Today was our last morning in Prague! While the others got themselves ready and Mark went through his usual morning computer routines, I took one more walk through the empty streets at 6 am. Now that I know my way around, I could take full advantage of the incredibly central location of our apartment. As ratty as the building was, a spot that is both 10 minutes from Wenceslaus Square and from the river (and 15 from the Old Town House, but I didn’t go there is this morning) is hard to beat. I photographed some more façades on Wenceslaus Square and the familiar city scape along the river in the morning light, and walked a little bit along the river listening to Smetana’s Ma Vlast (My Country) on my phone. Then we all had our last things for breakfast (plus some pastries I had brought home yesterday), tidied up, and left around 8:30 by tram (since we still had valid tickets until 9:15).
Once were were at the station, we found a place to park Mark with our luggage, and headed to a discount grocery (LIDL, an ALDI-like German chain) that we had spotted near the station and grabbed some super cheap open-face sandwiches and huge bottles of bubbly water for the trip, because Peter and Andrea were very concerned about disruptions or A/C malfunction on our trip, given the heat alerts all along the route from Prague to Hamburg. We had tickets for a newly finished line from Prague to Copenhagen–the line was not yet completed when they booked the trip, but opened on June 14, only two weeks ago! With reserved seats and all, it was a really good deal at about 60 Euro apiece from Prague to Hamburg without having to change trains.
Before we left, I was able to give our day tickets away and got coffee for the tree coffee drinkers. Then we boarded the train and a very pleasant trip through Czechia and into Germany along the Moldau/Vltava and then the Elbe (nerdy aside: we learned from Wikipedia that technically, the Elbe should be named Moldau after their confluence, given the hydrological convention of using the name of the longer tributary). We saw some beautiful granite and then sandstone formations, and even a few castle ruins, including the improbably named Burg Schreckenstein (which sounds like a children‘s book author‘s invention, Castle Frightful Rock). In Dresden, we got a glimpse of the downtown from afar; from there, we veered northwest to Berlin and started experiencing slowdowns that had to do with switching systems failing because of the heat, so that trains had to wait for each other since they were all using the same tracks. Berlin registered a temperature of 100 when we passed through (although by the time we got home, it was “only” in the mid-90s). After Berlin, the delays got worse, and our train even had to take a detour. The conductor was VERY apologetic and also kept us informed the whole time. The air conditioning worked, the very young Czech Railway employees in the board restaurant worked their butts off, and the mood was overall good. People were chatting, and I gave my seat to a young woman for a while as I lined up for coffee at the on-board restaurant. She had been sitting in the toasty corridor, and that way she could recharge her phone. It turned out that she spoke excellent English, and Mark got to chat with someone new that way! But it was still a long trip, with the delays eventually ending up being worse than on the way here–212 minutes, (vs. 209 from Hamburg to Vienna), 9 1/2 hours instead of 6. And it turns out we were actually super lucky, because later in the day, the entire route from Berlin to Hamburg came to a complete stop in both direction because of the heat wave, and all trains were canceled after about 4 pm. In other words, ours was among the last trains that still got to Hamburg, and if we had booked spots on a later train, we would have gotten stuck in Berlin with no way to get home! We later found out that the afternoon train from Hamburg to Prague (so our counterpart) did in fact get stuck on the tracks for several hours without air conditioning and left hundreds of passenger in the heat without ways to exit (on the tracks, leaving the train is extremely dangerous) until a fire department came to the rescue! So Andrea was right to insist on all the extra water!
We were certainly good and tired when we finally got home to a very toasty apartment (third floor and not well insulated, and of course completely closed up for the last 10 days). We tore open all the windows and doors to make it a bit more bearable. We’ll get somewhat cooler temperatures overnight; fingers crossed for relief. As tired as we were, we all still had jobs–Mark and I got us food at the nearby Döner shop. Peter applied for the partial refunds we are entitled to (for BOTH of those delayed trips). Andrea started laundry right away and heroically began unpacking–I’ll wait until tomorrow. But Mark and I went back out to get the groceries for the weekend at 10 pm; thankfully, the big grocery store by the bus stop is open until 11–and it was certainly buzzing with people now that it had cooled down a bit. We sat on the balcony for a bit and talked (the only cool spot we had), and were not in bed until midnight. What a day!