baden-baden!

Take a trip with us down memory lane (yesterday for us) to May 18, 2007

Hans-Jurgen woke up early on his day off to drive us to Zwickau to catch the train across the boarder. For all the money we had spent on trains in Germany the trip to Sokolov CZ cost us $10 each! More surprsing to Andi after that was that we only paid $1.50 each to get from Sokolov to Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) which was the same distance. What was more infuriating about the $1.50 though was that we had approximatley 20 minutes to change trains but only had Euros. Curtis left Andi with all the bags (except his heavy backpack) and ran about a mile to the bank to change money and back to the station--barely missing the train!!! We had to wait an hour for the next one but it was okay. We made it!

We arrived in Karolvy Vary, took a short bus ride and ended up down in the beautiful city center. So we decided to get a phone card to call Hans Jurgen and tell him we made it--only problem we bought the card opened it to use and realized it was for a mobile phone. I thought I'd ask to exchange it and then remembered that we are in Europe and they wouldn't even think about exchanging it.

The next step was to find our hotel. Curtis checked out the map, decided it wasn't far at all and that we could walk....then we walked, and walked and walked and finished our walk with a hike up a very steep cobblestone hill only to find out that they had given our room away due to a booking error! They found us an apartment right downtown on the river and we got to walk...guess where...back down the steep cobblestone hill. THERE IS A HAPPY ENDING THOUGH!!! Here it is: To make up for our lost reservation they gave us an entire 2 bedroom apartment on the 4th floor of a building right on the river with a living room, kitchen and balcony! I know I'm (Curtis) am not British, but "posh" is the only word to describe this place. If I didn't want to get out and see things so much we would have just stayed in the apartment. On average this place would have probably rented for 200+ Euros a night ($270) they gave it to us for the same price as the hostel...drum roll.... 37 Euros ($50) ! What a steal.

The city was beautiful and we walked lots to see all the fun places. Karlovy Vary is a spa town which used to be run by the Russian mafia and is still frequented by lots of Russian tourists. Also as a spa town there are very nice hotels and spas everywhere as well as natural springs that come out of the ground and have been piped into beuatiful fountains. There are many promanades that you can walk down and you will see people walking around with small oddly shapped mugs getting water from the taps and sipping on it all day long. They think this mineral filled natural spring water will cure their old, tired bodies--the fountain of you if youth if you will. We personally thought the water was---not good.

As we were eating dinner at a restaraunt by the river a man walked by. Curtis thought he looked familiar and realized it was a famous Czech actor named Zdenek Sverak who's film Kolja is probably the most famous Czech film that won and Academy award in 1996 for best foreign film. Curtis owns this movie. All of the Czech people were stopping him to talk and it was fun to see such a "star" so up cloase and personal (at least for Curtis since Andi had no idea who it was). Karlovy Vary is the home of an international film festival where lots of Hollywood Actors come every year and stay in the Grand Hotel Pupp (pronounced like Poop!)

We also saw the places where Casino Royale was filmed and the one promonade was right out of our balcony window. I got some great pictures at night of this spot.

Andi was tired so she went back to the room and Curtis wandered down to the bus station to figure out when the bus left in the morning for Prague. When he got back to the room it was off to bed so we could hit the road in the morning.

C&A