That's were we were yesterday. We left Antje's as planned, followed almost immediately I shut her flat door by the realisation I didn't have my handbag. Thanks to Antje and her neighbour-with-a-key, it got sorted very quickly, but not until we had missed our train, with just the 3 changes to Praha.
So we ended up leaving for Praha at 11.45am and taking the very trodden route though Regensburg to Schwandorf to Furth im Wald on the Czech border. So far so good(-ish). We were especially excited to go on the double decker train, which was ace.
We got on our next train, and approx 3 minutes across the border our Czech train (one carriage, approx 30 feet long, retro Soviet styling, high formica quotient) seemed to break down at a tiny station and were transferred to a bus. We have now seen all the small villages and railway stations between theGerman border and Plzn (Czech language not strong on consonants, but good on beer - it's pronounced 'Pilsning') and it took about 5 hours.
The countryside is really pretty, with loads of blackthorn, apple, pear and cherry trees overflowing with blossom, and kingcups everywhere. Every village has a large village pond and picturesquely dilapidated old architecture. We were eventually unceremoniously chucked of the bus with everyone else at another station in the middle of nowhere, and just followed the crowd to another train, which also stopped at all the tiny stations to Plzn. Our packbacks are heavy, but at least we have got into the habit of always having water and a bit of food on us, so apart from the uncertainty at times that we were heading in even vaguely the right direction, we were enjoying ourselves immensely.
We eventually got into Praha at 8.45pm and were met by our first Praha host, Petra, who again speaks brilliant English, Czech, Spanish and Portugese, and who's housemate had gone away for the weekend, and offered us his room. We fell into bed somewhat lighter than yesterday! I feel much better for being more physically active though.