✈ Europe Part III (& how the police thought we were smuggling humans)

Our second day in Prague - we pretty much cleared all the places we wanted to go the first day so this was a spam-souvenirs & stuff-our-faces-with-even-more-food-at-cafes-and-christmas-markets kind of day. 

First stop; round the corner to buy like 30 tins of biscuits at x'mas market booths FOB style (no thanks to me) hahaha. We were carrying so much we had to get back to the hotel to drop everything off before coming back out again. 

Btw, this is our hotel lobby hahaha. 

And then off to Tri-Cafe for a tea-break of hot chocolate (or in my case, iced ginger lemonade), hot soup and toasty quiche. 

The owner has a pretty cool routine; he marks the countries and the number of customers he's had from each country on a massive chalkboard list. We were the fourth set of Singaporeans to pop in.

The awesome awesome thing about winter is you get hungry every 2 hours (so you get to stuff your face non-stop) but you don't get (well, too) fat because you're walking so much (and enjoying it to boot).

We walked over to the Prague National Museum after that, bought even more souvenirs at another Christmas Market (Home-made honey!) that unfortunately weighed 2kgs a box, got slightly drunk over free apple cider (because we bought so much honey), and ended up giggling our way to Blue Wagon that had some pretty wicked fusion french and czech cuisine. 

yay us! 

On the way back … I caught sight of this guy and he cracked me up so bad I laughed all the way down the hill.

I LOVE HIS MASCOT OUTFIT. 

I have never seen one like that before. 

But he absolutely, stoutly, refused to look at me or turn towards my direction so I couldn't get a better shot.

He made my day though, he really did.

Our last brekky in Prague before we headed off to Berlin. 

The trip to Berlin was .. epic (all meanings of that word and then some). 

I must share it.

SO... I stayed up the night before prepping for a launch so had pretty much nada sleep and the plan was for me to knock out in the car after I dealt with all pending navigation routes and issues - everything fine and dandy - so I KO'ed and left V to his vices. 

2 hours later, I was violently shaken awake by a very desperate V because:

1. No more sun 

2. No street lamps on the interstate highway 

3. Very, very bad fog outside - visibility? less than 10m ahead of us

4. Car is starting to mist up on the inside as well 

5. Normally zen driver feels panicky x100 because he is on left-hand drive & it's some seriously unfamiliar ground now with the above going on

Conversation pretty much goes like this: 

V: Wake Up, Wake Upppp!! 

Me: waddup WADDUP! We in Berlin??? 

V: No. Look. 

Me: Oh. OH. That's not good. 

V *pretending to be calm: OK. Let's deal with this slowly. How do you on the ventilator in the car? What did you use to do in Melb? 

Me: Like this. 

*Ons something only to have the insides of the car go even foggier. 

Me: Well, maybe not. 

*Tries 10000 other buttons and knobs to be met with failure. 

A very cross V: Okay, that's it I'm winding down the windows so that cold air comes in and hopefully de-mists this stuff on the windscreen. 

Meek Me: Okay.

*15 blood freezing minutes later - no difference. 

Not-so-meek Me: Look there's a lorry in front of you, we can just follow his lights and make sure we don't lose him.

V *relieved: Okay! 

*10 minutes later lorry makes a righty, exits the highway and we're left alone again. 

*Awkward silence mixed with impending doom. 

V: Shit, the misting inside the car is getting worse. Get a cloth or something from the back!! 

Me: OK OK! 

*Grabs a cloth and starts scrubbing the windscreen 

V: Wtf are those my spongebob boxers?

*Me scrubbing really violently

Me: I DUNNO?! I JUST TOOK THE FIRST THING I GOT MY HANDS ON

V: Wtf why are you scrubbing your side!? I can't see!!

Me: Oh crap, sorry *starts scrubbing V's side of the windscreen violently

*5 minutes of me laboriously scrubbing and re-scrubbing the windscreen ensues

*We see a police car drive past us and wave something out of the window

*Silence between me and V

V: You think he's guiding us through the mist?

Me: Uhhh I doubt it

Me: Maybe you should stop the car 

V: Maybe I should 

*Pulls the car to a stop 

*Policeman hops out of his car and v crossly yells something in v foreign sounding language then gestures even crosslier (yes crosslier) for us to exit the highway into a very ominous looking, abandoned exit 

*A lot of fear going on in our car at this time

V: Does he really want us to stop here? Should we be worried? 

(in reference to Czech's police corruption scandal in 2013) 

*Me pretty much mute with fear 

*We pull over and realize that the car plate is german and are eternally, eternally relieved

(at least we weren't gonna get robbed/killed/have our corpses thrown out in the wilderness)

*Angry German Policeman realizes we speak English and starts yelling angry english at us:

HOW MANY PEOPLE DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR CAR?

Meek us: Two 

Angry Policeman: HOW MANY PEOPLE DO YOU HAVE IN THE BACK OF YOUR CAR?!? 

Meek us: None! 

Angry Policeman: WHAT IS THIS IN THE BACK?? SO MUCH LUGGAGE. SO MUCH MIST. HOW MANY PEOPLE DO YOU HAVE IN THE CAR???!

*Cue V shoots me the dirtiest look ever because we both now realize he is referring to our 7 luggage (5 mine and 2 V's) and 30 tins of biscuits and our poor ventilation/in-car mist which must've made it look like we had 10 hidden humans in the back of our car. 

*We open the doors for him to check everything out and he takes our passports and car rental agreement and goes off for the longest and most uncomfortable time ever to run a check on them. 

Policeman returns significantly pleasanter: YOU HAVE PASSED THE TEST!! 

Us: Ummm… 

Policeman: You crossed the Czech/German border and we do random checks for smuggling sometimes.  

*Cue second dirty look from V at me

Policeman: Don't you know how to on a ventilator? 

*Crawls practically on top of V's lap to help us on the ventilator

Us: Well… 

Policeman: Enjoy your trip to Germany!!!  

*Waves us farewell.

Both of us: W.T.F?!

#storyofmylife.

Anw, we were so traumatized by that incident, V felt that it was imperative that we stop by Dresden in Germany for a quick pick-me-up and calm-your-soul cookie at another Christmas market. 

But I mean, really, do we look like human traffickers or smugglers?! 

You can probably tell, I wasn't looking very remorseful and V was still looking very harassed hahaha. 

The fear must've ignited some sort of a stuff-our-faces fest because we couldn't stop eating after hahaha.

And that wraps our 3-hour stopover at Dresden. 

Will blog about Berlin in my next post!! :>