Crawling around Prague

On our way to Prague one of my friends said she wanted to see the castle. I was like "there's a castle?". This is funny because I had been there before. Well I ended up remembering the castle one I remember the trip up there on the tram and the freezing weather and trying to take refuge from it in a church. The thing is that the Prague castle is not so much like a castle as one would think but a collection of old buildings and I would probably call the actual castle more of a palace. It seemed weird to be in Prague after four years of thinking "been there, done that - no reason to go back". It was a big city with loads of old buildings. I do have to say they all started looking the same after a while. I might have also been in a weird mood and not feeling the wonder other people where.

I think I like looking at great landscapes and such better than buildings in a city. Canyons and such are way great. I also liked looking at the lakes on the way there from the train windows. At some places it almost felt like I was just on a train to Jyväskylä. I think at the moment I actually rather wanted to be going there.

My travel companions walk slowly. I mean really slowly. I know I have a habit of walking at a reasonable speed but that just wasn't it. I was trying to "keep down" (opposite of keepin up) with the group but it was just impossible. I tried doing the Thunderbirds -walk even making "the puppet" trip once in a while, I tried doing my very slow sunday stroll walk and even tried to just walk very slowly but nothing worked. My legs started hurting because of walking too slow even though I had to stop like every five meters to wait for the group. I did even try to converse with the group to want to keep with them but they did not get my tourist attitude. I even stopped to buy ice cream or gaze into shop windows but they were still not keeping up with me. At one point I suspected they might be doing it on purpose but that just could not be it. Or who knows. (There were seven of us all together and you might guess I was the outsider not that I'm not used to such groups.) And yes while I was walking as slow as I could all the rest of the people on the streets were walking at twice the speed. I'm not in the habit of exaggerating.

I did not get my travel companions. They did not want to go for coffee and thus take it easy or go round like crazy seeing everything. Or they did want to see everything but did it in the snail pace I could not keep down with. Most of the group also apparently did not need food at all. After six hours of going around the castle and surrounding area some people were "not really hungry" and the ones that were did not voice their opinion on wanting a break for food and since I was the only one casually saying I could use food, nothing came of it. Oh why can't seeing the sites be pleasant. It could be. I know. I've had pleasant tourism experiences at times. I do not need to wake up at 8 in the morning just to see the sites. I can skip a few buildings to have a pleasant moment in a cafe watching other people walk by looking tired.

I did maybe have some fun or at least I can say that I've been there and done that twice - no need to go again. It was weird having memories of the last trip flashing back when I saw places. It was quite disturbing at times. No need to have that happening again.

The surreal part of the trip was when finally after 12 hours of traveling on trains we finally got back here and got off the last train. Suddenly, like magic, my travel companions had learned to walk at a regular pace and were trailing off toward their home with just a few bothering to wave me goodbye. I just had to laugh. It was quite ironic. After that I went to get my bike and cycled home in the pouring rain. I will most likely travel with these people again.