Marvels and Mishaps

Our last day in Germany began well and ended...well, let's call it an adventure.
With the wedding being over, you would think we'd all be sleeping in and relaxing, right? Well, some of us did. Stephanie Andresen and Stephanie Armstrong left the house at 4:30AM to go to Ireland for a week. Kimberly left around 7, and Mr. Andresen was the one who carted everyone around. Carissa and I managed to sleep through the early morning activity and woke up rested. Once again, we were able to take our time getting ready and I decided to pack my backpack since Stephen and I were planning to leave. :( We didn't know when exactly we'd be leaving but I figured we should leave sometime in the afternoon. This day also happened to be a German holiday so Thomas invited us to a park with other church friends. Stephen, Sean, Erich, and Thomas came to the Andresen's where Stephen and I said our goodbyes to everyone and left for the park. We grabbed some lunch at McDonalds on the way and arrived at a beautiful and HUGE park! By park, I don't mean the little parks where kids slide down the one slide and play in the sand. I mean a HUGE green park with fields of grass, dirt paths, some statues, and several trees. It took us awhile to find the our church friends, but we finally did and began passing around a volleyball. Next, Thomas taught us all how to play Cricket! Then we ended with a Russian game called "3 is too many" (translated literally). It's hard to explain, but it was really fun to play!
The next few hours were sad and a little unfortunate. Thomas, Erich, Sean, Stephen, and I walked back to the car so that Steve and I could grab our backpacks. When we were almost to the train station, Stephen realized he had forgotten his jacket in Thomas' car! (I'm just glad he remembered before we were on the train!) Thomas graciously offered to run back and meet us at the station. The rest of us continued on, and tried to figure out which train we should take. When Thomas was back and we'd bought our tickets, we hugged them goodbye and took off. It was sad to say goodbye to all our new friends, but we couldn't be sad for long, because we were on our way to Prague!!
We still had to switch trains so as to take the Eurail from Berlin to Prague. We managed to get off at the right station and find the platform that the train would leave from. Fortunately, the train was running a little late and we arrived with about 10 minutes to spare. 10 minutes went by and still our train wasn't there...something wasn't quite right. Stephen went to check and found out that the train had been moved to the platform behind us!!! Naturally, he was informed just as the train was leaving. Therefore, while we were sitting on the platform waiting for our train, it was sitting literally a couple yards away. Aaaaand we missed it. :) For some reason, God didn't want us on that train. The next train was due an hour later so we sat around, checking the train updates often, and eventually boarded the correct train headed for Prague! :) We left Berlin about 6:30pm and arrived in Prague at 11:30pm.
And that's not the end of our adventure...
You see, I've never really had to plan for trains, and hostels, while trying to think of everything we might need to know. So...I managed to forget something pretty important...directions to our hostel from the train station! Fortunately (more of God's grace), when I had printed out our reservations for the hostel, there were directions written on the back! I didn't have a map of Prague, but at least we had this.
Directions were a helpful step, but by the time we arrived, the station was dark and almost empty and all the signs were in Czech. This resulted in us guessing...quite often. Fortunately, again, we managed to guess correctly pretty much the whole night. We followed the steps down to the main part of the station. After searching a little, we found a Metro sign. That was good, but then where were we supposed to buy tickets? and with what? (since we didn't have Czech money). Here's how we did it. Stephen got cash from an ATM, but naturally it gave him cash in big bills. We finally found the ticket machines only to find that they only take coins; but we only had bills. Next objective: change our bill into coins. We found an open cafe in the train station and although the cashier didn't look happy about giving change for a large bill (we simply bought a water), he did anyway and we had coins! Next dilemma, the ticket machines would only take 20 Korun coins. We had one 20 and one 50...we needed two 20's. So...I returned to the cafe to buy another water and recieve a 20 K coin. Success!
We found the correct Metro and took the train to the next station where we needed to change to another line. As we stood waiting for the next train, we were told that this was going to be the last train for the night!! What timing! (once again, God was gracious!) We took the last train to our exit and found our next challenge. How were we supposed to find the streets on our written directions? We never did find the streets, but by following Stephen's intuitions on directions (which sometimes isn't the smartest thing, but in this case was impeccably accurate) and by spotting one landmark that I had read about in the directions, we were able to find our hostel! I'm still amazed that we did it so quickly and without a map, but very glad that we did. It was almost 1am by this point and we were more than ready to find a bed. :)
We checked into our hostel room and immediately went to bed.

Sorry, no pictures were taken to document this day....but never fear, I have a TON from today.