No I didn’t get lazy and forget to post for two weeks. This is just one, very long day.
The drama began when I opened my inbox to an email from Ryanair. The worst had happened: the ground crews were striking again, the airport was to be closed Monday from 4am (our departure was scheduled for 6:40). Though, rather surprisingly, Ryanair offered to change the flight for free to seemingly anywhere, from anywhere. More concerned about reaching Greece than about manipulating the system to get a better flight, I found us the soonest closest possible flight to Athens…from Budapest. While Prague is closer, Ryanair does not fly Prague to Athens, so we were pretty stuck with Budapest, and a 12hr 3-train trip through Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.
We’ll arrive in Budapest with a bit under an hour to explore before heading to the airport for our Athens flight at last!
My attempt to do a quick run to Wenceslas Square, “a five minute walk” according to Prague’s train station website, was neither a walk nor five minutes. I got to the point that I could see the square, but was still a few blocks away, when I got the text that our departing train was arriving. A great plan foiled by bad directions! So, I got my 20 minutes in Prague, running full speed for about 16 of them. I got one half decent photo:
Now I sit, a bit over 9 hours after boarding my first train today, and with exactly 3 hours remaining. All I can say is Athens better be amazing!
Berlin to Prague to Budapest to Athens
