A long time ago, and just finished school, I made plans to work my way around the planet as a courier. I wanted to see everything. Just before I was about to set off, I met a guy at a party. Guy said "hey, if you can get to Vienna by, want to go to Poland?"Yes. I sure did.So I got myself to Vienna by giving over my baggage space to a bank, I think. And he got us to the train station. The wrong train station.Then we took the wrong train from Vienna to the wrong station in Prague, missed all his friends heading to Warsaw and ended up sleeping on the floor of the station until it grew light out.Sometime after dawn, we went walking, all the way around the back end of the train depot, down by the docks and the river, over the Charles Bridge several times, passing the still-closed shops on the Václavské náměstí. Yes, lost again. But the early sunlight on the river, and the architecture of central Prague made it all worthwhile.Though I was mentally booking a train out, we kept talking and walking. We caught the sun going down over the Vltava, climbed some hills, watched the locks work along the shipping lanes, and saw the Orloj - the medieval astronomical clock - ring the changes in the square.Days later, we made it to Warsaw in the most roundabout way possible. But walking Prague is still one of my favorite memories, and I loved writing some of those details into Episode 6, along with other period elements like the Bílá labuť (the White Swan) department store, where I sent Zerena on a frustrating mission.(Also, reader, that guy? I married him. ... We still get lost sometimes. Mostly on purpose.)
