The Last Day of Hiking!

Berlin was a very nice city but, sitting in our cosy room at Lette'm Sleep youth hostel (on Lettestraße, haha), after a walk around the sleepy Wednesday-night centre, we realised that we would not be able to make the most of Berlin without being there for at least a few days. In fact, all of our city stays had only been for one night, and it seemed a shame to have to leave a place before we properly got to know it. This in mind, we decided that we would depart from Berlin early on Thursday, and try to do the whole Berlin-Prague trip in a 'one-r'. This would allow us a proper long weekend in Prague, and a chance to truly appreciate it.

Enter the most hectic hitchhiking day we have yet experienced.

Our early start actually turned out to be 9am or so, so not incredibly early. With the help of googlemaps and our own innate senses of direction, we took the S-bahn to the southern outskirts of the city. This actually provided us with a great view over the streets and houses as we passed through and over them. Conclusion: Berlin is a really great city, but definitely deserves more than an evening's viewing.

We settled down between a Burger King drive-through and a petrol station, and scribbled ourselves cheerful 'Dresden' signs on the back of last month's cereal packets. Most of the cars seemed to shun us, until a young man walked over from a nearby carwash, introduced himself as Trösten, and offered us a lift to Dresden. Trösten turned out to be a great guy, who spoke very good English and was interested in everything, especially languages. He had to travel between Berlin and Dresden every week to take care of the two companies which he had co-founded. One undertook electronic database analysis for companies, and the other, a pioneering project, offered a kind of social and professional networking website for mathematicians. He had a lot of interesting ideas about the learning of languages, and was full of fun anecdotes, like the time when he had mistaken the word for scrambled eggs for 'cocaine' in venezuelan spanish!

We had a great time hitching with Trösten, and when we arrived in Dresden we checked out some maps together and he dropped us at a roadside from where it looked likely we would be taken to Prague.

As time passed though, it became apparent we had not picked the best spot. Hundreds of cars drove past, but no-one gave us a second glance, even though there was ample space to stop. Puzzled, we walked partway into the centre of Dresden, then bussed it the rest of the way to the Central Station. After getting an internet connection, we decided to take the advice of the World Wide Web, and try a location in the South of the city, near the Teknische Universität. We encountered a couple of German hitchers who'd been there all day and were still trying. We waited for 3 hours and watched the passing traffic. Eventually, the temptations of a nearby kebab shop got too much, and we went in for a donner and beer. The waiter also befriended us by mysteriously bringing us shots of something awfully strong, possibly Ouzu. We sat gloomily and researched youth hostels in Dresden

We walked gloomily back out into the cold and semi-darkness and spent a gloomy 15 minutes scouting for alternate hitch locations for the next day. There were none. I thought it might be nice to wait 5 more minutes by the university and hope for the miracle. The miracle came!

A huge truck, driven by a very nice czech man, stopped at the lights and he gestured us inside. Our driver spoke very little English or German, but he made it clear he could take us to within 10 miles of Prague, and the rest was up to us. We didn't actually get his name in syllables we could understand and memorise, but he was a great driver, especially considering that he was carrying 40 tonnes of metal in two containers. Soon we were across the border, and standing outside a service station in the dark holding up optimistic signs. It got darker and colder. We went inside for coffee, and thought gloomy thoughts about sleeping the night in the café.

However, before we could get too downcast, a guy came out of nowhere and offered us a lift to the outskirts of Prague. Micha was another trucker, this time from Belgrade. He spoke a little more English, but still very little. He was again a lovely guy, and very happy to share his German chocolate-cakes with us. We were dropped at a service station, waved goodbye, and realised we had no idea where we were, and didn't have lots of cash for a taxi.

We walked into town.

And what a creepy walk it was...almost no-one about, a mix of woods and suburbs, then taller buildings, tramlines and finally...a hotel! Booked out. The next one was too. Eventually we got the youth hostel 'Marabou', where we got an internet connection. We also met Jan, and with a combination of the two, we found that most hostels were booked up for easter weekend. However, a few phone calls later, and we managed to get ourselves beds at the Czech Inn, one of the nicest budget places in town. We took a taxi there, czechked in and fell finally into wonderful, soft, clean beds at around 2am.

And never before have we deserved them so much.