Prague
Authored By Brian
I’ve heard so many great things about Prague and forced my brother and father to add it to our itinerary. The Czech Republic is in the process of becoming part of the European Union but my travel agent (Rose Wylie, Travel 100 Group, 847.256.2108 x163) wisely advised us to make sure our rental car agency would permit our car to enter CZ. My dad told me he had found a fantastic deal on a car and I passed the warning along to which the rental agency assured us the car was good to go. The drive from Berlin to Prague is not very far and we figured we could make it in about 3-4 hours at a leisurely pace allowing time to enjoy the countryside and occasional rest and stretch stop.
The countryside did not disappoint and in short time we were carving our way through narrow roads in country towns en route to the border. Unlike most of the EU which has forgone borders like driving between California and Nevada, the Czech Republic still has a regular border checkpoint for passports and auto papers (proving you own/rent the car you have).
Although we knew we would reach the border eventually, we were quite unprepared for it as it popped out of nowhere. We pulled into a median parking position to search the car for our passports and auto papers before getting back into line and approaching the guards (complete with automatic assault rifles).
As it turns out, this picture is as close as we got to Prague. Avis rentals does not allow any of their cars into the Czech Republic despite what they told us repeatedly and we were kindly redirected by the assault rifle, er, guard, to head back into Germany. No stamp, no Czech Republic, no Prague. That also means nowhere to stay as our reservation was in Prague.
A quick check of a map for our next destination Munich and the in-car GPS navigation, we settled on Dresden as our stop point for the evening and off we went… strange, the countryside looks mighty familiar.
