stuartmoss
Member
Enjoy! I really enjoyed this trip and would recommend it.
Enjoy! I really enjoyed this trip and would recommend it.
A Railjet to Berlin? Didn’t know they operated as far north as Berlin.Seconded! EC258 has the advantage of being lightly loaded as it runs late in the day - reports say it will be withdrawn between Usti n L and Dresden from December, and replaced by a Railjet to Berlin an hour earlier.
No they don't - yet - but it's in the draft timetable.A Railjet to Berlin? Didn’t know they operated as far north as Berlin.
Enjoy! I really enjoyed this trip and would recommend it.
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Did you stay around Usti? I wonder what it's really like because some Czechs told me it has a certain reputation as a rough place, but I've never been there.
My guess is it was a mainly German-speaking city before WW2 perhaps?
When I first went to Prague in 1987, a lot of the older people could still speak German
Yes, a lot of the Czech-German border area was a mix of German and Czech speakers before WW2, and was annexed by Hitler's Germany before the war. After the war, when the borders were re-established much as before, many German speakers were expelled. (The same happened in many places in Europe, of course. In Vojvodina, a region in the north of Serbia in what was Yugoslavia, it was trilingual before the war - Serbo-Croat/Hungarian/German [a former colleague of mine grew up there then, and explained how the little kids in her town spoke a mix of the 3 languages in the street, without even realising until later that it was 3 separate languages], but after WW2 most of the German speakers were booted out and it became an officially bilingual semi-autonomous region of the Serbian constituent republic of a federal Yugoslavia.)
And remember that prior to the First World War (in Kafka's time) Prague itself was in many ways trilingual - with Czech, a sizeable German-speaking community, and also large Jewish community speaking (I guess) Yiddish.
About German - English has very much displaced German these days. Finding a person under 40 that speaks German isn't so easy, except in border towns, and English is the default language when communicating in this part of the world.
About Usti - there are some nice things to do there, such as the cable car that goes from the roof of the shopping centre to the Vetruse hill. The project itself was a classic case of political corruption, but it does provide a nice way to the top of the hill without having to walk there. The cable car is actually completely useless due to the low capacity (only 120 people per hour), ...
The zoo is also quite nice, ... as it has spacious paddocks on the side of a huge hill. There's not much else there, though it's an interesting enough place to visit for 2 days. There are also some pretty towns nearby to visit, such as Teplice, Lovosice and Litomierice.
Apart from that, the bad reputation that the city has comes from the 1990's. After the end of Communism, Usti became a hub of human trafficking and prostitution, with the old road from Altenburg to Teplice notorious for the huge amounts of brothels and prostitutes lining the road. ...
About German - English has very much displaced German these days. Finding a person under 40 that speaks German isn't so easy, except in border towns, and English is the default language when communicating in this part of the world. I speak Polish, and I don't use English to Czechs unless I really don't understand them. With Slovaks, I won't use English at all, because around 70% of words are mutually intelligible and the grammar is very similar to Polish. However, historically, German dominated in the Czech lands (be careful with this - the Czech lands are what is known as Bohemia in the Czech Republic, and Moravia / Silesia have different identities). ...
Noticed that too when I visited Prague a few years ago. Also, trying to speak russian is not a good idea at all. I tried, thinking it would be a good opportunity to practice... Had to make damn sure they understood I was not coming from Russia.
KV is slightly different, because the Russian connection to the spas goes back well before the Revolution (fairly sure Edward VII the Kaiser and the Tsar all went there...). There was a through sleeper from Moscow until fairly recently too (and one from Kosice even more recently, but that's different!)They seem to have got used to Russian in Karlovy Vary - menus there in Russian and signs on hotels too. Not sure about Marianske Lazne. How exactly did the locals react if/when you tried to speak Russian?
They seem to have got used to Russian in Karlovy Vary - menus there in Russian and signs on hotels too. Not sure about Marianske Lazne. How exactly did the locals react if/when you tried to speak Russian?
Very rude or simply ignoring. I switched to english quite quickly. Later I witnessed a russian couple in a restaurant, arrived together with me, at the same time. We ordered almost together too. When I finished eating, they were still waiting to be served...
Enjoy! I really enjoyed this trip and would recommend it.
I have only now watched the video. Did you get sponsorship from the CKD or Czech Tourism?
Was it on a Saturday or Sunday? It definitely makes the route along the Elbe (?) look very pleasant. And rail travel through the Prague suburbs is always interesting. I'm not sure that I'd term the meal 'a bargain' except by UK standards, but decent value for the comfort of a train, I agree.