TV: Amazing Race 12: Ep 6

In this episode, it was another case of airport drama as teams tried to catch early flights from Lithuania to Croatia. Not listening to details probably cost the race for the brother / sister team who had one several of the early legs. They were booked business class seats instead of economy by a travel agent. It was hard to tell if the agent was just upselling or if the economy seats for a flight other teams were on were all booked anyway. In any case, the order of arrival in Croatia mostly determined the order of finish for the racers.

Actually Nate and Jen kept messing up and still finished 3rd in spite of themselves. They arrived in Croatia first but got lost trying to find the first clue box, which allowed the father / daughter team to go into first. Then they were turned down by a taxi driver for being too wet. They were so frustrated by this, they desperately broke the rules and coaxed a local to become a taxi driver to the pit stop. They were caught and had to go back to hire a real taxi. That allowed the Goth team to pass them up for second place. The editing made it look like their relationship has no hope. But maybe they do belong to each other despite the arguing. They sort of remind me of The Needlers from Saturday Night Live. Nate also had the quote of the episode with his reference to a "cherry on top of a melted sundae."

TK and Rachel cruised into 4th place. They and the grandfather / grandson team (5th place) missed a connecting flight in Prague. It is a beautiful city to be stuck in I must say, but I suspect these poor teams never saw anything outside the Prague airport. I never saw the airport myself since I took a very scenic train ride to that city from Berlin back in 2001. The teams had to rebook through Vienna to travel to Dubrovnik. Vienna is another beautiful city, just a short hop by plane, train or automobile from Prague I suspect. My visit to Vienna actually occurred way back in 1991 or 1992 when a co-worker and I drove there from Paris, France with several stops along the way. We were going to drive all the way to Budapest, Hungary but we were turned back at the border because my co-worker did not have the right dates in his visa paperwork. Fortunately, the conference we attended was in Vienna, so we did not get into trouble.

Anyway, it looks like Dubrovnik is another cool European city to visit. All the remaining teams saw a nice view as they drove to the harbor and rode a zip line from one turret to another in the fortress near the harbor.

I probably would have decided to do short / long instead of long /short because I do not know how well I would have rowed around the city walls.

TJ and Rachel were checking out the prize they had one in the previous leg. Looks like they will be staying at the New Otani in Tokyo. I stayed there way back in 1994. Luxurious hotel with a nice garden and convenient location (well my company has an office in Japan that is practically next door). Well I did almost mess up my back when I slipped in the bathtub. But that was the only one of two lowlights of a fun trip. I will save the other lowlight for a future blog entry if it ever enters my mind again.

Hopefully Hendekea has learned that knowing how to say, "There's a party in my pants" in Bosnian is not a huge advantage over other teams.

Next episode: Grandpa gets freaked out.