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Tuesday 9 August 1994
After yesterday's downpour, the weather had cleared and it was a pleasant sunny morning. The Christians were already out in force, sharing their early morning sing-song with everyone else in the campsite, whether they liked it or not. I heard them pray for a safe passage to Romania, which I assumed was their next destination. I wondered whether they had been there before. Romania was a country still some way of the tourist circuit but it was probably also the sort of place that was fair game for their missionary zeal.

By way of contrast we were heading in the opposite direction and today would be our last behind the old Iron Curtain. We departed the campsite fairly late, caught the bus to Andel Station and then dropped off our backpacks at Hlavni Station. We started the second part of our Prague sightseeing by catching a tram over the river up to Castle Hill. In some ways the castle reminded me of the one in Budapest in the way that it overlooked the main part of city on the other side of the river. However the castle here was on a far grander scale than the one in Budapest. Situated within the walls of the compound were the Cathedral Treasury building and the former Bohemian Royal Palace which was now the official residence of the President. Dominating the inner courtyard was St Vitus Cathedral, a dark and spectacular gothic edifice. The cathedral was elaborately carved and there were dozens of mischievous looking gargoyles surveying the tourists ambling around below them. Around the corner and just out of sight from all this grandeur was Golden Lane, the tradesmen's quarter which consisted of a terrace of impossibly quaint cottages, one of which used to be the home of Franz Kafka. 

It was noticeable how many people were buying Kafka related merchandise here although I suspected that many of them like me had hardly dipped a toe into his oeuvre. Nevertheless, wishing for some of the arch-bohemian's mystique to rub off onto me, I did purchase a Kafkaesque postcard which I sent to a friend who had actually read some of his stuff. We then exited the castle compound and found ourselves winding down the hill towards the river. Along the way, we had a wonderful view of the red rooftops of the city, a vista that was punctuated by soaring towers and elegant domes. We passed the domed St Nicholas Church which was pictured on the front of my guidebook and then wove our way between the tram tracks towards the Charles Bridge. This seemed to the focal point of all of Prague's tourist activity but that didn't seem to matter too much as there was so much going on here. There were artists stationed along the bridge, many of whom were churning out rather unappealing caricatures of tourists or sketches of Hollywood stars. Some though were selling some reasonable pieces and I bought a small brightly coloured painting of a mill that was attached to a riverside building. With our sightseeing pretty much complete, we walked back to the Stare Mesto where we enjoyed a few drinks outside. We then found an excellent basement pizza joint where naturally enough we stuffed our faces with the wonderful pizza that we saw emerge straight from a wood-fired oven.

After a couple more beers at another bar we caught the Metro back to Hlavni Station. At the station shop, I bought some local wine which came in a wide based bottle which I thought would be useful in preventing it from toppling over whilst the train was moving. I also bought a small bottle of zubrovka, a local vodka and herb combination, to ensure that I got a good nights sleep. We found our reserved seats in an empty compartment but it wasn't long before we once again had company. This time we were joined by three Americans, two blokes and one female who had already been on a Eurail trip for a few weeks. They were a friendly bunch and it turned out that one of them, a Californian called Romel, had actually attended my alma mater Essex University as an exchange student during the past year. The other two Tom and Melanie were both east-coasters but all of them had travelled quite extensively, especially Romel who had actually made it to Romania and the border of Kaliningrad during his trip. We decided to enliven the journey by drinking the wine and playing a few games of cards and it wasn't long before we polished off the bottle of zubrovka as well.

As we journeyed through the night, the compartment got livelier and just when we thought we'd run out of booze, the train stopped at Plzen, the town famous for being the birthplace of Pilsen lager. It therefore seemed like divine provenance that there was a man walking up and down the platform selling big 660ml bottles of Pilsner Urquell through the windows of the train. We bought as many as the rest of our Czech crowns could stretch to and once we were fully stocked, the train pulled off and made its way towards the German border.

Wednesday 10 August 1994
We were still up well into the morning and as the train wound its way through Bavaria our compartment party roared on. Although we had crossed back in Germany, any lingering sense of melancholy associated with closing the circle on our journey was pretty much blotted out by the beer. We must have been making quite a lot of noise though as an Australian in the next compartment kept on coming in and telling us to shut up as she was trying to get some sleep. However filled with drunken bravado I told her that if she wanted to get some sleep, she should book into one of the couchettes. Not too impressed with that she threatened to call the guard but I made some comment about that being against the ethos of backpacking and that as an Australian she should ensure that such protocols were not transgressed. Surprisingly, after that she went back to her seat and didn't bother us again!

It was a hot evening and as our non-smoking cabin rapidly filled with smoke it was necessary to open the windows. At this point Tom, a laid back guy with a slightly hyper edge, decided that the compartment was in need of some decoration so he stuck his hand out of the window whilst the train was going at about 60 mph and grabbed a bunch of branches from the track side foliage. His hand was almost ripped to shreds in the process but the branches nicely decorated the wine bottle which by now contained about twenty cigarette butts floating around in dark, murky water. I knew that that bottle would come in handy and it was reassuring to know that its flat-bottomed design would at least reduce the likelihood of it toppling over.

Whilst the rest of us were quite happy playing cards, Tom decided that it would be a good idea to 'streak the train' so he stripped off and duly ran up and down the corridor before rushing back in saying that the guard had spotted him and was hot on his tail. Luckily though, the guard walked past the door so we could then get on with finishing off our beer in peace. We were still up when the train arrived at Nuremberg for a scheduled half-hour stop at about four o'clock in the morning. Feeling a little restless, the lads and myself decided to get off and wander around the station leaving a rather anxious Lorraine and Melanie on the train together with our backpacks. The station was deserted but it had some nice shops. After spending about 20 minutes exploring the surrounding area we got back on the train much to the relief of our female companions and when the train finally pulled out of the station we managed to get our heads down for a couple of hours sleep.

The next thing we knew it was daylight and we had arrived in Munich. In the early morning light it soon became clear that the compartment was a complete mess. There were empty bottles everywhere and despite our best efforts to prevent them, the sticky floor meant that there had also been some spillages. Whilst everyone else was getting off the train we were busy clearing up the mess with big piles of paper towels that I'd nicked from the toilets. When we finally managed to get the compartment into some sort of order, we bade farewell to our American buddies and then thought about what we were going to do for the next stage of our journey.

We had originally toyed with the idea of walking around the central sights of Munich but we weren't really in any state to do that. The best we could think of was to get back on a train and try and grab some sleep along the way. After having spent the last week and a half travelling around in 'classic' European rolling stock, the type with separate compartments and windows that could be pulled half-way down, we opted this time for a sleek, modern ICE train. Not only were these trains super fast, they were also super expensive. The supplement we had to pay for the privilege of riding on one of them was almost as much as we'd spent during our past week in Eastern Europe. This was train travel on a different level altogether and I didn't feel totally comfortable in my scruffy, hungover state being surrounded by well-dressed businessmen. The design of the carriage was a bit too clinical though and the air-conditioning was positively cold. The tinted windows and brushed aluminium décor made us feel as though we were stuck inside a Bang & Olufsen hi-fi system but at least the seats were comfortable and the pleasant rolling hills of the Bavarian countryside helped to ease away the residual effects of last night's excesses. 

It was soon obvious that we were ripping through the country at great speed and when the ICE train reached Mannheim, we changed onto a more conventional train which would take us through to Amsterdam with just one more connection to make at Cologne along the way. At this point I was wondering why we hadn't travelled from Prague to Amsterdam via Central Germany instead of going via Bavaria. Then as we joined the banks of the Rhine, I remembered that we'd planned to travel up the valley so that we could see all the castles that lined the river.

This really was a great sight and helped to revive our spirits further. It was quite extraordinary how many castles and picture-book villages lined the sinuous path of the river and I was glad that we hadn't skipped the chance to see them. After we changed trains at Cologne, the landscape became more industrial and by the time we crossed the border into Holland it seemed like we'd seen most of Germany in one day. It was late afternoon by the time we reached Amsterdam Centraal Station but a quick trip to the tourist office pointed us in the direction of the nearest campsite which was just a ten minute bus ride away. The campsite itself wasn't too unpleasant but the tents were packed one against another and most of the clients seemed to be teenage weekend stoners from Germany or England. There were a bunch of school age kids staying in the chalets that lined the main camping areas but judging by the expressions on the faces of the adults who were supervising them, this didn't look like it was really their scene. It all seemed a far cry from the campsite in Sopot where we camped amongst Polish families, most of whom were probably spending their annual holidays there. The showers here weren't bad though and after a nice soak we washed off the remnants of last night and caught a bus back to the city centre. 

After all the sightseeing we'd done on this trip, we decided just to wander around at random and generally take things easy. The attractions of Amsterdam could wait for another time and in any case it didn't really fit into the Eastern European theme of our journey. Instead we strolled around the city centre taking in the canals and the red light district but all we really wanted was a couple of beers and something to eat. We found a nice canalside bar where we sat and watched the tour boats and self-hire pedalos go by. Of course there were plenty of drunken Brits around which was a depressing sign that we were close to home but at least we found a great kebab and falafel shop where we stuffed our faces. Back at the campsite there was plenty of activity, people playing music and so on, but we were so tired after last night that we slept through all that without any problems at all.

Thursday 11 August 1994
Today was our last day on continental Europe and the overcast sky matched our mood. I was beginning to feel the end of trip blues kick in. There were lots of hazy looking youths ambling around the campsite in search of a smoke or something to eat but luckily I managed to get into the shower before the queues started to form. After that we bought some freshly baked baguettes from the campsite shop which went down nicely and helped to perk us up. With our tent packed up for the final time, we endorsed our strippenkaarts and rode back to Centraal Station to drop our backpacks off. 

We still had a few hours to kill so we randomly followed the concentric paths of the canals around the city. We eventually found a little Surinamese café where we enjoyed the best meal of the whole trip. I had a wonderful lamb curry which was served with rice and spiced potatoes and Lorraine had a similar veggie option. The old woman running the café seemed concerned that someone might steal the second-hand SLR camera that I'd left out on the table but despite our proximity to the Red Light District, the atmosphere didn't seem too heavy. We had just enough time for one more beer before we made our way back to Centraal Station where we connected onto the boat train for Harwich. 

The train sped through the flat landscape passing through The Hague and Rotterdam before completing the final stretch of our continental rail journey at the Hook of Holland. The weather was cloudy and it had become noticeably cooler over the last day or two. Sadly, this time there were no topless women to greet us back to the Hook of Holland and it was with a sense of sadness that we got off the train and made our way to the ferry terminal. As we left the platform, I watched a local train trundle along the short stretch of track to Hook of Holland Strand, the station at the end of the line where we accidentally ended up on our first day. That was the only stop west but there were thousands east. In one direction the possibilities seemed endless, in the other real life once again beckoned.

Passing through passport control, we were greeted by a friendly official who I asked to stamp my passport just so that my collection was complete. He happily obliged but as we were about to board the ship for the overnight crossing back to England, I noticed a sign saying that there was going to be a British Rail strike the next day. The thought of having to head back to England was always the worst thing about travelling abroad but the strike threat just made things worse. By the time we got up on deck to watch the ferry depart from port, the sky had cleared and the sun was setting. The lights of Rotterdam and Europoort illuminated the horizon and as the ship sailed further away, I looked back across the continent and thought about everything we'd experienced over the last two weeks. Three thousand miles and five countries later, we were almost back to where we had started. I stayed up on deck for as long as it took for the mainland to disappear from view but eventually we found ourselves in the bar again.

Being a Thursday evening the bar wasn't as full as it was on the way over although the large number of Dutch Hell's Angels drinking there probably put some people off. As before, the 'house band' were on hand to provide the entertainment for the evening and as before they reeled through their repertoire of jaunty Euro-friendly hits with a slightly weary aplomb. But just as I was waiting to hear their version of 'Walking on Sunshine', something extraordinary happened. Whilst the singer took a quick fag break, the band seized the opportunity to really do their own thing. The transformation was quite amazing and a smile came across the face of the balding, bearded, beer-bellied guitarist as he plucked the first delicate notes of Santana's 'Samba Pa Ti'. It wasn't long though before the veteran rockers decided to add their own full blown rock wig-out jam arrangement to this classic tune but strangely it worked. The guitarist bashed out a truly awesome solo, hitting all the right notes at exactly the right time. Carlos himself would have been proud and even some of the Angels were nodding silently along to it. When it was all over the crowd cheered and demanded more but as the singer came back on to perform 'The Walk of Life' it wasn't quite what we wanted to hear. At this point we would have normally hit the sack but as we had no choice but to doss down in the bar, we had to see the show through to the bitter end.

Friday 12 August 1994
We were woken early by the sound of vacuum cleaning and as discarded crisp fragments and cigarette ends were sucked up with a crackle, we dusted ourselves down and went out on deck for some fresh air. We'd only left Holland eight hours earlier but the prospect of home and work was looming ever larger. Once off the boat we found out that the notice about the rail strike was true but at least a replacement coach had been provided for us. However, it wasn't so lucky for a couple of cycle tourists who had to remove their panniers and practically dismantle their bikes to get them into the luggage hold. 

It was still early and we made reasonable speed through the desolate Essex landscape and by the time we hit the East End of London we had just caught the tail end of the rush hour. Although we went past a couple of notable sights along the way, including the notorious Blind Beggar pub in Bethnal Green, we were glad to arrive at Liverpool Street and finally make our way back home. After two weeks of camping, sleeping on trains and living for the most part off bread and cheese, an afternoon nap and a hot shower at home were well appreciated. There was nothing much else for us to do later that evening except go out for a beer and a curry, look back on the trip and think about where to go next year and that's exactly what we did.

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