[Rick Lee]

I just drove from Nueremberg to Plzen, Prague, Ceske Budejovice and then to Vienna. CZ still uses their own currency, though most places there will take Euros. Problem is when you need coins for the parking automats. They print out a time and you place it on your dashboard. Also, we booked a lot of pensions and B&B's through Kayak, which took a credit card for the reservation. But we found out in each place that the cc had not been charged and we still had to pay upon checkout. No biggie, but one of the places only took cash and that can be dicey sometimes.

Parking in Prague is a b!tch. It's not cheap in the garages and not allowed on most streets without a residential permit. This was a HUGE problem for us, as I specifically chose a hotel whose TripAdvisor reviews said they had parking avail. They did not and it took me well over an hour and a taxi ride back to find a place on the street, to which I had to return early the next morning to feed the meter. Really, really sucked.

Short-distance trains can be tricky. I speak German almost as well as English and know my way around. And I still had some trouble today when I had to take the S-Bahn from Duesseldorf to Neuss. It's all on the honor system here, but I did get a ticket from the automat. You used to have to get the tickets time stamped when you boarded, but I didn't notice this ticket's fine print that said it was already "validated." So I "validated" it at the machine when boarding. Of course, they were doing spot checks on my train and the guy told me my ticket was no good. Because I speak like a local, he assumed I was a local and should know better. I told him I hadn't lived here in 20 yrs. and back then no tickets were printed as already validated. He let me go.

I got busted for this in Prague too about 22 yrs. ago, but the fine was so cheap, it wasn't worth the hassle of trying to figure out how to do it the right way. Now they have signs in English and German, not in 1990.