This year, from January 26th to 31th, me and Mum to Europe for the first time! It was a package tour to Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic. WE visited basically all the famous places—Heroes Square, Buda Castle, Schönbrunn Palace, Hallstatt, České Budějovice, Prague's town square...but I'm not here to talk about that! I want to write about the things we enjoyed between.
First was the flight. We departed from Incheon at dawn and arrived in the afternoon at Václav Havel Airport. The night flight took more than 13 hours! I had two meals, slept a lot and watched the flight information on the seat monitor whenever I was awake. There was a feature that told you what major city was the closest to the current location. We flew above Kazakhstan... above Georgia... above Turkey... above Bulgaria... above Greece... Finally, when the arrow pointed to Adamclisi in Romania, my heart was pounding. We arrived at the centre of Europe! I'm here!
We travelled by bus. Crossing borders by road, that's unthinkable in Korea here! I was surprised by the view outside the windows, it was so different from home. There were so many windmills in the countryside, and the grass on the farmlands was green. Here the climate is very different, the land completely freezes over in winter so grass can't grow at all. I was also fascinated by the European number plates. All those cars were from different countries! I didn't want to fall asleep in the bus, so I counted some on the highway. This was the result:
CZ — 64
H — 134
A — 189
RO — 55
PL — 31
LT — 2
D — 19
SK — 30
BIH — 1
BG — 7
SRB — 17
TR — 14
FIN — 1
GR — 1
HR — 2
NMK — 3
MK — 1
F — 2
CH — 2
NL — 1
SLO — 3
UR — 1
MD — 1
E — 3
LV — 1
EST — 1
B — 1
L — 1
Our bus driver was Marek, and he was Czech. He was a great driver! I greeted him in Czech whenever we got on and off the bus. "Dobré ráno, dobrý den, dobrý večer, dobrou noc!" Our Korean guide, who also lives in the Czech Republic, advised us to say hello more often whenever we meet the locals in a hotel lift or somewhere else. As tourists from a faraway land, leaving a good impression on them will make everyone happy and they will likely be more friendly to us in the future also, he said.
I saw some stadiums outside the window too, I had to be very quick to take those photos.
Yes, of course, this trip was also about football. Even if I can't watch an actual match yet, I wanted to take a little peek of how's it like there. It wasn't too hard to find, because wherever we went, there were stickers! Football stickers, everywhere! No one else knew those were from ultras, but I knew about them and I was able to see them. I took lots and lots of photos, and here's the entirety of them! Please click on the image for all the good details!
The last day, before we returned back to Václav Havel Airport, we had exactly one hour of free time at the square. But I had an idea. Sparta Prague's Stadion Letná is pretty close to the square, so if I ask the guide to get me some tickets and hurry up after lunch...European football, here we come!
It was my first ever time visiting a European football stadium! Of course it was empty, but I was so happy. I bought a home shirt and a Sparta mascot plushie from the fanshop. Then we called the taxi to go back to the square, back to the airport, back home. Now my future goal is to visit a stadium full of passionate fans! This trip was one of the best moments of my life.
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| Goodbye Prague, for now. We will meet again! |
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