Munich to Prague

Czech! Czech ! Czech! Czech ! Czech !

I had dozed off when the sound of this sound woke me up on the upper tier of Deutsche Bahn bus. In the same bus a group of young men had been travelling with us and making the most of this prolonged journey between Munich and Prague. This sound of Czech…Czech meant that we had crossed the German territory and had entered Czech Republic. There was no reason to celebrate this event but the young crowd was in a mood to celebrate everything and anything. Even before this group had even boarded the bus at Munich the beer bottles were in their hands and they remained so when I last saw them disembarking. My estimate is that each one of them must have had 8-9 bottles to drink if not more. Our German conductor was enjoying their company very much and made sure that they shared some beer with me. When I went and bought some beer at a stop, he insisted that I keep it away and drink some free Beer.
 A stockily built character, he was as involved with the group as if he was their team leader. He could not speak a word of English so it took me a long time to understand why the bus had stopped soon after starting from Munich. All he would do was look at the rear end and reply ‘Kaput !’

It was a journey which was scheduled for 4 hours and 39 minutes. It took us over 7 hours and 39 minutes. This was not expected out of super efficient Germans but then a lot of things happened to delay us.  At the very beginning the door of cargo hold came apart (Kaput !) and it was first repaired by a repair team and then bus had to be changed. Then someone realized that his wallet had been left behind in the old bus; once this was resolved , the conductor somehow realized that one of the passengers had been left behind at the point we were waiting for the wallet to be retrieved.
The  bus’ toilet could not cope up with so much beer so the driver had to stop the bus constantly throughout the way. Once the bus stopped, it was difficult to re-start it as loo break would be followed by smoke break. 

Just 4 days later when we took the return bus, it had a different crew and an entirely different profile of passengers. The super efficient driver actually got us to Munich in 4 hours and 39 minutes!

Travel Dilemma 

Now, why was I travelling is a bus to Prague? I mean it would make sense to fly to Prague and save time. Well, my air ticket was Delhi-Frankfurt-Munich-San Francisco- Honolulu-SFO- New York-Munich-Delhi.
Does this itinerary shock you ? And I was adding Prague to this already congested itinerary. Adding one more sector to the same ticket was impossible. I think Lufthansa had not realized that they had sold me too many sectors at a comparatively low price and allowed me 5 stopovers of over 3 days.  Frankfurt was not something I had asked for but the direct Delhi Munich flight had got cancelled on that day so we had to do this additional flight. Up to a point I was willing to pay till Rs 16000 (Euro 200) per person for Munich-Prague-Munich air tickets but the tickets got expensive further and were costing Euro 300 per person. It was then the idea of travelling by train and bus came to me.

Prague is well connected to Munich and Vienna by trains. All information is available at www.Czech-transport.com and online tickets could be purchased at around 40 Euros one way per person from this website. This was a substantial improvement from air fare as our family tickets would have costed Euro 320 for return journey instead of Euro 1200 by air. I was somehow not very happy with the train timings so started looking for bus alternative. I liked what I saw. The timings suited us and so did the fare. We got a great deal of Euro 164 for the entire family for return fare! This booking was done at www.bahn.com and this is what resulted in our bus journey. So organised was the ticketing system that it included the short train ride from Munich Airport to the bus station from where we were to board the bus to Prague.
This wasn't difficult at all. From the airport itself we got S 8 train to Hackerbruke and we just had to cross the bridge to enter the bus station. Travelling light helped tremendously here. The Bus station had on its upper level several restaurants and a grocery store. We could eat our breakfast and wait for the departure time without any problems. 

We had started our travel the previous evening from Delhi. As it happens each year someone at the Indira Gandhi airport tries to act super intelligent . Normally it is some immigration officer but this time we had someone called Amit Bokalia from Lufthansa. He took around 25 minutes to check us in when it should not have taken more than 5 minutes. He looked at our schengen visa issued by Czech republic and wanted to know why we were going to Munich and not Czech Republic. I explained that we were indeed travelling to Czech Republic by bus from Munich. He wanted to see bookings. I am super organized in this respect so presented him with a spirally bound booklet, which had each booking, itinerary and transportation tickets. I opened the page of Prague hotel bookings and gave to him.I also showed him the bus tickets to Prague from Munich. Then he asked me a few more irrelevant questions and after a  point I had to tell him to buzz off. Then came his harangue about why it was important to follow rules and for him to implement them.I suggested that he join immigration department as he did not appear to be fit for an airline job.

The DB Bahn bus was superb. It had huge windows for Panoramic views. We had got front seats on the upper deck. I just wish the windows were cleaner.As we left Munich behind, the beautiful countryside came into view for most part of journey. As mentioned earlier, the journey took 3 hours longer than scheduled. But for most part the stunning views and the singing and merrymaking of the the boys on lower deck kept us occupied. The bus even had wi fi which worked fine for 50% of journey and that kept my kids occupied.
All the delay and anxiety to reach Prague was making this bus drive irritating but as an afterthought all the incidents did make it a journey to remember. We hardly have any remembrance of the return journey !

Why Prague ? 

Last year I had promised my cousin Kunaal that we would celebrate his birthday in Prague as we had been to most of the prominent cities of Europe. Czech Republic had been a part of communist regime till 1989 and we had not yet visited any city of East Europe which had been behind the iron curtain. Prague has had certain fascination for us as most of the friends and relatives who have traveled here have described it not only as the most beautiful city they have been to but also called it a fun city with a lot to do. My aunt has traveled from USA to Prague twice in last few years as she fell in love with the city. My dear friend Linus who had recently traveled to Prague raved and raved about the cafes, pubs, music, beer, historical buildings, and amazing walking tours . Practically, it did not make sense to get a schengen visa for family, break the journey in Munich, and take a long bus trip when the idea was to travel to USA but then my travel plans are always a bit unorthodox. Having visited USA a few times, you do enjoy the shopping and the natural beauty there but start missing the history, beautiful buildings and conglomeration of hundreds of nationalities in the famous squares of the city. We were off to USA for a family wedding and taking a few days detour before that seemed to be a great idea to me and it fulfilled my wife Devicka's condition of taking a break somewhere in between this long journey to San Francisco.

So, we had reached Prague for Kunaal's birthday as promised to him. He had reached there a couple of days earlier with another couple. The only hitch was that we reached the apartment at 8.30 PM feeling dead tired after having traveled for more than 24 hours. It so happened that Kunaal's wife Jyoti and her friend had been very fascinated with Prague and walked a bit too much that day and were in no mood to celebrate and were ready to crash out. So, it was up to us the 3 guys to kick off the celebrations. This we did. I couldn't let the tiredness deprive me of an evening's fun.

Our first evening was at 'Hot Pepper's, at Wenceslas square. They call themselves Gate to hell. After a long and tiring journey, it was more like heaven to me.