutting west through Plzen (great brewing town), southern Germany and Switzerland. In Asia, we never had a big problem setting routes, because we were mostly on skinny islands or peninsulas. But in Europe, I keep looking at the map and wanting to go everywhere--west, north, east, south, anywhere but where we have already agreed to go. I'm sure this drives Eric nuts.

So after flirting with the western route, we headed north. We camped one night at Tezerin, then spent the next morning bumming around Litomerice (pleasant small town with extremely cheap Net access in the public library). Just before Litomerice we saw something we haven't seen much since Asia: a bicycle pushcart carrying a huge fridge and even a kitchen sink. Now we've seen it all.

Later in a very small town, just 10km away, we pulled up in front of a bar. The door was locked but an old man walking by said, "moment..." then something we didn't understand but he clearly wanted us to wait. He walk off quickly. A few minutes later a middle aged woman walked up the road. She was very friendly. We asked for two "piwo" (Czech for beer). She unlocked the bar and came out a few minutes later with two large plastic cups of beer. Really good beer too. And for both it cost less than 50 cents.

From Litomerice, Eric wanted to follow the Elbe river north, because the Elbe flows out of Czech, so the way would be downhill. But it takes a really windy path. I looked at the map and opted for the straight route. I should know, after two years, that when it comes to picking routes, Eric is always right. I think I've learned it now. But that day, I was still ignorant.

So we headed straight north, through Usti, and then over one huge hill, the kind that can produce heart attacks. It was a long, brutal climb and at times, the grade was more than 10%. Luckily, it only took about two hours. We reached 700 or 800 meters, from around 200 at the bottom.

Then we hit Petrovice, the border town.

ERIC: This is the first border in Europe that has had that Asia feel. In fact, there were a lot of Asian people there, with shops set up along the road had all sorts of soda bottles and chintzy tourist crap hanging outside (big beach towels with pictures of leapords, etc). They looked exactly like the stalls we saw in Zhangmu at the border between Nepal and Tibet.

Also there was a huge supermarket, which was amazing since there was no town to speak of at the border post. Germans pour across the border here to buy stuff on the cheap. We saw couples in Mercedez Benzes loading up their trunks with Czech beer. You can also get bananas here for half price (they may not meet EU size and shape specifications, but they taste the same).

We didn't have many Czech crowns left. But we knew we'd have to pay a high commission to change them in Germany (we were right, the standard minimum fee is 10 marks, or a little over US$5). So we decided to blow them all on one last Czech meal. We sized up a few restaurants, picked one, and had a great time eating. They kept trying to bring us more food, but we had to turn them down because we had a very set budget for that meal (about 300 crowns, or US$9 for two). The owner of the place came over to talk to us.

He asked about where we go back to when we go home. We plan to live in Washington DC, but we are going to end the bike trip in Pittsburgh, PA. We usually don't name Pittsburgh, thinking most people abroad don't know it. But Pittsburgh is an Eastern European city, and not only did this guy know it, he knew it was the home of Jaromir Jagr, famous hockey player for the Pittsburgh Penguins. It was a great meal, but it was a little over our budget. We gave them our 300 crowns, and then had to raid our coin collection to give them 10 more crowns to pay the bill exactly.

Next: Germany, from East to West.

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