from Pillar to Post: a traveller's guide to stuff: And a tiring introduction to a new city

Through the early morning fog we walked, crossing the street once to avoid a group of 3 suspicious-looking men. Within 15 minutes we had reached the train station and it was time to once again say goodbye to this lovely city and to brace ourselves for the next unknown.
The majority of the following 2 hour train trip was also shrouded in intermittent fog and it didn't subside even when we had arrived at our next destination city of Linz. Still in Austria, but closer to the Czech border, Linz is not the best place to visit on a Sunday morning - despite its claim to fame as being Hitler's favourite town. We had only a couple of hours here until our connecting train and Sunday morning, then and there, was the only time that was available to us. Don't get me wrong, it seemed like a nice enough place, a really nice place in fact, but it was just dead. Almost no-one on the streets and most of the stores were closed. Despite this, I could still appreciate the city's architectural merits. Although almost completely devoid of greenery and in some places riddled with construction work, the buildings on the central square, Hauptplatz, and main street eminating from it away from the river boast an aesthetically pleasing Vienna-like feel - but on a much smaller scale.
After this short interlude, it was back on the tram to the train station (again nervous about potential ticket inspectors as we were pretty sure we had bought the wrong tickets.) We managed to avoid another fine.
The fog subsided eventually and as the train rolled through green pastures, far-reaching forested areas and small Austrian, then Czech villages, I watched. A long 7 hours and two-thirds of the Czech countryside had duly passed before we arrived - almost 12 hours after setting off from Salzburg. It was dark and we were tired. We were meant to be meeting Pedro, Dan and Kristina (of The Mop fame) at the train station but neither of our phones had credit so there was a period of about an hour of attempting to use public pay phones and asking shop keepers if we could use theirs before I figured out that it's not impossible to top-up my mobile whilst roaming. Then there was a half-hour of waiting in a nearby restaurant for them to turn up. An hour or so later, whilst on our way to a pub, Lee and I decided we were too tired and weren't prepared to lug our bags around anymore, so we would look for a hostel instead - it was about 11pm by this point, which makes looking for a hostel in a brand new city a little taxing, and so after an hour or so of walking around the busy and wide main avenue of Václavské nám and sitting in McDonald's we took the easy option and gave up to meet with the guys again, just in time for a new pub. The fog once more began to fill the streets and the temperature had become that kind of bitter cold we had come to expect of European evenings. It wasn't until about four and a half hours after this, at 4:30am, that our heads had finally hit the pillow in a disused hotel owned by one of Dan's mates. A long day.
The morning came and went and I don't think any of us were up before about midday. The light of the new day again came to the rescue and, although the place at night looked mighty impressive, it certainly looked a lot more friendly that following day. We ventured into town on the underground and for a couple of hours in the afternoon Dan acted as our tour guide, showing us some of the many wonderful sights in his home city.
We were in Prague.

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