CZECH REPUBLIC

We reach this country with the patience practically used up; we gave plenty of turns trying to look for the best place to do hitchhiking to the outskirts of Bratislava. In the end a Czech picks us up, and it is also true that when you spend hours on the road waiting, and somebody at the back whistles you, and says you that he brings you, the joy multiplies by a thousand. In this case, neither drug nor nothing, the man crosses the border with us without any problem, and he left us in a place where he would return to pass to go to Brno, so, if anybody didn’t stop for us before, he would pick us up late or early. It seems that the hitchhiking works well here; and such a good entry in the country, that the man of the following car gave us a book of sentences in Czech-English. Brno, doesn’t impress us a lot, the truth; but the memory of every place is always good, in this case it was thanks to the friendliness of Katka, big lover of the folk music from Asturias (Spain). The best of the city, the cathedral undoubtedly; and why not, the concert of gospel, that we saw at the main square.



Without waiting a lot, we were half of way between Prague and Brno; and for the first time in the travel, we saw several hitchhikers mates, but they were hitchhiking on the highway, here is prohibited but the people do it... The exit of the motorway where we stay was totally dead, so we had two options: still to be waiting there, or to do as the Czech colleagues and hitchhike in the motorway. In the face of our astonishment, the first enormous truck that pass, stops... we didn’t think two times, we run to go up, and again surprised when the driver asked us to remove our shoes to go up to the truck. The man was a very friendly Turkish, he told us that he stops because he thought that I was Turkish as well. When we go by truck the time is longer, because it goes more slowly, and you establish more relation with the people; although the language sometimes is a problem, with people as Goktug we can understand each other even if the same language is not spoken.

In our first look to Prague we saw that the prices are higher by the massive tourism, as this country is cheaper even than Slovakia. Here we stay five days at the house of a Ukrainian and a Russian, Olesky and Pavel.



The city is very interesting, undoubtedly, but I prefer a short journey that we did during our stay here…



One of the days we went to Kutna Hora, a town at 70 km from Prague, and as the hitchhiking goes well here, then, why we are going to pay a train; on the day we went and we returned. The Gothic cathedral is amazing, and we also had the opportunity of watch the museum of the tobacco, very interesting; but the best thing of the town was the Bone Church, a "tribute" to the dead people of the big plague, that devastate Europe, The Plague. During the plague, the corpses were piled up in common pits, and to somebody occurred the brilliant idea of decorate the interior of the church of the cemetery, with the bones of about 40.000 people. There are shields, letters, vases, but the summit work undoubtedly, is the central lamp; absolutely everything make with bones.

For the first time leaving a city we have "competitors" hitchhiking, that is good signal, and it is that here this works very well. The last night in Czech Republic it wasn’t that well, it was at the unpronounceable city of Hradec Kralove, where it joins a big storm, and cold, with a failure of our contact of CS, although finally we fix ourselves, and we spent the night in a kinder garden, was an interesting experience...