1. The most kilometers traveled over the week. Self-explanatory.

2. The most checkpoint cities visited. Each team had to complete a mission of sorts at each checkpoint. The reward -- a new tray of Red Bulls. And when you got really lucky, a sandwich.

3. The most fans/votes on our team's online blog. The blog had to be updated daily. In the end, it was clear that this feature existed solely for our parents' amusement and sanity.

Blog Entry: Don't Forget to Curb the Hubris on the Way to Innsbruck
When in Innsbruck, Day 3

From: Team Czechmate
October 27, 2008

Today we learned the dual nature of fortune's wheel.

Task point Munich in a nutshell: it was hard, really hard. You'd imagine a bit of consistency amongst checkpoints regarding difficulty -- Vienna took 15 minutes -- but leave it to the Germans to throw us for a loop.

Honestly, we were simply spoiled from Vienna, so having to actually travel all over München for our challenge was not exactly appealing. Here's what happened. We infuriated the spirit of Lady Bavaria. The statue, actually, but I'm still convinced she is possessed. William decided it would be cute to pour two cans of Red Bull into a perfectly wonderful German beer to make it "better" for pictures while standing underneath Lady Bavaria's bronze flanks. Bavaria's beer goddess was right there, watching, and William brazenly taints her beverage of choice. Maybe you are not aware, but that's like Crocodile Dundee pissing into a kiwi. Such poor manners simply never bode well.

It took almost two hours of sweaty jogging around Munich to complete the challenge. For lunch we purchased 6 euro ($7.65) burgers from McDonald's. To add another disappointment in Munich, there were no lovely Red Bull assistants as was the case in Budapest and Graz.

Lady Bavaria set her revenge in motion in the form of a ride from outer Munich to a petrol/food stop just before the split to Innsbruck-Salzburg. Ahhh, so convenient, we thought, we'll have no problem getting a ride from here. Well, 15 minutes passed, no luck, then a half-hour, 45 minutes, an hour, an hour and a half, two hours... Nothing but cold glares and "ahhh zno we travelz to munchien."

This cruel twist of fate is partly my fault as well. Yesterday William was worried I got too cocky with a blog post that stated, "And they said it would be hard for three grownish men to hitchhike."

The combination of my hubris and Will's cultural absentmindedness finally caught up to us. It seemed like Lady Bavaria wanted us to get a good, long, long, long look at her beloved countryside. A time out of sorts.

Well, now it's been three hours and still no one will take us to Innsbruck. This just isn't fun anymore. All the friendly people were going in the opposite direction, or had sorry excuses like "families" or "cars full of luggage." Pathetic.

And now the sun sets. The temperature drops at least 10 degrees. The cars continue to pour through the petrol station, marching one after another. We entertain ourselves watching the Germans, distinguishable by their European Union "D" (Deutschland) license plates, as they pull up to the petrol pump, tank on the wrong side, and proceed to drag the nozzle across their car's hood and jam it into the hole.

It's been four hours now and we've taken up identifying constellations from the curb in front of the station. Another car with Austrian plates and the distinguishing "I" -- for Innsbruck -- pulls into the pump. There is nothing to lose, so I begin to walk towards the car as Brett reminds me to "use the big Red Bull sign we stole today."

A young man emerges from the white Škoda, and an attractive woman exits from the passenger side.

"Excuse me, sir, are you traveling to Innsbruck this evening?" I unfold the sign, exposing the Red Bull cow, and continue, "Because were compet-"

"Holy craps," yells the man with an Austrian accent, "I wanted to do that so bad; it looked so fun! You and your friends need the ride to Innsbruck, right?"

"Uh, well that-"

But he's already walking towards me; arms wide open with the biggest smile on his face. His woman friend is laughing too.

"You come with us to Innsbruck tonight. We'll take you!" he interrupts.

Lady Bavaria must have been appeased. We didn't care if they wanted to dice us into 1,000 tiny pieces; we had a ride out of that damn cow pasture.

And Hemingway was right, the sun also rises.

It didn't take driving past the original Swarovski crystal factory in the mountainous valley of Tirol to realize that we had found a true diamond in the rough. But we did it anyway.

Blog entry: reflections from Shitzerland when the going actually gets tough
The Bridge to Shitzerland

From: Team Czechmate
October 29, 2008

Nothing better highlights the manic depressive nature of our luck than our adventures past the bridge to nowhere after leaving Innsbruck the other night. One night in Innsbruck we're dining on home-cooked pasta and ice cream soaked in rare, South African olive oils, the next, well…

This night is one of those cold, drizzly hemorrhoids of a night that seems to seep its way through every down feather, depositing a glaze of mist on my eyebrows like morning dew on leaves of grass. Sounds beautiful, feels miserable. This was not the night to be stranded without shelter in Switzerland.

It is midnight when the two businessmen across the truck-stop bar decide to leave. They are our ride to the border. Lenay and her Red Bull camera crew had long since abandoned us in search of alternating currents and Wi-Fi connections.

Brett, Will and I are back to basics, again traveling alone on foot.

We have made our journey from Innsbruck to just shy of the Swiss border over the evening but it is slow traveling. Hitchhiking is like that. You never write your own timetables when depending on the sympathy of strangers. So if the two businessmen could take us to the border and nowhere farther, we'd sure as hell take it.

They drop us off next to a bridge. The sign reads "Rhein." The ride over from the gas station was quick; maybe 10 minutes mostly spent talking about Bode Miller's "dangerous" style that the Austrians seem to adore so much.

The overcast sky is dark and the chronic drizzle persists like a stinging cough. It falls down, down on our backpacks and into the Rhine as we cross the concrete bridge to Shitzerland on foot.

My topsiders, those fantastic flat-footed boat shoes that Brett warned me against wearing, are sucking up water like a Trenton hook… err. I watch helplessly as, every stride or so, the saturation mark creeps farther and farther back from toe to ankle. But the novelty of forging the Rhein is too fresh, our spirits have yet to be dampened…just my feet.

On the other side of the bridge a border guard emerges from a checkpoint and demands passports.

"Oh, oh, oh, will you stamp mine?" I ask. What novelty.

We speak with the female guard -- who seems quite nice -- about the village locale and the possibility of finding a hostel or hotel room for that night. But she coldly informs us there are none.

So after taking a rest under the dry border-awning, on cold concrete, we continue our march past the Rhein.

The first night in Switzerland.

We walk through the quiet, sleeping town for an hour in vain. Finally we find the train station (a quiet, unlit, open-air awning) our only and best protection from the rain, though, not the cold or the wind. At 5am a train will leave for Zurich.

It is now 2am.

So we sit, under the awning, and we climb into our sleeping bags and sit upright for the next three hours, fighting the temptation to close our eyes in this quaint Alpine town.

Will wants to catch the 5am train but I argue against it. Brett supports me. It'd be 80 euros and we could likely hitch a ride in the morning. So Will lets himself fall asleep on the cold floor. No matter where we are, Will sleeps like an Austrian princess. Shitzerland is no exception.

Suddenly I shoot upwards, startled by the sound of a car engine. It is 4am -- I had passed out for an hour and it was raining harder now. I couldn't let that happen again.

Brett was up now, just as miserable. There are shooting pains in my ankle from resting on the concrete through my bag.

The air is damper too, colder.

In my bag now, almost fully propped upright, I think of home and my bed in Prague -- with clean sheets that I had freshly made in anticipation of a drowsy return. I think about skydiving, the mundane nature of Sudoku, and Pancake, my family's black cat that was ironically run over by a pickup last summer. I am going deliriously nutty -- sounds like a good candy bar though -- from a lack of sleep.

It seems this place across the Rhine evokes the saddest and most regretful memories of recent past. I have to get out.

"Will, we'll take the 5am train," I say, changing my stance. Brett nods his head, buried in his hands. He is going mad too.

We all need out. Cost is no deterrence.

The station lights turn on at 4:45am and soon after we leave on the first train for Zurich.