prague and the C Z E C H republic

March was definitely madness in our house. April started out at a fast, furious pace as well.

As I type this, there are five Bavarian men working like crazy.

Screeching rolls of tape, a dialect of German I can not understand and crumpling  packing paper are the sounds that fill the rooms of our emptying house.  

The real packing started the last Tuesday. We were allowed to ship 500 pounds ahead of our household goods shipment.

Towels, sheets, pillows, dishes, scooters and of course, Legos are all en route to KS.

The real fun started this past Friday as the majority of our household items were boxed and snugly placed onto crates headed for Haysville, Kansas.

This afternoon, we will be left with only the dust and mess from almost three years in our Mackenbach home as they plan to finish up and sign off on our shipment in the next few hours.

Great friends have welcomed us into their home for three nights until we can move into temporary housing on base.

Wednesday, we will ship our van. Thursday, we will move on base. We fly out April 22nd.

Opting not to spend the weekend in a half-filled house waiting to be cleaned, we took off Saturday for our last quick trip.

Our destination was the {huge} city of Prague in the Czech Republic. In just twenty four house, we were we able to peek at another beautiful city while checking another country off our list.

Planning to drive and come home in a day, we took the advice of friends and drove the bulk of the trip (four hours) to Grafenwohr, Germany where we stayed in Army Lodging for the night. It was great advice as we did not have to wake up at the crack of dawn and all got a good night’s sleep.

Our plan for Prague did not go quite as anticipated. We are actually just fine with that.

Prague is not a driver-friendly city.

It is also a big city. You have to be careful where you park with gangs and theft a huge problem. We saw several cars with boots attached for those parking illegally. The rules are strict, the language a barrier. We are not big-city people to start with and noted how grateful we were to be on the same track.

On top of those factors, our Coleman was on day two of an ear infection that landed us in the ER between the hours of one and four {am} the night before. On a good day, he’s not thrilled to walk. Today, we decided to not even pick that battle.

Rather than pay more than $30 for safe underground parking to fight kids in a city they did not want to be in, we did what we like to call a drive-by tour. Jim's superior big-city driving skills were put to the test with busses backing up in front of us and trams coming from every direction. 

All in all, we survived.

I think we caught a little of the beauty, but were once again happy to get out of the craziness of another big European city and back into Germany.