Military family and the vacation

While stationed overseas there are a few things a family will want to do,  like travel.  Now not all times of the year are great to go traveling, but it always seems that when you get  to time to go traveling its the most expensive time.  Yet we still go after it and we have fun doing it.

So this year as part of my family's Christmas gift I got with another family and we started down the track to where to go for block leave.  So where did we decided to go?  Prague it was.  Why not I was thinking,  well that was the short answer to a long list of things to come.

First I said, "lets stay at hotels and fly into Prague for New Years".  Well at about 5-6000 Euro for a 8 people that went right out the door.  So I went the way that many may have not.  I was thinking "how about the train and I will rent a house for a week should be cheaper, and it was.  But that's only the beginning of the story.

Once I have more photos I will get them updated but Suffice it to say it started snowing the night before our trip.  Its winter and Germany after all so I did expect it.  The thing that worried me is that the past couple weeks Germany had gotten a few (16+ inches) already. Who knew what the roads were going to be like outside with all the ice and snow on the ground.  We only had to drive about 45 minutes away from where we were to catch the train.  Sounded like a great mix.

Our drive down was not bad at all.  Even with the cold temperatures the roads were not icy at all, it seems like the Germans' learned about the use of salt (smiles). Well we get to the town where the station was in and you know it looked like they had never heard or see the modern invention of a plow.  My cohort in all of this was behind me and we trucked on though and finally made it to the train station.  We quickly unloaded all the kiddies and spouses and headed out to find a parking garage. With only minutes to spare we link back up with our families and proceed to the train.  Was this going to be a Lampoon Christmas? Were they all going to have fun? Were we going to be safe in another country? All things were to come.  Knowing that there were going to be challenges with languages and cultures, I knew that this was going to be an experience that would stick in all the families heads.  Both the good and the bad ones.  

We rush to get on the train and to find our seats.  The first time we get on I think we need to be in one wagon and ended up in another.  It turns out that we are sitting in the open 1st class wagon and not the 2nd class I had no idea.  I just thought wow Germans like to travel on trains this is nice.  But all of this was short lived when an attended came up asked for tickets.  I got up and with to use the facilities, only to come back and hear my wife say that the porter said that we have to get off at a station we were not slotted to get off. So I tracked down a porter and try to get to the bottom of all of this.  It turns out that for some reason we going to have to change trains. 

I didn't think this was going to be a huge problem, until they said that I would need to arrange to get on a different train but they did not know which train or when.  We found out shortly after our departure that our one stop of changing trains turned into multiple.  We ended up having to scramble to trains that were not expecting extra passengers. As well as a family that is nice and just let every person go in front of them.  So where did we end up on the train.  The catch was that there were no seats any where. People were sitting in the isles, we ended up in the bicycle room of the IC train.  Oh yeah Sato what happened to my reserved seats.

All I could think of was "How Ghetto".  Train stop after train stop people got off but more got on.  As a seat would come available I would slip in a wife and kid.  The other husband made a make shift bed out of the luggage and dealt with it while I felt embarrassed and ashamed that I was putting them through this.  We finally got on the last train that we needed and we said hell with it and hopped into one of those cabin cars closed the curtains and rested for the remaining time into Prague.  As we were pulling up into the city of Prague it was beautiful.  The snow capped buildings and it looked so modern at night.  It was beautiful I couldn't wait to explore and check out all the sights tomorrow and the rest of the week.  Oh yeah the housing flat that we rented was on the 5th floor which I knew.  But at the time it had a working elevator now which is not working.  hahahaha  Life is grand.  I cant wait to see what tomorrow will bring.

From all of us in Prague....