Wednesday, 26.03.08, 9:18 a.m., on a train en route to Prague, CZ

It is uncanny that the train I am riding on to my motherland is called "ALEX." It has to be a sign from Bedrick, Francicek, Pavel, or Zsusanna!

I am sitting in my compartment with a German student who is probably in her mid 20s and two Canadian students, Jean and Gennelle, who are on spring break from their studies at the University of Leeds. Jean is from Alberta and Gennelle is from Ontario. I immediately hit it off with them and we become fast friends. I just hope that they don't think that I am a creeper. When you are traveling independently, you have to put yourself out there---you have no alternative. I'm glad that I have some cool people to talk to because this ride is nearly seven hours in length...

Random aside, but I *loved* Germany. It was quite the pleasant surprise. I was not expecting it to be so charming and the people (at least in Bavaria) were delightful, fun-loving, and helpful. Germany will always be underrated because of 20th century stigmas, but make no mistake---it is charming! Munich reminded me of Montreal, except Germanic and flat as a pancake. Sitting on the train, movement is completely horizontal. The Bavarian countryside is slightly obnoxious in its lack of character. To put it into perspective, it is like central Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania steam-rolled eight million times and decorated with centuries-old churches.
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2:30 p.m., Plzeň, CZ, en route to Prague, CZ

It has been an intense ride. Me, Gennelle, and Jean have passed the time by talking about pretty much everything, including celebrity family trees and who we would want in ours. "ALEX" crossed the Czech border about an hour ago. A surly woman who checked our tickets came to our cabin door and in a broken smattering of English, German, and Czech told us that we would arrive in Prague one hour later because of the snow in Bavaria, which was nothing compared to the snowstorm of biblical proportions that hit Cleveland right before I left for the tour.

Then another woman, even surlier than the one before, checked our tickets yet again and shouted at us in Czech about a train change. We had no idea how to take it, and her gestures made it seem like we should stay on "ALEX" because we were ticketed to Prague via this train. So we continue talking and don't realize that we are the only ones LEFT ON THE TRAIN! The same Bohemian woman comes over and shouts, "Večer! Večer! Večer!!!!" (Hurry! Hurry!)

So we haul ass off of "ALEX" and frantically search for our connecting train in the Plzeň train station and see the platform for "Praha" departing in TWO MINUTES. We barely make it onto this rinky dink cabin in time. I notice that the seats feel a little more comfortable than on "ALEX," even though it looks like it hasn't had any work done on it since the mid 70s. The SAME WOMAN comes to check tickets and yells at us AGAIN. Apparently, we are in first class, so we grab our gear and shuffle off to the second class cabin, which shitty and half of the size of our "ALEX" compartment. So now me, Gennelle, and Jean sit with a man who has uncontrollable nose hair, two German women, and a fat dude with greasy, slicked back hair and a trash stache. He blasts death metal through his iPod. The icing on the cake is his G-Unit hoodie, which is horribly out-of-place with his metal dude vibe. Threeish hours until Prague and we have this...

The west bohemian countryside is harsh. Intense, intense poverty.It is like Appalachia but worse. Shit strewn about outside of plywood shacks, bad graffiti, foreclosed homes, abandoned factories, bundles of freshly-chopped firewood, horses grazing beside piles of garbage, dead Skoda cars from the Czechoslovak era, and gray skies. This is heavy shit. You can see the economy in transition and how nearly a century of communism affected tens of thousands of people.

The forests are glimmers of freshness on a severely dilapidated terrain. Time to stop writing until Prague...it is hard to keep my pen steady on this rickety train!