1. The Subway Police. Each of the cities relies on an honor system for subway riders. Budapest seemed the most interested in actually verifying how honorable you are. At some stations, subway employees made sure you validated your ticket before getting on the escalator down to the tracks, and at one station, we were stopped and asked to produce our tickets. They did not appear as vigilant in Vienna and Prague, but you shouldn't test that.
2. Follow the "No Photo" Instructions. Plenty of historic sites have rules about not taking photos, but the soldiers guarding St. Stephen's crown at the Hungarian Parliament were quite serious about it, as one of the people on our tour found out. Too bad one of those guys' predecessors several centuries ago didn't take their job quite as seriously. The crown was dropped and the cross on the top is bent at a 30-degree angle.
3. Reserve Train Seats for Long Journeys. We bought our Budapest to Vienna and our Vienna to Prague tickets online at the Austrian Railways' website. They were less than half the cost of buying them from Rail Europe, which is a more American-user friendly website. We were sure to reserve our seats, which is a good thing, because the train to Vienna was relatively full and across the aisle from us was a couple who hadn't reserved their seats, had to give up the seats they had claimed to their rightful owners, and then were trying to figure out what to do with only minutes to spare before the train left.
4. Sharing a Table. When you have a chance, share a table. We went to one popular Vienna restaurant for dinner without a reservation and were waiting with 2 engineers in town on business who were in the same situation. The hostess had a 4-person table and offered it to us. We ended up having one of the best conversations of the trip. One engineer was from Norway and the other from Germany and they were very interested in American politics. I don't know what impressions those gentlemen had about Americans before the dinner, but if they had any unpleasant stereotypes, I'm confident they were dispelled by the end.
5. Tipping. Each city goes by a 10% rule-of-thumb, but at many restaurants, you cannot add the tip to your credit card bill, and instead need to pay any tip in cash.
6. The Prague Metro. Upon arriving at Prague's train station, we searched in vain for the sign for the entrance to the Metro, only to later find that it was this:
 |
| See the M? Sure you do, now that I told you about it. |
I had seen this sign, but merely thought it was a down arrow; I completely missed the letter "M" hidden at the top of the logo. In the same way, I must have seen the FedEx logo for about 15 years before some pointed out to me that there's an arrow hidden in it. (See for yourself -- it's between the E and the X!)
7. Paying for Pretzels. In Wenceslas Square in modern downtown Prague, we were away from the Old Town, and I thought we would also be away from any tourist-trap restaurants. We saw a restaurant advertising "Authentic Czech Cuisine" and found a table. The fact that the sign was in English should have been a clue, but we were pretty tired by that point. Anyway, they had a cover charge for sitting down for a meal (in fine print on the back of the menu) and even charged us for each little pretzel we ate (which we had thought were just offered gratis). Oh well.
 |
| Pretzels on the table? Thank you. How many did we eat? 2. That'll be $4. |
8. Walking. We averaged about 20,000 steps a day (10 miles, give or take), so by all means, wear comfortable shoes!
No comments:
Post a Comment