So we ended Day 1 of our trip with us passing out at around 6pm, London time… I woke up at about 3am on Day 2 and try as I might, I couldn’t get back to sleep.

At around 4am, I finally had enough of trying and got out of bed, waking my brother up in the process. We watched BBC2 while we puttered around and got ready (not that there was much to pack or unpack for that matter). Now and again, we would look out of the window – not too sure why but we did. I noticed that the snow was melting. I fervently hoped that our flight would go ahead today and I would be grateful for that.

After maybe the 2nd or 3rd time looking out of the window, I saw this:

Pardon the awful photo, but it was the best I could do… but yeah… we saw a fox roaming around! This totally made me feel David Attenborough-ish haha Thought it was rather cool to see.

Anywho, we headed downstairs at about 5am to catch the first transfer bus to Terminal 5. We weren’t surprised that there were already a small mass of people waiting in the lobby. What I was rather surprised at (though I have no idea why), was the sheer amount of people in Terminal 5. There were queue barriers, but no one seemed to be using them and it didn’t matter which check-in counters you were at, there were at least 20 people in each line… and some lines almost went out of the doors! (okay so I exaggerated a little bit, but they were rather long in comparison to others) The staff did try to check in people whose flight was departing within 1 hour, but the message sometimes didn’t get filtered down to the masses.

I listened to my brother for once and joined a short looking queue. Luckily it was the right one and it took us about an hour to get our boarding passes. The lady kind of muttered that we should have used the machines to check in, but I don’t think it would have scanned our baggage tags, though seeing how frazzled she was, I held my tongue.

During our stint in the queue, we heard from one guy who’s been here for 3 days (he had to come back every day to find out if his flight would be cancelled or not) and another dude who waited in line yesterday for 10 hours, finally got his ticket rebooked but because he was pretty much at the end of the line, they had run out rooms at the hotels. I would have to say that we were pretty lucky to only go through what we did yesterday. Man, poor guys…

We hustled through security (we were getting rather good at loading everything into the trays, taking off our jackets and shoes, then putting everything back on, whilst shouldering our gear) and I checked the departure flight information board. There was a spark of dread and apprehension as I saw that we once again did not have a gate number.

I left my gear with my brother to go to the bathroom and tried to shake off the feeling that stole over me, quickly pricking the joy that threatened to bubble up as we went through security. When I came out, he was hovering at the entrance.

“Gate A10.”

The bubble burst in a very good way. I was so happy that I couldn’t get a grin off my face. The grin however, slowly slid off as we were delay by 15 minutes (we had no crew), then by 45 minutes (we had no cabin crew), and finally 2.5 hours later, we were allowed on to the bus to board our plane on the tarmac.

We had the most lovely pilot ever. He was so polite and apologetic about the whole delay. When we finally were cleared to push back, I thought “finally!”… but then we stopped.

Our polite pilot explained how push back works (one dude in a truck pulling the plane, and another walking along side to make sure everything’s okay) and then went on to tell us (with much chagrin) that the dude walking along side slipped on patch of ice and had to be replaced. I giggled at the silliness of it, though the pilot went on in detail that the dude had hit his head pretty hard on the ground and seemed quite shaken – it would also be, most realistically, 10 minutes before his replacement would arrive. Our pilot also apologised for this, even though it wasn’t his fault! Anywho, I felt it was rather poor form of me to find it funny the guy slipped, seeing how severe the slip was, but I’m quite sure he was okay (the pilot was really and sincerely concerned for the guy) and I’m quite sure he would look back and laugh on it too. =P I hope.

Finally… we are in PRAGUE!

Sooooooo happy that we finally made it, though little did I know all the other stuff that would happen to us later on.

We touched down at about 1.30pm, passport control went off with a minor hitch (she was unsure whether my passport photo was me and so had to ask 2 of her colleagues and even then they were unsure still! Definitely will get a new passport when I get back), and caught the bus to Zlicin metro station with no problems.

Actually, on the way down to the metro station, I lost my brother’s phone – and with it my SIM. I think it was the way I was carrying my suitcase – the movements pushed the phone out of my pocket and onto the stair case. My brother was very annoyed at me because he hadn’t uploaded any of the videos and photos of his going away party T____T eep…

I was keeping in contact with my dad quite regularly, keeping him updated with what was happening, and also my aunts in Berlin were calling me up to check up on what was going on and making contingency plans. So losing the phone meant that I couldn’t reassure them that everything was okay and whether or not we had reached our hotel safely. My brother’s SIM wasn’t activated for global roaming and my Samsung had died (hence my SIM in brother’s phone), so we couldn’t do anything til I could log onto the ‘Net.

Anywho… we were almost at our hotel! We just had to train it to Invalidovna and it would be a short walk to Hotel Olympik Tristar.

The baggage handlers managed to somehow lose one of our big suitcase’s wheel… we did better than them: we managed to lose THREE wheels between Invalidovna metro station to our hotel’s reception desk. Yes, three. Two on the big one (so now we only have one wheel left) and one from the small suitcase. Mind you, the walk itself only took about 5 minutes.

It really didn’t help my brother that he really really really really quite urgently needed to poop.

There was a little issue with our reservation at the hotel (as we arrived a day later than we were suppose to), during which the time it took to get it sorted out, my brother got to relieve himself. (Yes, I’m quite sure no one wants to know about my brother’s bowel movements, but he was complaining so much I had to put it in as part of the experience.. so you have to experience it too =P albeit in a watered down form haha).

Anywho, finally checked in… breathed a sigh of relief and went to find my phone charger… What? Where’s the charger?? ARRRGH… you GOT to be kidding me!

*ahem* So it would seem that I left not only my phone charger at home, but several of the other cables too. Damn… I was sooooo sure I had packed them! I felt rather down-trodden by all the bad luck and my stupidity on top of that… I didn’t even want to go out any more (it was about 3.30pm by this stage).

My lack of enthusiasm was very much echoed by my brother, who strongly desired to stay in the hotel for the rest of the trip and only going out for food. I agreed with the staying in the hotel, but only for the rest of the day – really just felt too drained from the day’s emotional roller coaster ride to be enthusiastic and take photos.

Just when we were about to head out to the supermarket next to the station, my brother looked into his 2nd pair of shoes that I had packed and asked, “Did you put the cables in my shoes?”

What the?! And there he was, pulling out small, labeled zip lock bag after zip lock bag out of his shoes. I had totally forgotten that to save space, I had shoved them into his shoes. Maaaaan… what a relief! I wasn’t so stupid after all (though in a sense, I was kind of discombobulated by my own cleverness hahaha).

… Though that was short-lived as I found out that the two converters I had with me was not made for a 3-prong Australian plug, only 2-prongs…. *SIGH* laaaaame. This meant I couldn’t charge anything via USB, which was quite a lot of devices.

*sighs* Anywho, so all in all, thank goodness for the Internet (5 euro deposit for the ethernet cable). It definitely kept my brother and I sane.

It was another early night – I think we slept at about 5.30 or 6.30. Perhaps it was also the jet lag catching up with us.

My attempt of doing the whole… I don’t know what it’s called… but here’s the Lego Storm Trooper Bien so kindly bought for me (thanks Bien! ^_^), looking pensively out at Prague (or if you will, the suburb of Invalidovna). What’s he contemplating? His poses for tomorrow of course! =D hahaha