Munich to Prague

Many say that Prague is the most romantic city in the world, but for my first few hours here I hated every stick of it. It's a long story ...

The day started out well enough - the weather in Munich was sunny and warm, and when I stopped for lunch by a field the air felt like silk, scented with the smells of late summer in the country - drying hay, and sunshine, and flowers.

The first part of the afternoon was similarly pleasant, as I hooned along the autobahn through eastern Germany, golden oldies playing on the radio (it was that or something which made me feel as though I'd escaped into the worst of Eurovision) and ate peach after funny, flat little peach. I crossed the border into the Czech Republic without any drama (or, again, anyone to check my passport, which makes the experience very underwhelming - I might as well be going from NSW to Victoria), and the roads immediately deteriorated. They were still fairly driveable though, and I stopped as soon as I could to get out and breathe the Czech air, which seemed to be the embodiment of pastoral ideals. Never have I seen anywhere so green!

Come for a drive down the autobahn in Bavaria. Towards the end of this clip you can see some mountains off in the distance at the left of the screen. These are the dividing line between Bavarian, Germany, and Bohemia, Czech Republic.

Czech Republic - really, really green.

Onwards ho, and the roads continued poor and it became increasingly obvious that Czech drivers are quite mad. On my way from the border to Prague, I passed two traffic accidents, both involving vehicles which had driven off the side of the road. Nobody hurt, no major damage done to any of the vehicles, they just seemed to have missed the road.

Driving through Bohemia.

As the afternoon wore on, my unreliable Google Maps took me to Prague through the back streets and country roads of the Czech Republic - at first this was rather dreamy as I passed through tiny Czech villages and fields of corn or hay, down streets lined with trees. But after a couple of hours the novelty began to pall and I just wanted to get to Prague already. Even in the midst of my frustration, I couldn't help admiring the Vltava gorge which I drove up to enter the city. However, this particular road was not one which computed with my disconnected Maps and I spent 2 hours driving around and around the city trying to find the campsite, barely dodging fellow drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, trams, busses, tramlines and cobblestones. I had to navigate using the couple of maps which the campsite had on their website and which I'd previously downloaded, and they weren't very detailed, so all I really had to work with was the knowledge that the place was on the Vltava river, and which side of the river it was on. By the time I finally got here and put my tent up I was in a right mood and only fit for climbing into my tent and sulking for a couple of hours before falling asleep.

First task for tomorrow: buy satellite navigation system.