6th May

flew off at night. parents were desperate to send me off (not really but they insisted on seeing me into the departure hall). ongying and dawn appeared too, insisting that it was 顺路 (my ass, seeing that i know exactly where they lived). they insisted that they didn't need a ride back, but who the fuck would give up free rides?

7th May

reached frankfurt in the morning, and the plane ride sucked. too bloody long with nothing to do. the movies got kinda boring. not looking forward to the flight back. there was a pretty adorable baby on the ride though.

moved off from the airport railway station to the frankfurt main station. kinda got lost with all the different tracks, but starting to learn how to navigate the station. the train system in frankfurt works on an honest system, so you'll have to be honest enough to pay for your own tickets, as there's no one checking (other than the random train inspector which i did not see any) and sometimes, the locals apparently do cheat on this.

reached the station and looked for a place to store our luggages. they have these huge lockers for 4 euros each which could store my luggage and my bag. though i'm not really sure if my parent's luggage could fit into it. though there's always the luggage counter which someone will look after it for you but it cost a little more (which we went to at first but the person helpfully told us about the cheaper one). got stuck at the locker, seeing that it ate up my money. carmen went to look for some guy for help and he provided me with another locker that i did not ahve to pay for. germans are surprisingly friendly.

so, with nothing to do til night time when we were supposed to take the train to prague, we walked around the city a little. the people in frankfurt dresses damn well, with lots of suits and coats and i don't know what else. shopping's pretty damn good too, with like megastores lining the streets. espirit's a little expensive here, but h&m is wonderful. there's the bargain shelf where everything there costs like 9euros. carmen got a nice jacket for that price. i got a shirt for a little more than that. but keeping in mind that we were travelling to london (factory fucking outlets ftw) we controlled our shopping impulse to the max. and ended up eating a lot. lots of fantastic cars around this area as well. all the mercs and bmws and other luxurious huge cars. they also had the smart cars, which were like tiny little cars that was damn cool. the way they parked the car was pretty funny as well, in the gap between two huge cars (perpendicular parking). wish i had one.

breakfast was this 5 euro thing, with like three freaking eggs. unless my scrambled eggs have been fried with 3 eggs or something, this has got to be the most number of eggs i've eaten at one go. 

lunch was at this street market thing, and we had a sandwich each, and this fried potato thing with this really good sauce and pickled lettuce(?). no idea what the vegetable and sauce actually was, but tasted damn good. and of course, we had beer. one light beer and two dark beers. interestingly enough, it was the dark beer with the weaker alcoholic taste. papa would love the light beer though. if i'm not wrong, a glass of beer cost about 2 euros or less. and this was the place i got my first tan of the year. you know how they say that in the desert, standing out in the sun is fucking hot, but once you got in the shade it'll be damn cool? it's the same way in frankfurt (and like all the other cities which i've been in so far). sticking our beers in the shadowed area kept them cool for damn long, even without ice. but with good beer, it didn't last that long anyway. there was also this pretty interesting drink, which was apparently apple wine. tasted like alcoholic apple cider. i liked that a lot. and being greedy asses, we keep forgetting to take photos of our food (this has happened so many times, even in singapore).

dinner... i can't remember what the hell we had. was it mcdonalds? i think so. the mcdonald's in singapore might be better, with cheaper prices and better sauce. and more dessert choices. no such thing as an apple pie here. :(

and we were silly enough to pay for the damn toilet in the station when there was a free toilet for use in mcdonalds. and there was no free wireless. :( well there was wireless, but i'm not very sure if there's a need to pay for it, as you got to get accounts (kind of similar to wireless@sg, except that the wireless is confirmed free).

and because we only wanted to use one day on our travelpass, we had to take a train that was after 12 midnight. 12 midnight in frankfurt is 6am in singapore, and coupled with the nonexistent sleep (well i slept very little) on the plane, this was kind of killing me. what a relief to get up on the damn sleeper train and just sleep away.

8th may

and we woke up to see prague out of our windows. by the way, the sun rises freaking early in europe (like around 5am or before) and sets damn late. which does really weird stuff to my body clock. i'm looking around at the sky and thinking it's like 6pm, but a look at my watch tells me it's 9pm. :S

the view out of the train window was damn good as well. we were rolling through the countryside, with the occasional cities popping out.

got a little confused at where we were supposed to get off. we've got really lucky this trip. before we could get off or make any move, the train started moving, and the next station we stopped at was the correct one. everyone kind of breathed a sigh of relief (other people in the cabin weren't sure where to get off too).

and here's our train station!

it's off to our first hostel!

the streets in prague's all cobbled (even the roads), which makes it a pain in the ass to drag our luggage around. if i'm ever coming to europe again and moving around like this, i'm investing in a damn good backpack. i shudder a little wondering about the state of the wheels on my luggage. (hi huimin if you're reading this you might want to consider getting a new luggage.)

yes all the roads in prague look like this. roads are even worse as the stones are rounder, bigger and more uneven.

the entrance to the hostel's hidden in the little passageway. the arrow pointing into the passage only said hostel, and i was wondering WHAT hostel. umm hi hostel your name is only AZ hostel would it kill you to add the two little letters for poor tourists like us? but the hostel's extremely fantastic for the price we've paid. the people in the hostel's are pretty friendly too, helping out with every single stupid questions we had. not a bad place to stay if you ever come to prague, and it's pretty central in it's area. we were able to walk to the old town square, and even the prague castle (which took us like an hour to walk there. we definitely have the words "cheapos on tour" tattooed somewhere on our bodies.

and some of the sights in prague around our hostel.

and now it's time to go wake carmen choy up so i'll probably continue this later.