Friday, August 17, 2012

Prague or Bust!

Don't let the face fool you... I was in complete panic mode at this moment.

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Blogging and traveling don’t make for good bedfellows if I am the person in charge of both duties.  In a word, I… rather, WE have been rather busy and documenting our travels has taken a back seat.  

While traveling through each country, I wrote out some highlights of our adventures so far, more as a catalog of our trip.  It's more about mine and Martin's adventures and less as a blog.  I hope you don’t mind that my voice is written more in my traveling voice (if there is such a thing) and less in my blog voice.  

To begin, traveling with the Frey family may not be ideal for some.  What I have found is that when we hit the city we have planned to explore, we kind of hit it running at a marathon pace; really with little time to relax.  The reason is because we are on a tight schedule if we want to hit all the cities I have planned out for our next six weeks of travel.  Yep, I said six weeks.  Are we crazy?  Maybe… my reasoning is that if Martin was offering, I was willing to take full advantage of the time and schedule.   We have a lot of cities that I have wanted to see all my life and I am not taking this particular undertaking lying down.  

So far, Lily has been more than ideal and a wonderful traveling buddy.  Although getting around Europe with a small child who is also“non-walker” has proved to be both challenging and a bit hysterical (in a funny sense), Martin and I are managing.  We have lifted Lily up stairs and then down stairs.  We have pushed Lily’s little stroller past its maximum capabilities and it has held up strong with both of us saying, “I don’t know how this stroller is still moving.  I was sure that last round of stairs would have done it in for good.”   However, it keeps rolling and we keep moving.

From my last post, we were still in Moscow, where Martin and I were going to catch a flight to Prague.  That in its self proved to be a bit challenging.  When I booked the flights a few months ago (on a Russian airline), I didn’t realize that it had us routed through Istanbul with a one hour layover before we were to catch a connecting flight to Prague. This is all fine and dandy, but my husbnd is an engineer by trade, and taking a flight to Instanbul instead of in a straight line to Prague didn’t seem logical.  Istanbul is great and all, but it is completely in the opposite direction of Prague.  Problem was, we didn't figure out this important piece of information until the day were to leave Moscow.

Quickly, Martin had a travel agent cancel our tickets and book us on another flight straight to Prague.   Only, the travel agent booked the wrong date, the 25th of August!  Again, we didn't figure this out until noon and the supposed flight was scheduled for 2 pm!  About that moment, I felt my heart beating out of my chest wondering if we really got ourselves into a bit of pickle.  So, I jumped online while Martin called the airlines and cancelled the flight slated for the 25th.  

As I was frantically searching, I saw that flights for that same day were upwards to $600 each.  At that point, I was thinking that I am going to need to be hauled off to the hospital because our VISA was about to expire and I was too cheap to pay that hefty sum to get us out of Russia (my heart was coming out of my chest at that point).  LUCKILY, I found a website with discount tickets.  For some unknown reason, I found flights on Lufthansa airlines for less than $200 each that were leaving Russia that very afternoon.  I booked them and then went back to try and recreate that same fair and flight, only to be told that they were still $600.  I don’t know why, but an instant prayer was answered in finding those cheap flights, because I'm still not quite sure how I was able to secure those tickets. 

When we got to the airport in Moscow, we found that our flight was delayed, which would have been fine except we only had an hour layover in Munich.  My heart began to pick up its pace once again as I sat there ringing my hands.  We were going to miss our flight for Prague!  Finally, an hour later our flight pulled out of the airport and headed for Munich. 

When we got to Munich (an hour late) there was a Lufthansa worker out on the tarmac waiting for Martin and I with a special shuttle to take us to our flight.  One slight glitch was that we had to clear customs in Munich!  I was sure the flight wouldn’t wait any longer; we were destined to spend the night in Munich.  I was going to need to be taken away in a stretcher at about that moment.  Martin, of course, was completely calm joking how he wouldn’t mind spending a day in Munich.  Me, on the other hand--it was Prague or nothing!

Somehow, the customs worker could see the panic in my face and shuffled us through customs quickly.  Then back to the shuttle, out to another part of the airport, back onto the tarmac where our plane had been sitting waiting for the Frey family for an hour.  

When we boarded, I felt the compelling need to individually apologize to all the patient passengers as we passed them.  FINALLY as I took my seat, I let out a gasp and fell instantly asleep for the 40-minute flight to Prague.

To be continued…