If you are reading this blog, hopefully you have read parts 1 and 2 and realized what night we have had already. It will make you appreciate this part of the story that much more.
So after we left McDonald’s, (where Christy walked in on a couple in the women’s bathroom “doing it”…. AWKWARD!) we walked back to our bus station at 7:32 AM….. only to realize that our 7:50 AM bus ACTUALLY left at 7:30 AM. “Didn’t we asked you to double-check the bus time last night???” I spit out at Lucas. Yes we had, and yes he did. And he had read the time wrong BOTH times. “Grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, grace….” He reminded us (well, mostly me, Christy and Aubrie were much more patient). So we proceed to wait in the cold for the 8 AM bus…..
…..That never comes. It is around 8:10 that we realize our bus isn’t coming. By this time, Jeremy and Kayla have found their way back to us after dropping off Brittany at the airport, so we are together but just as stuck as ever. We ask a native guy if he speaks English, and he tells us the bus comes at 9. Relieved, we tell him that we were worried cause it didn’t come at 8. “It didn’t come at 8? Hmm….. Interesting.” He says with a slightly puzzled look on his face. The relief that we had a moment before vanishes, but we figure if this dude has to be on the same bus as us, we can wait until 9. We continue to shiver in the cold as the sun rises higher in the sky, each bus that pulls into the station brings our hopes up, and every bus that pulls out to a different destination brings them back down again. It draws closer and closer to 9, and my patience is drawn thinner and thinner. A bus pulls up nearby; it’s not our bus, but our friend who speaks English tells us that the 9 o’clock bus isn’t coming, we should take this bus to city unknown to us and hope to find a train/bus/some form of transportation back home. This doesn’t satisfy our leaders, so yet another bus pulls away, taking with it my last form of hope.
Later, Kayla and Aubrie told me about a conversation they had, “if we don’t get Shawndell somewhere to rest soon, I think she might snap!” And it’s probably true… I apologize to my team for being super rude and almost crazy in those moments of being cold and sick and needing sleep. Thoughts were running around in my mind of what might happen if I didn’t get on a bus going somewhere sometime soon. I’m not sure what I thought would happen or if any of my thoughts were lucid, but it probably wouldn’t have been pretty. What I do know was that I was NOT pretty to my team at that moment. Sorry God, I know what you will have me working on next. But my team was super patient with me and with each other, even though the boys took advantage of our sleepiness and made Christy to do 10 push-ups cause Lucas got her with the “Mine game”. Not very nice if you ask me.
However, our men stepped up in authority and ventured out in search of information. Us girls sitting at the bus stop discovered it is much warmer lying on the concrete in the sun than sitting on the bench in the shade….. and all of us fall asleep. Safe? Probably not. We were woken up by the boys’ return with good news of great joy to sleepy ears: we found a way home, let’s go. Hands helped me up and Jeremy carried my bag as we hurried back to the subway (which was now open). What happened next was rather a blur, I pretty much just followed whoever was leading and did whatever they told me to do. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure we bought tickets for the subway, rode the subway two stops, transfered to another subway, rode it two stops, got off and walked to the train station and bought tickets for a train to one station and from there to another station. Then we walked up and down a couple escalators and flights of stairs to find a bathroom where we had to pay 10 Czech Krowns to pee…. Ridiculous, I know. This whole time is kinda a daze to me, I just know there was a lot of people and crowds going every different directions, I just made sure I was following someone from my group. It was very confusing.
We finally made it onto our train….. and it was wonderful. The most amazing train ever, nay, the most amazing transportation ever. It was roomy and warm and I sat with Jeremy, Christy and Aubrie in a cabin with a very nice Australian lady, where I proceeded to sleep for the duration of the hour long ride. Apparently we missed a very funny moment in the other cabin, when Kayla watched a sleepy Lucas tumble into the seat across from him cause he was falling asleep while sitting upright. Yes, super funny even though I didn’t see it. When we sadly left that train, we made our way to the next train no problem, and though it wasn’t as nice, it was still taking us HOME. We got off that train because they were working on the tracks or something, so they took us on a short bus ride to the train station in Rumbork that the train should have taken us to. Oh yeah, and on the bus was a knight in shining armor… NO JOKE! Not sure where he came from, or where he was going, but a knight in shining armor was riding the bus with us. Kayla said that if he had knelt down and asked her to marry him, she would have said yes then and there. Too bad they didn’t speak the same language.
When the bus dropped us off at the train station, we walked down the street to the bus station to take a bus back to our final destination. It’s a sunny mid-afternoon, and several of us fall asleep on the bus station benches in the warm sunshine as we wait for our bus. I will say, it was the most delightful nap I have ever taken. I was woken up to yet another funny scenario…. Apparently we hadn’t learned our lesson yet, but NONE of OUR buses run on SUNDAYS! NONE. EVER. After our beautiful nap in the sun, really all we could do was shake our heads and chuckle. At that point, however, we gave up on the Czech Republic public transportation. We called our contact and asked him to come pick us up, as we were less than 20 kilometers away from Sluknov. When we finally made it home, I don’t think we lasted more then two hours before we were asleep. Christy and Kayla were ambitious, and went to the store to pick up dinner….. however, our late afternoon nap turned into bedtime at 6 PM, and I know that I didn’t wake up until Christy and Kayla woke up at 5:30 AM for ministry this morning. I ate breakfast with them, and then proceeded to go back to sleep until 11. It was the most satisfying 15-plus hours of sleep I have ever had.
So now you know the story of our adventures…. night life in Prague, exploring castles, homeless is a bus station, and public transportation in the Czech Republic. All I have to say is:
Never travel on Sunday in the Czech Republic.
And P.S. WE LOVE YOU BRITT!
