I’ve ranted about Lufthansa enough, so I think I’ll omit the blow-by-blow account of my journey from Bangalore. I will, however, note that my day trip to Pune was on Sahara Air – they fly various combinations of BLR/PNQ/HYD service using CRJ-200’s – and their evening PNQ-BLR was 55 minutes late. I’d built enough time into the schedule to allow for this, but even so: on future visits to India, I think I’m going to make it a rule not to rely on evening connections on the day I leave.
So back to Europe. The FRA-PRG flight was on a Lufthansa A320 with no more than 30 passengers, which made it a very comfortable 45 minute hop. And they served a simple cheese sandwich – wonderful black bread, sharp cheddar, iceberg lettuce – that was infinitely better than anything they’d provided on the various intercontinental routes. There must be a lesson there.
Arriving in Prague, we pulled in to a rather deserted, obviously new terminal building, and the intrepid band of passengers traversed the jetway and various escalators, breezed through Immigration, and waited for our bags to appear on the carousel. I noticed that one of the passengers had a Sun Networks bag, and about the same time he noticed that I was wearing a bright red Sun Microsystems jacket. It turned out that it was Pavel Suk, the site director in Prague and the host for my visit. He’d just returned from 10 days in California; like me, he was finding the transition to -8C weather something of a shock to the system. The coincidence was convenient, since we were able to share a taxi into the city: Pavel was going to the Sun office, and I was going to the Diplomat Hotel, just a few hundred metres down the road.
I LIKE this hotel. My room is comfortable, and everything just works. OK, Internet access is overpriced and a bit unpredictable, but it’s functional. But the decisive factor was my experience in the CD Club restaurant. After unpacking and taking a shower, I headed downstairs for a relatively early dinner. I’d already checked out the menu on the web, and had picked out (vegetarians avert your eyes) the “veal goulash with black beer, roast chanterelles and ham-dumplings”. You can’t get much more Czech than that. But to complement such a rich combination, I really wanted a simple salad, and they didn’t have one on the menu. All their salads were, frankly, over-elaborate.
So I explained that I wanted a local red wine, the goulash, and a simple salad to go with the goulash. The maitre d’ didn’t bat an eyelid, and moments late I had one of the best mixed salads I’ve ever tasted, with remarkably good tomatoes and cucumbers, and olive oil and balsamic vinegar on the side. The goulash was superb, too, and the very dry red wine balanced the intensity of the veal and mushrooms perfectly. And there was more wonderful black bread, this time with finely chopped nuts stirred into the batter.
(Is this an example of what Terry calls “food porn”?)
Tomorrow I plan to explore the old city – the Stare Mesto. And then on Monday, before I head over to the office, I have to make sure that my laundry is in hand. I deliberately packed light for this trip, and if the hotel doesn’t make good on their same-day service pledge, I’m going to be in some difficulties….