Czech Trains

Before coming to Europe, I bought a couple train passes, one, the "global" Europe pass, and the other, the Czech Flexipass (because the "global" pass doesn't cover any Eastern European countries). Because I had this train pass, I felt that I should take the trains as I went from Brno to Třebíč to Telč to Praha (Prague). This was a mistake. The train from Třebíč to Telč took about two and a half hours. The bus would have been 45 minutes. From Telč to Praha was even worse. The first trip was as fast as one could go by train. I was pretty proud of myself navigating small, poorly marked train stations (Jihlava, the station above is one of the bigger ones I went through) where there was no English written or spoken. Going from Telč to Praha, I was not so successful. But I learned some things, where you ask the info person for an itinerary, they most likely will not give you the very next one, but the one after that. So the two hour wait might only need to be 5 minutes, if you're quick. Second, Czechs like to list the next stop of a route, so make sure you know the difference between the final destination and the next stop before that train leaves that you could have taken. Third, have your entire trip planned out before leaving, so if you aren't going to make it to Kutná Hora in time to go to the Sedlec Bone Church, you can take the quicker route to Praha. And lastly, if you're not completely sure, ask someone before you get on a train. Luckily, I asked and got off the wrong one before it left, but not in time to get on the right one before it left. Take home message, if visiting small cities in the Czech countryside, take the bus.

I figured I'd add here some notes on English music. I brought my iPod with me because I figured that I'd be on trains a lot, and it'd be nice to have. But I find that I hesitate to listen to it because it makes me feel out of place. I've been working hard this trip to not feel like a tourist, and there are a couple things that really make me feel like a tourist. One is pulling out my map or guidebook, and the other is speaking or hearing English. The speaking part isn't so hard, I just don't say much all day. But the hearing has made me hesitate using my iPod. But yesterday I realized that a lot of the time when places are playing a radio station, half the songs are in English. But what I find most surprising about this is that they are songs I've never heard before. Not they just aren't my type of songs, I really don't think these songs are very popular in the US. I guess it's kind of a David Hasselhoff kind of thing, they love him in Germany, but he's got no following in the US. So I decided that if they're going to play English music in train station waiting rooms, I can listen to my iPod.