Travel Diaries #7: Entering a Different Land

Riding the train from Salzburg to Prague was the craziest train ride I took on this trip. Riding through Austria, there are quaint towns dotted along the countryside with the steeples of their churches pointing towards the sky. The houses are chalets that (usually, not on this trip though) are covered in snow in the winter. Everything is warm and inviting, as it should be...The Sound of Music was, after all, filmed here. As soon as we crossed the border, it was obvious that we weren't in Austria anymore. The train station was not shining with joyful Austrian faces awaiting the arrival of their loved ones. No, the station was an old broken down house surrounded by nothing but fields and standing on the platform was an old Czech man in a big fuzzy hat, a heavy coat and a bushy grey beard attached to a very serious face.

As day turned quickly into night, things just got crazier. The old, broken down train stations looked just as sad as ever and the man on the platform was now holding a lantern with a candle in it to guide the train in and send it on its way. Changing trains was something that terrified us, solely because of the name of the town where we had to change trains: Czeske Bodejovice. It didn't sound inviting and so far the train stations we had seen did not look inviting to tourists. Luckily, this town we'd never heard of was a little bigger than we thought and with the help of a Czech information desk through very broken English, we were on our way to Prague.

The car ride to our apartment made me feel like I was being tossed around in the waves of an ocean of uncertainty. We turned up one bumpy, cobble stoned street and made a sharp turn around another too narrow for most any car. It was a maze and I loved it. Every building was decorated with such detail and architects of long ago decided that intricate statues should be placed on every building, no matter how insignificant it is. The buildings all had giant doors, the night life was apparent and I was excited to be there.

The next two days, we wandered all over that city taking it all in from many of the different towers and bridges throughout the city. Looking out from a tall point, all you can see are red rooftops of buildings all crammed together and the streets are so narrow, you don't even see them from up high. The cathedrals look like castles and we quickly understood why they call it the City of Spires. Everywhere you look, something is pointing high in the sky in a foreboding manner. It's a beautiful city, but it has a very dark past.

We visited the Museum of Communism and for two hours I read about the rise and fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia. It was a Communist state until 1989. Here we stood, tourists in this city, only twenty years after such darkness had finally left their nation. Considering how little time it has been, this city is phenomenal. They have made quite the comeback, but it seems like it will be ages before that comeback will hit the outskirts that we rode the train through. I received more history of the country just in that train ride than I ever knew about the Czech Republic and that was just one tiny portion of it. That is why I have loved this trip. There's no way to fully understand the history of the world without seeing it and now that I have seen a little bit, I understand so much more than I ever did before.