I'm sitting in my house in Chico now...a house that I had inhabited for almost a year before my sudden disappearance into the European Continent. It's still my house, and nothing here has really changed. But yet, it doesn't feel like my house. It all feels quite strange. It's like what David Byrne from the Talking Heads says in one of his songs: "This is not my beautiful house...How did I get here?"
Well, I'll tell you how I got here...it took about 27 straight hours to be exact...a new travel record for me. It was one of those days that just wouldn't end, where I kept finding myself stuck in some chair with my knees bumping up against the seat in front of me. For the London to New York leg, the trip started out quite pleasant as I chatted up a pretty young woman named Dorothy getting her doctorate in clinical psychology at UC-Berkeley. She had just gotten back from Morocco, and so we exchanged travel stories and had a good laugh. The plane ride was also quite pleasant as they fed us lunch and let us watch movies on the tiny screens built into the backs of the seats. Watching movies felt like such a luxury to me. I hadn't seen a movie in God knows how long. It didn't matter what movie was playing...I was watching it. "Shrek the Third" could have been a complete piece of crap, but I wouldn't have known. At that moment, it was an artistic masterpiece to me. Then I watched "Lucky You," which was some movie about people playing poker. Once again, this movie could very well have blown chunks, but I was in heaven anyway. And then finally, it was Marlon Brando giving the performance of his life in "On the Waterfront." Oh, I was so happy I could have cried.
However, as I kept heading west, I noticed that the people around me kept getting weirder and weirder, and my travel situation kept becoming more and more unpleasant. For the New York to San Francisco leg, American Airlines suddenly became cheapskates and were now going to charge me to eat a meal. They were also now charging me for headphones to watch the movie "Lucky You," which I had just seen. Lucky me, my ass. Disappointed, I sat down beside a gentleman who at first seemed normal. Then I suddenly realized that...hey...this guy only has one arm. One arm! That put everything into perspective for me, and I suddenly remembered that old saying from my youth: "I cried when I had no airline meal to eat, until I met a man who had no arm." Or something like that. Anyway, after seeing this man with just one arm, I just counted my blessings, quit bitching and read my book.
The Amtrak leg of the journey from San Francisco to Chico seemed interminable. Just when I thought I was through with all the frat boy college types, this whole crew of guys piled into the bus heading to Emeryville, exhibiting the typical dumbass behaviors I had been trying so hard to get away from all summer. There was a "Rock the Bells" concert going on in S.F. which they had all just attended, so they kept screaming "Rage!" and "Wu-Tang!" over and over and talking about getting wasted and getting high. I just wanted to throw myself in front of the Amtrak bus and just end it there.
The late-night Amtrak train to Chico wasn't too bad...just extremely late at night. It was about at this point that I started getting a little delusional from being up for almost 24 hours. The 9-hour jet lag was really started to affect me. Several times I woke up out of my groggy haze and thought, "Crap, Eric, we gotta get off the train or we'll miss our stop!" and then I'd suddenly realize that Eric wasn't there, and I wasn't in Europe anymore. Yep...I was really starting to mentally lose it. Once I got off at the Chico train station at 2 am, I started looking at some of the other folks getting off. Talk about some scary-looking individuals. I mean, I was nothing great to look at either after being a bum in Europe for 10 weeks, but compared to some of these folks, I wasn't doing so bad.
So now I'm back in Chico at my home, ready to get my life back together and move on with the next phase in my life. I think it's going to be a slow process these next few days. I've suddenly realized how dumb I've become when it comes to doing some of the simplest things...like operating a cell phone. I'm afraid to see what's going to happen when I try to drive my car again! Yes, living in the land of America again will be a little odd for me. When you go from having nothing but the junk on your back...to suddenly having access to cars and computers and refrigerators and a nice comfortable bed to yourself...you suddenly realize how good you really do have it in America, and you feel a little spoiled. You also realize that you really don't need to accumulate a lot of stuff in life to make yourself happy. For me, what makes me happy is travelling around, and seeing things, and taking pictures, and then writing about it and sharing it with others. I like stories and memories. I've even debated writing a book about the experiences I just had in Europe. I hardly doubt anything would come of it if I do write it, but at least I'd have it for my own benefit.
To all of you who've kept up with the blog this summer, I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. And I hope it inspires some of you to go off and check out some of the wonderful things that this world has to offer. As I've learned during my 32 years on this planet, life is short, so take full advantage of the time you've got here and see as much as you can.
Well, I guess that's it for The Travelin' Fool. Hey.... you don't need to cry. Here... dry those tears with this napkin I picked up at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich. There you go! There's no need to cry, because there will be other adventures in the future. The Travelin' Fool will live on... but for now, it's time to put away the blog and move on to other things... such as finding a job so I can support future trips around the world! Oh, once the travel bug hits, it's a deadly thing. So much to see in this world, so little time.
Brian
Monday, August 20, 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Brit Happens
Well, isn't that something.
I'm sitting here in London, in the basement of the hostel, eating my breakfast of toast, cereal, juice and coffee, and who should be looking at me but that crusty old sea captain painting that I encountered at the beginning of my trip.
But something is different this time. When I was just starting this trip, he seemed to have a scowl on his face, like he didn't approve of me or anything I'd done with my life. His look seemed to say, "How did you end up in MY scullery room, you bloody prick? Off with you!" But now that I look at him again, 10 weeks later, he's different. His scowl is no longer a scowl, but a slight look of surprise that seems to say, "Wow...you survived your trip. I AM impressed. Good job, my boy. Good job."
It's a good feeling to start coming back to what I know. It feels as if everything is now coming full circle, and like walking backwards in time, I'm seeing everything pass before me again a second time as I head back west. The creature comforts of the world I know are starting to come back: English keyboards, people speaking English again, CNN and BBC. It feels nice to know that I'll be shedding my backpack in a matter of a day or two, ditching the campgrounds and the hostels and getting back to my normal life. Not to say that anything of my experience this summer was bad. As a matter of fact, it was all pretty incredible. But after doing it for 10 weeks, you need a vacation from the vacation.
When you backpack, you end up making a lot of sacrifices that you never expected. First of all, your privacy disappears. You're stuck in rooms crammed with 30 other people, all bumping into each other. Or you're stuck in a tent next to someone who stinks just as bad as you. Each bathroom you go to looks like a toxic waste dump because 100 people trashed it right before you got there.
And then there's the continuous moving around from place to place, constantly packing...and repacking...and packing again. You realize your backpack can't nearly fit everything you had hoped it would, so you're continuously telling yourself that you can't acquire things. And then you start seeing yourself wearing the same clothes over and over. You feel like you're some cartoon character or cast member from "Gilligan's Island" who never has a new outfit to show.
At first, all of this is no big deal. But after a while, you start to miss the privacy...and the cleanliness...and the variety of clothing that you had in your former life. That's when it's time to pitch the backpack over into the river and call it quits and go home, which is where I'm at right now. Except I'm not throwing my backpack in the River Thames...it cost me way too much.
I think my breaking point was two days ago in Munich when I was at the Euro Youth Hostel. I was awoken at 2 am to the sounds of these young drunk American kids yelling and making a racket about something. One of them had thrown up on the floor of the dorm room, and glass was broken all over the floor. They just started waking everyone up, turning on lights, and making a scene. That's when I started realizing, "Hey...I'm 32 years-old. I really don't need to put up with this crap anymore. I'm done with this."
Yep. I think my backpacking days of wandering around willy-nilly across the globe are done. Not to say that I won't do a little more of it in the future, but nothing of the magnitude I've just done. I'm an adult now, and don't need to subject myself to this fraternity house atmosphere anymore. It was all good and fun, but now, I ready to move on. I got it all out of my system, and it feels good.
I'm sitting here in London, in the basement of the hostel, eating my breakfast of toast, cereal, juice and coffee, and who should be looking at me but that crusty old sea captain painting that I encountered at the beginning of my trip.
But something is different this time. When I was just starting this trip, he seemed to have a scowl on his face, like he didn't approve of me or anything I'd done with my life. His look seemed to say, "How did you end up in MY scullery room, you bloody prick? Off with you!" But now that I look at him again, 10 weeks later, he's different. His scowl is no longer a scowl, but a slight look of surprise that seems to say, "Wow...you survived your trip. I AM impressed. Good job, my boy. Good job."
It's a good feeling to start coming back to what I know. It feels as if everything is now coming full circle, and like walking backwards in time, I'm seeing everything pass before me again a second time as I head back west. The creature comforts of the world I know are starting to come back: English keyboards, people speaking English again, CNN and BBC. It feels nice to know that I'll be shedding my backpack in a matter of a day or two, ditching the campgrounds and the hostels and getting back to my normal life. Not to say that anything of my experience this summer was bad. As a matter of fact, it was all pretty incredible. But after doing it for 10 weeks, you need a vacation from the vacation.
When you backpack, you end up making a lot of sacrifices that you never expected. First of all, your privacy disappears. You're stuck in rooms crammed with 30 other people, all bumping into each other. Or you're stuck in a tent next to someone who stinks just as bad as you. Each bathroom you go to looks like a toxic waste dump because 100 people trashed it right before you got there.
And then there's the continuous moving around from place to place, constantly packing...and repacking...and packing again. You realize your backpack can't nearly fit everything you had hoped it would, so you're continuously telling yourself that you can't acquire things. And then you start seeing yourself wearing the same clothes over and over. You feel like you're some cartoon character or cast member from "Gilligan's Island" who never has a new outfit to show.
At first, all of this is no big deal. But after a while, you start to miss the privacy...and the cleanliness...and the variety of clothing that you had in your former life. That's when it's time to pitch the backpack over into the river and call it quits and go home, which is where I'm at right now. Except I'm not throwing my backpack in the River Thames...it cost me way too much.
I think my breaking point was two days ago in Munich when I was at the Euro Youth Hostel. I was awoken at 2 am to the sounds of these young drunk American kids yelling and making a racket about something. One of them had thrown up on the floor of the dorm room, and glass was broken all over the floor. They just started waking everyone up, turning on lights, and making a scene. That's when I started realizing, "Hey...I'm 32 years-old. I really don't need to put up with this crap anymore. I'm done with this."
Yep. I think my backpacking days of wandering around willy-nilly across the globe are done. Not to say that I won't do a little more of it in the future, but nothing of the magnitude I've just done. I'm an adult now, and don't need to subject myself to this fraternity house atmosphere anymore. It was all good and fun, but now, I ready to move on. I got it all out of my system, and it feels good.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
A Day at Dachau
Boy...talk about going from Yin one day, and going to Yang the next.
I woke up this morning, without a clue in the world as to what I was going to do. Some American expat named Mike handed me a brochure on taking a biking tour of Munich, telling me that "It´s the most fun that I´d have in Munich with my pants on." I don´t know quite where he´s coming from...I have lots of fun with my pants on. Besides, if I went around town wandering with my posterior all exposed, who knows what German prison I would end up in. And besides that, think about the chafing and sunburns from being naked down there. Ooooh...don´t like the thought of it. I think I´ll keep my leiderhosen on.
Anyway, I decided to not go along on Mike´s Bike Tour, considering I somehow ended up visiting every "hidden, off-the-beaten-path" place by accident yesterday for free that he takes people to for 20 Euros a whack. But I didn´t see the nudist section of the English Garden, as Mike promises he will take me to. But I´m sure there´s a lot of "bad naked" there and not the "good naked," so I think I´m better off without his tour.
What I did do today is go to Dachau. I knew absolutely nothing about this waking up this morning. I read that it was a former Nazi concentration camp, and I was shocked that it was so close to Munich. So within minutes, I bought a ticket and hopped on the train and bus to get out there. I figured it would only take about 2 hours max to see this place. I spent 6 hours there total, and despite it being very sad and depressing, I´m really glad I went today. I learned more about why WWII came to occur than I would watching the The Hitler Channel...sorry...The HISTORY Channel all day long. Dachau put a lot of what happened during the Holocaust into perspective for me. And after doing a year-long stint with the California Dept. of Corrections, it really affected me being in a prison setting again, trapped inside barbed wire and seeing where people were housed like animals. It´s disturbing, but I think that once again, all Americans should see this once in their lifetime. I also once again feel proud about my country, because they were the liberators for the prisoners of Dachau.
I´d type more, but I´m running out of Euros. Gotta save them for my final day in Germany tomorrow. Will type more later.
I woke up this morning, without a clue in the world as to what I was going to do. Some American expat named Mike handed me a brochure on taking a biking tour of Munich, telling me that "It´s the most fun that I´d have in Munich with my pants on." I don´t know quite where he´s coming from...I have lots of fun with my pants on. Besides, if I went around town wandering with my posterior all exposed, who knows what German prison I would end up in. And besides that, think about the chafing and sunburns from being naked down there. Ooooh...don´t like the thought of it. I think I´ll keep my leiderhosen on.
Anyway, I decided to not go along on Mike´s Bike Tour, considering I somehow ended up visiting every "hidden, off-the-beaten-path" place by accident yesterday for free that he takes people to for 20 Euros a whack. But I didn´t see the nudist section of the English Garden, as Mike promises he will take me to. But I´m sure there´s a lot of "bad naked" there and not the "good naked," so I think I´m better off without his tour.
What I did do today is go to Dachau. I knew absolutely nothing about this waking up this morning. I read that it was a former Nazi concentration camp, and I was shocked that it was so close to Munich. So within minutes, I bought a ticket and hopped on the train and bus to get out there. I figured it would only take about 2 hours max to see this place. I spent 6 hours there total, and despite it being very sad and depressing, I´m really glad I went today. I learned more about why WWII came to occur than I would watching the The Hitler Channel...sorry...The HISTORY Channel all day long. Dachau put a lot of what happened during the Holocaust into perspective for me. And after doing a year-long stint with the California Dept. of Corrections, it really affected me being in a prison setting again, trapped inside barbed wire and seeing where people were housed like animals. It´s disturbing, but I think that once again, all Americans should see this once in their lifetime. I also once again feel proud about my country, because they were the liberators for the prisoners of Dachau.
I´d type more, but I´m running out of Euros. Gotta save them for my final day in Germany tomorrow. Will type more later.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Budapest Exposed
Hoohah! What an awesome day so far in Müchen (a.k.a. Munich). Already, I hit the Hoffbrauhaus for lunch (and waited over an hour just to get served by my pissed-off waiter who had some grudge against me. Very odd. Maybe I sat down at the wrong table. Maybe he hates tourists...especially Americans who come in wearing their Sierra Nevada Brewery T-shirt. Don´t know. The Hoffbrau is a nutty place with chaos all around. I don´t know how they keep anything straight), wandered around the city, checked out the broken Glockenspiel (are the people on it supposed to move around and dance to chimes or something???), climbed up the St. Peter tower to see the city from high above, watched Germans surfboarding on the canal (I kid you not...they´ve got a pressurized stream of water pouring out from under a bridge, and it´s a surfboarding park now), and then ended up eating and drinking at the giant beer garden called Englischer Garten (that´s how Germans pronounce "English Garden" when they start getting wasted. I swiped the huge 1 Liter beer stein I put a deposit on, as those snooty Arizona girls from back in Prague had told me they had done (maybe they weren´t total idiots after all). Makes a nice souvenir.) My my...Munich is really shaping out to be everything I expected it to be.
But then there´s Budapest, which didn´t do hardly anything for me. I don´t know...maybe some external factors were influencing my opinion of this place...maybe I was just getting tired of seeing the same types of stuff over and over. But as a whole, Budapest didn´t seem to have a lot of the high cultural attactions that I´ve seen in the other cities I´ve visited. I felt like Budapest was still trying to pull itself up by its bootstraps after years of being suppressed by the Communists. Sure, Budapest has some churches to check out, but they´re nothing spectacular as compared to other cities. For example, I tried checking out the Jewish synagogue in town, but they were charging way too much for nothing (way to go, Judiasm, for perpetuating your demeaning stereotype), so I went to the Catholic Church instead (which was free...hooray!) and saw the severed hand of their saint. It was about 1,000 years old and clenched up in a fist like it didn´t want to let go of its control. It was a little disturbing, but I guess these Hungarians cling onto any holy relic they can get their "hands" on! Ha! Oh, I´m just killing myself here! There´s a whole entire history about how this "hand" has changed hands over the millenium. It even ended up in the USA while WWII was going on.
Other than the severed hand, everything else in Budapest tended to revolve around war, or terror, or their past association with communism. Oh, wait now...there was a silly musical fountain that would dance to opera music. That was pleasant. Everything else...not so pleasant. Their warfare museum was interesting in the fact that I got to see the losing side´s interpretation of WWII (Hungary sided with the Nazis. Bad mistake.). Although the signage was horribly translated in English (which I´ve also noticed in all the other countries I´ve visited. Europe needs an official English copy editor to proofread all their stuff), I could still get the gist of what they were saying, and it came across to me that they were rewriting history. They put themselves as innocent victims to Hitler and Germany and just HAD to go along with them with all the mass genocides... and it was their God-given right to reclaim the lands taken away from them at the end of WWI. So, my B.S. meter was going off the charts. Further on in the museum, they had some swastikas and uniforms displayed that rather shocked me. I figured they would have removed all that stuff completely. I guess not.
Another thing that´s shocking is how there´s a wax museum at the top of the Citadel on the Buda side of the city has Nazi soldiers putting prisoners-of-war in horrible situations. They title the attraction "1944." Once again, I find it horribly wrong that a country is continuing to display inappropriate stuff like this. I mean, this ain´t "Hogan´s Heroes" we´re talking about here with that crazy, lovable Colonel Klink. If this was America, Jewish groups, Holocaust victims, and even Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Push Colition would be out protesting this thing. Here in Hungary, it´s all good fun. Oh, here kids...put on these funny Nazi hats down at the gift store and let´s take your picture. Oy vey!
One attraction that I checked out, that I´m glad they did keep, was called Statue Park. It´s located about 5 kilometers south of the city, way far away from everything, and contains all the old statues that used to be around during the days of communism. Once communism starting falling in the early 90´s, anything even connected with communism was quickly removed and destroyed. Luckily, Budapest saw the need to preserve some of this stuff to show future generations what communism was like. The park contains about 40 statues, some of which are Lenin with his business suit on, holding out his hand as if to say "Welcome to my repressive kindgom. Can I show you around?" But most are done in that bland propagandist style where "the worker" is made up into a giant superhero. All the people have blockish features to them, and their muscles are just bulging out all over like they´re Barry Bonds on steroids. They´re a real trip to look at. I would have hated to be one of the artists making those at the time, because they were limited on what they could do. "Oh, so you want me to make ANOTHER non-descript big worker waving a flag? And put the communist star somewhere in there? Boy, like I haven´t done THAT before!" The funniest part about Statue Park is when you leave it. At the exit, they´re selling T-shirts, most of them with tie-ins to South Park and McDonald´s (I´m sure Lenin is just rolling in his glass viewing box). There´s also one of those boxy crappy cars (Der Trabis???) that everyone in Communismland would have to drive just sitting there as you leave. Yes, communism is dead. But I´m glad someone perserved some of these old relics so I can appreciate what I have in my country.
Our "hostel takeover" in Budapest was also pretty bad. The first hostel we stayed at was called "Amazing Hostel." The only thing amazing about it was that it wasn´t shut down and condemned by a safety official. It was inside an old apartment building that looked like a Russian tank had tried to blow it up from the outside. It was completely empty and falling apart except for 3 rooms way in the back that had been renovated. Just walking to my room everyday was putting my life on the line. One false step, and I would have fallen over the 3-story railing and plummeted to my death. The rooms were crammed with beds, giving you no room to even move around or pack your stuff. Eric had a classic Chicago "porch disaster" in his bed when the wooden frame broke. Luckily, he was on the bottom of the bunk bed and only fell a foot. I put on my structural engineer hat to access the damage to see if I was in danger of falling, but I appeared OK. Then the next morning, Eric fell again in his bed. Poor guy. Then his locker door fell on top of his head. Yes sir...welcome to Fawlty Towers.
The other hostel, Island Hostel, was located on (surpise!) an island in the middle of the Danube River. It was a dump as well...looked like it used to be a summer beach home at one time, then had fallen into disrepair and was eventually turned into a hostel. The smell of mildew just hovered in my room. However, the hostel´s one redeeming feature was that it was located on the river. Beautiful view at night. Just gorgeous. Oh well. I guess you gotta take what you can get when you´re cheap.
But then there´s Budapest, which didn´t do hardly anything for me. I don´t know...maybe some external factors were influencing my opinion of this place...maybe I was just getting tired of seeing the same types of stuff over and over. But as a whole, Budapest didn´t seem to have a lot of the high cultural attactions that I´ve seen in the other cities I´ve visited. I felt like Budapest was still trying to pull itself up by its bootstraps after years of being suppressed by the Communists. Sure, Budapest has some churches to check out, but they´re nothing spectacular as compared to other cities. For example, I tried checking out the Jewish synagogue in town, but they were charging way too much for nothing (way to go, Judiasm, for perpetuating your demeaning stereotype), so I went to the Catholic Church instead (which was free...hooray!) and saw the severed hand of their saint. It was about 1,000 years old and clenched up in a fist like it didn´t want to let go of its control. It was a little disturbing, but I guess these Hungarians cling onto any holy relic they can get their "hands" on! Ha! Oh, I´m just killing myself here! There´s a whole entire history about how this "hand" has changed hands over the millenium. It even ended up in the USA while WWII was going on.
Other than the severed hand, everything else in Budapest tended to revolve around war, or terror, or their past association with communism. Oh, wait now...there was a silly musical fountain that would dance to opera music. That was pleasant. Everything else...not so pleasant. Their warfare museum was interesting in the fact that I got to see the losing side´s interpretation of WWII (Hungary sided with the Nazis. Bad mistake.). Although the signage was horribly translated in English (which I´ve also noticed in all the other countries I´ve visited. Europe needs an official English copy editor to proofread all their stuff), I could still get the gist of what they were saying, and it came across to me that they were rewriting history. They put themselves as innocent victims to Hitler and Germany and just HAD to go along with them with all the mass genocides... and it was their God-given right to reclaim the lands taken away from them at the end of WWI. So, my B.S. meter was going off the charts. Further on in the museum, they had some swastikas and uniforms displayed that rather shocked me. I figured they would have removed all that stuff completely. I guess not.
Another thing that´s shocking is how there´s a wax museum at the top of the Citadel on the Buda side of the city has Nazi soldiers putting prisoners-of-war in horrible situations. They title the attraction "1944." Once again, I find it horribly wrong that a country is continuing to display inappropriate stuff like this. I mean, this ain´t "Hogan´s Heroes" we´re talking about here with that crazy, lovable Colonel Klink. If this was America, Jewish groups, Holocaust victims, and even Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Push Colition would be out protesting this thing. Here in Hungary, it´s all good fun. Oh, here kids...put on these funny Nazi hats down at the gift store and let´s take your picture. Oy vey!
One attraction that I checked out, that I´m glad they did keep, was called Statue Park. It´s located about 5 kilometers south of the city, way far away from everything, and contains all the old statues that used to be around during the days of communism. Once communism starting falling in the early 90´s, anything even connected with communism was quickly removed and destroyed. Luckily, Budapest saw the need to preserve some of this stuff to show future generations what communism was like. The park contains about 40 statues, some of which are Lenin with his business suit on, holding out his hand as if to say "Welcome to my repressive kindgom. Can I show you around?" But most are done in that bland propagandist style where "the worker" is made up into a giant superhero. All the people have blockish features to them, and their muscles are just bulging out all over like they´re Barry Bonds on steroids. They´re a real trip to look at. I would have hated to be one of the artists making those at the time, because they were limited on what they could do. "Oh, so you want me to make ANOTHER non-descript big worker waving a flag? And put the communist star somewhere in there? Boy, like I haven´t done THAT before!" The funniest part about Statue Park is when you leave it. At the exit, they´re selling T-shirts, most of them with tie-ins to South Park and McDonald´s (I´m sure Lenin is just rolling in his glass viewing box). There´s also one of those boxy crappy cars (Der Trabis???) that everyone in Communismland would have to drive just sitting there as you leave. Yes, communism is dead. But I´m glad someone perserved some of these old relics so I can appreciate what I have in my country.
Our "hostel takeover" in Budapest was also pretty bad. The first hostel we stayed at was called "Amazing Hostel." The only thing amazing about it was that it wasn´t shut down and condemned by a safety official. It was inside an old apartment building that looked like a Russian tank had tried to blow it up from the outside. It was completely empty and falling apart except for 3 rooms way in the back that had been renovated. Just walking to my room everyday was putting my life on the line. One false step, and I would have fallen over the 3-story railing and plummeted to my death. The rooms were crammed with beds, giving you no room to even move around or pack your stuff. Eric had a classic Chicago "porch disaster" in his bed when the wooden frame broke. Luckily, he was on the bottom of the bunk bed and only fell a foot. I put on my structural engineer hat to access the damage to see if I was in danger of falling, but I appeared OK. Then the next morning, Eric fell again in his bed. Poor guy. Then his locker door fell on top of his head. Yes sir...welcome to Fawlty Towers.
The other hostel, Island Hostel, was located on (surpise!) an island in the middle of the Danube River. It was a dump as well...looked like it used to be a summer beach home at one time, then had fallen into disrepair and was eventually turned into a hostel. The smell of mildew just hovered in my room. However, the hostel´s one redeeming feature was that it was located on the river. Beautiful view at night. Just gorgeous. Oh well. I guess you gotta take what you can get when you´re cheap.
Homeward Bound
Gutentag once again, everyone! Just got into Munich about an hour ago, and although I haven´t seen anything in this city yet besides the train station, I´m getting this warm fuzzy feeling that this city is going to be awesome. The hostel I´m at--Euro Youth Hotel--really has its act together. And I was just given a map showing all the beer halls and gardens in this city. Oh, I feel like a kid on Christmas morning right now!!! I´ll only type a little for the moment, because I want to get out and visit a museum or two and sample Munich´s best here.
As the title of this positng indicates, I´ve now turned directions and I´m making the pilgrimage back to the States, bit by bit. It´s a little sad, because you realize that the trip is coming to an end. While heading east, there´s no end in sight and you have no grasp of time...it´s a never-ending journey into the land of mystery. But my internal homing device went off a few days ago in Budapest, and now I´m on autopilot heading back west. There´s no getting off this train now...I´m on my way back home.
I parted ways with Eric yesterday morning, which was a little tough. We spent 9 continuous weeks together, through both the good and the bad. That´s the longest amount of time I think I´ve ever been around anyone non-stop. Sometimes we got along great...sometimes I think we annoyed the hell out of each other with our own individual quirks. But like a marriage (in a non-gay sort of way), we made it work, and it´s a little hard when that person isn´t around anymore to chew the fat with. So I will definitely miss his company. It´s weird being by myself again. Already, I´ve noticed a significant change as several weirdos are starting to come up to me and harrass me now that I´m a lone target. I´ll get into some of that more in a later post.
As the title of this positng indicates, I´ve now turned directions and I´m making the pilgrimage back to the States, bit by bit. It´s a little sad, because you realize that the trip is coming to an end. While heading east, there´s no end in sight and you have no grasp of time...it´s a never-ending journey into the land of mystery. But my internal homing device went off a few days ago in Budapest, and now I´m on autopilot heading back west. There´s no getting off this train now...I´m on my way back home.
I parted ways with Eric yesterday morning, which was a little tough. We spent 9 continuous weeks together, through both the good and the bad. That´s the longest amount of time I think I´ve ever been around anyone non-stop. Sometimes we got along great...sometimes I think we annoyed the hell out of each other with our own individual quirks. But like a marriage (in a non-gay sort of way), we made it work, and it´s a little hard when that person isn´t around anymore to chew the fat with. So I will definitely miss his company. It´s weird being by myself again. Already, I´ve noticed a significant change as several weirdos are starting to come up to me and harrass me now that I´m a lone target. I´ll get into some of that more in a later post.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Vienna Wieners
Gutentag, everyone! It's another language, another country again. Actually, another TWO countries!!! Whew! What the hell happened these past few days? It went by so fast. Man, my head is spinning from all the stuff that's happened. I've got to sit down, take it easy and collect my thoughts. Wooooo......slow down, Brian. There we go. Nice and easy.
All right. I'm ready to spill the beans on the last few days. Who knows where this diatribe is going to go, so bear with me.
Our remaining days in Prague were filled with the drunken revelry that we had been hoping to experience in this city. If you recall from the previous posting, our first night in Prague was pretty lame. Playing Czech Monopoly with a snarky Canadian, a spacey Mexican, and a depressed Texan do not make for an exciting evening. I felt as if I had somehow been sent back to church summer camp.
Our next evening was only slightly better...Eric and I couldn't find anyone at the hostel to venture out on the town with us, so like Lewis and Clark, we went out into the unknown, blazing our own pub trail. In the process, we did happen to run into two 22 year-old girls from Arizona who were also at the hostel. They had just graduated from school and were trying to see all of Europe in a month, which is a pretty idiotic thing. First of all, it's impossible, and second, jumping around from city to city every other day leaves you no time to enjoy your travels. Anyway, we were trying to find a good pub to go to, but they got impatient and forced us into having a beer at an overpriced restaurant. I got rather annoyed by this...and their snobby spoiled attitudes got on my nerves after an hour. Thankfully, they split from us and took off to find a dance club. We just went back to the hostel, feeling screwed out of our cheap beer. You come to Prague for the cheap beer. If you miss out on it, it's such a tragedy. At least that's how us guys see it.
The third night was an awesome night. The dynamics of the hostel changed with some new arrivals. After dinner, the dining room turned into a massive card tournament with about 20 people drinking cheap bottled beer and trash talking. We learned a new game, but since it's name is vulgar and there might be a young audience reading this blog, I'll refer to it simply as the "Game That Must Not Be Named," or GTMNBN for short. The GTMNBN was a crazy bizarre game with rules that had to have been made up by a bunch of drunk frat guys. At first, it makes no sense. But then after a round of it, it's actually quite a blast. For example, 2's start the deck, 3's force another person to take all the cards, 5's are invisible, 7's make the numbers go backwards, 8's skip the next player, 10's clear the deck, and then you have face down cards that you have to play without getting to look at them (this probably makes no utter sense to you, but I guarantee, come and visit me when I get back home and we'll have a grand ol' time playing GTMNBN). Another great thing about the game is that the winner gets to decide upon a punishment for the loser. In our first round, we made the loser go around and hug everyone in the room, which was rather amusing for those who didn't know what was going on. In the second round, Eric actually lost, and for his punishment, he had to wear a party dress during the next round of the game. One of the Canadian girls brought out her dress for Eric to wear, but it was too small. So she brought out a stretchy dress and made Eric get into it...but like O.J.'s glove, it just wouldn't fit. So, Eric was off the hook, which is probably a good thing, because I think he'd make the ugliest, hairiest girl I've ever seen.
After the cards, a massive group of us went out into Prague to go to a dance club. We had a contingent of Americans, Canadians, British, and Irish in the group, which made for an interesting evening. Throw in some Australians and some Kiwis and it would have pretty much completed the entire Anglo alliance. The ride on the tram into Prague devolved into chaos when noone knew where the tram was taking us, so after getting lost, we somehow bumbled our way to "Central Europe's Largest Dance Club," which doesn't say very much if you think about it, because Prague IS central Europe. Anyway, Club Latzke was a 5 story towering inferno of lights and loud music. On each of its five floors, there was a different type of music playing. Floor 1 had that freaky European techo Sprockets stuff. Floor 2 was all 80's music. Floor 3 was modern butt-grinding music which I somehow never heard before (dang, I'm getting old). Who knows what was playing on Floors 4 and 5...I didn't make it up that far. After two hours of this, it was suddenly 4 am and I was ready to call it quits. So I skipped out on the group of young 'uns and took a tram back to the hostel so Old Man Brian could get some rest.
The fourth evening was more subdued. Eric and I joined the Irish contingent (with a Liverpool straggler and some new guy from Portugal) and hung out at Double Trouble. Double Trouble sounds a lot worse than it really was...it was just some hole-in-the-wall dungeon where people drank. I kept looking for the "trouble" but didn't seem to find it. It ended up just being a couple of guys talking about football, which I have no clue about over here. The Irish kid who looked suspiciously like a young Jack Black was a riot to listen to. He would just jabber on about the stupidest things...it was like listening to a live version of Wikipedia. I split at 2:30 because we had to get up early to catch a bus to Vienna.
The next morning, I found Eric in a catatonic state on his bed. He did not look good from practically staying out the entire night long after I had left. The Eurobus ride to Vienna was rather quick and painless, but once we arrived at the campground, Eric was knocked out in the tent for hours. We ventured into Vienna that evening to check out the sights...
...and that's when the rain began. It rained. And rained. And rained. We sought shelter in a Greek/Turkish pizza place and ate there, then ventured over to the 1516 Brewery to wait out the storm. But the rain kept on going. Back at the campsite, my side of the tent was completely flooded, soaking everything I had. I have a name for that tent, and that, too, cannot be posted in this blog, so we will simply refer to it as the "Tent That Must Not Be Named," or TTMNBN. I was frantically using my wash towel to bail out TTMNBN, like it was a sinking ship. The sleeping bag was like a sponge, so I had to throw that outside and try to make due wearing warm clothes and sleeping just on my mattress. But my clothes were soaked, too. And the temperature in Austria started dropping. So around 4 am, I was a miserable, shivering mess.
That's when a vision of Bear Grylls (host of Discovery Channel's "Man Vs. Wild") suddenly came to me and kicked me into survival mode all of a sudden. I could hear Bear telling me how having wet clothes was the worst situation you could put yourself in, and you had to do something quick to get warm. I would have built a fire, but all these European countries don't let you make fires, which is pretty lame (and I don't see Smokey Bear anywhere around here, so it can't be THAT bad a thing). So I was thinking and thinking of what to do. Then it hit me: this campsite has a dryer...a real working clothes dryer. But I had no Euro coins to plug in! Crap! I rushed over to the dryer anyway at 4 in the morning, admidst the torrential rain...and to my surprise, those foolish Austrians hadn't installed a coin machine on the dryer. It was free! I couldn't believe it! So like a madman, I hauled everything I owned over to the laundry room, and camped out there into the morning hours shoving everything into the dryer until it was toasty dry. I finally got back to bed about 6:30 am and crashed for the next 4 hours as the rain started to dissipate.
We spent all day Friday wandering the city of Vienna, checking out the massive buildings and crazy statues that they have there. They have a lot of violent statues, I've noticed...statues of people clubbing each other over the head with big sticks, poking each other with long metal rods, and strangling and fighting each other to the death. Unlike the French with their plain graceful statues of Greek gods and goddesses, the Austrians like their gory violence and show the actual stories of the gods and goddesses taking place in their statues. Austria is a tough-feeling country with a lot of male machismo all around. You ride Vienna's underground, and you've got the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger yelling out all the stops for you in German: "STEPHENSPLATZ!!! KARLSPLATZ!!! HESSENGASSE!!!." It sounds really tough. I made sure I got off at the right stops or else I felt the train would come and kick my ass. Even the handles on the subway doors require brute strength to get them open. You've got to turn the handle and yank really hard, all within a few seconds. No wonder why this country produces so many tough men (and women). It's a workout everyday just riding public transportation.
But Vienna is a beautiful city. Seems like half the people there are dressed up as Mozart. Either there's a Mozart impersonator convention going on in town, or Vienna is trapped in time and hasn't picked up the latest copy of GQ to figure out what current fashion trends are. With all these faux Mozarts walking around, I felt that the REAL Mozart was getting slighted here, so I jumped on a tram with Eric (who was like the walking dead at this point) and found the cemetery where he and all the other decomposing composers were buried. Dumb luck reared its head again. After an hour wandering around lost in this cemetery, unable to find the titans of classical music, I gave up, and on the way towards the exit, I just happened to run into the whole entire lot. Beethoven. Mozart. Brahms. Shubert. Strauss. The list kept going on and on. Man, there must be a curse in Vienna that kills off all these composers once they arrive. If I was a composer, I wouldn't want to live there for fear of dying. It's like those silly horror films with the dumb white people going into the haunted house...and staying there despite all the ghosts and creepy stuff trying to kill them. Get the message, people: Get out!!!
Eric kept deteriorating, so he split for the campsite and I spent the evening wandering around Vienna. I bumbled into a film festival outside their main town building. They were showing a film of Placido Domingo singing opera, and they had people eating and drinking in the grounds around it. I then hopped on a tram and found a restaurant called Centimeters that bases the price of its food on the length of the sandwich you order. Pretty clever. They had metric rulers all over this restaurant. I opted to get some strange pancake thing filled with meat and covered with au gratin sauce. I love the German language...it makes me laugh. Reading a menu in German is a riot for me. Every word sounds like a sound effect.
On Saturday morning before we headed out of Vienna, I grabbed some strudel at a local bakery to eat on the bus. We then went to Cafe Central, which is a coffee house/restaurant. I read about it in my travel book and figured it would simply be some regular coffee house with students and the regular intelligentsia hanging out on couches with their laptops. Oh my gosh...stepping into this place, I was suddenly transported back in time. Inside I was greeted by a grand palace with gothic arches. It was so beautiful. I sat down and got their Viennese Breakfast, which consisted of Julius Meinl coffee (I love that stuff), a hard-boiled egg that I got to crack with a dainty spoon, and a big plate of assorted rolls...all for about €5,90, which is awesome!!! The Austrian waiter was a hoot as well, dressed in his dapper red jacket and going "Soooooo" before everything he said to us in his broken English. Cafe Central was such a pleasant surprise, and a great way to end my brief Vienna experience.
But now we are in Budapest, and this place confuses me even more. The language is even screwier, and I can't even begin to pronounce anything. This is the farthest east I'm heading, because I've got to start heading back west in a few days to travel back home. I'll be spending a few hours working on the final itinerary today. Looks like a trip to Munich might be in the works. Eric is finally looking back to normal again, so we'll probably check out some of the former Communist sights here and try not to get suckered by the locals. I'll give you the low-down on Budapest in the next day or two, so stay tuned.
All right. I'm ready to spill the beans on the last few days. Who knows where this diatribe is going to go, so bear with me.
Our remaining days in Prague were filled with the drunken revelry that we had been hoping to experience in this city. If you recall from the previous posting, our first night in Prague was pretty lame. Playing Czech Monopoly with a snarky Canadian, a spacey Mexican, and a depressed Texan do not make for an exciting evening. I felt as if I had somehow been sent back to church summer camp.
Our next evening was only slightly better...Eric and I couldn't find anyone at the hostel to venture out on the town with us, so like Lewis and Clark, we went out into the unknown, blazing our own pub trail. In the process, we did happen to run into two 22 year-old girls from Arizona who were also at the hostel. They had just graduated from school and were trying to see all of Europe in a month, which is a pretty idiotic thing. First of all, it's impossible, and second, jumping around from city to city every other day leaves you no time to enjoy your travels. Anyway, we were trying to find a good pub to go to, but they got impatient and forced us into having a beer at an overpriced restaurant. I got rather annoyed by this...and their snobby spoiled attitudes got on my nerves after an hour. Thankfully, they split from us and took off to find a dance club. We just went back to the hostel, feeling screwed out of our cheap beer. You come to Prague for the cheap beer. If you miss out on it, it's such a tragedy. At least that's how us guys see it.
The third night was an awesome night. The dynamics of the hostel changed with some new arrivals. After dinner, the dining room turned into a massive card tournament with about 20 people drinking cheap bottled beer and trash talking. We learned a new game, but since it's name is vulgar and there might be a young audience reading this blog, I'll refer to it simply as the "Game That Must Not Be Named," or GTMNBN for short. The GTMNBN was a crazy bizarre game with rules that had to have been made up by a bunch of drunk frat guys. At first, it makes no sense. But then after a round of it, it's actually quite a blast. For example, 2's start the deck, 3's force another person to take all the cards, 5's are invisible, 7's make the numbers go backwards, 8's skip the next player, 10's clear the deck, and then you have face down cards that you have to play without getting to look at them (this probably makes no utter sense to you, but I guarantee, come and visit me when I get back home and we'll have a grand ol' time playing GTMNBN). Another great thing about the game is that the winner gets to decide upon a punishment for the loser. In our first round, we made the loser go around and hug everyone in the room, which was rather amusing for those who didn't know what was going on. In the second round, Eric actually lost, and for his punishment, he had to wear a party dress during the next round of the game. One of the Canadian girls brought out her dress for Eric to wear, but it was too small. So she brought out a stretchy dress and made Eric get into it...but like O.J.'s glove, it just wouldn't fit. So, Eric was off the hook, which is probably a good thing, because I think he'd make the ugliest, hairiest girl I've ever seen.
After the cards, a massive group of us went out into Prague to go to a dance club. We had a contingent of Americans, Canadians, British, and Irish in the group, which made for an interesting evening. Throw in some Australians and some Kiwis and it would have pretty much completed the entire Anglo alliance. The ride on the tram into Prague devolved into chaos when noone knew where the tram was taking us, so after getting lost, we somehow bumbled our way to "Central Europe's Largest Dance Club," which doesn't say very much if you think about it, because Prague IS central Europe. Anyway, Club Latzke was a 5 story towering inferno of lights and loud music. On each of its five floors, there was a different type of music playing. Floor 1 had that freaky European techo Sprockets stuff. Floor 2 was all 80's music. Floor 3 was modern butt-grinding music which I somehow never heard before (dang, I'm getting old). Who knows what was playing on Floors 4 and 5...I didn't make it up that far. After two hours of this, it was suddenly 4 am and I was ready to call it quits. So I skipped out on the group of young 'uns and took a tram back to the hostel so Old Man Brian could get some rest.
The fourth evening was more subdued. Eric and I joined the Irish contingent (with a Liverpool straggler and some new guy from Portugal) and hung out at Double Trouble. Double Trouble sounds a lot worse than it really was...it was just some hole-in-the-wall dungeon where people drank. I kept looking for the "trouble" but didn't seem to find it. It ended up just being a couple of guys talking about football, which I have no clue about over here. The Irish kid who looked suspiciously like a young Jack Black was a riot to listen to. He would just jabber on about the stupidest things...it was like listening to a live version of Wikipedia. I split at 2:30 because we had to get up early to catch a bus to Vienna.
The next morning, I found Eric in a catatonic state on his bed. He did not look good from practically staying out the entire night long after I had left. The Eurobus ride to Vienna was rather quick and painless, but once we arrived at the campground, Eric was knocked out in the tent for hours. We ventured into Vienna that evening to check out the sights...
...and that's when the rain began. It rained. And rained. And rained. We sought shelter in a Greek/Turkish pizza place and ate there, then ventured over to the 1516 Brewery to wait out the storm. But the rain kept on going. Back at the campsite, my side of the tent was completely flooded, soaking everything I had. I have a name for that tent, and that, too, cannot be posted in this blog, so we will simply refer to it as the "Tent That Must Not Be Named," or TTMNBN. I was frantically using my wash towel to bail out TTMNBN, like it was a sinking ship. The sleeping bag was like a sponge, so I had to throw that outside and try to make due wearing warm clothes and sleeping just on my mattress. But my clothes were soaked, too. And the temperature in Austria started dropping. So around 4 am, I was a miserable, shivering mess.
That's when a vision of Bear Grylls (host of Discovery Channel's "Man Vs. Wild") suddenly came to me and kicked me into survival mode all of a sudden. I could hear Bear telling me how having wet clothes was the worst situation you could put yourself in, and you had to do something quick to get warm. I would have built a fire, but all these European countries don't let you make fires, which is pretty lame (and I don't see Smokey Bear anywhere around here, so it can't be THAT bad a thing). So I was thinking and thinking of what to do. Then it hit me: this campsite has a dryer...a real working clothes dryer. But I had no Euro coins to plug in! Crap! I rushed over to the dryer anyway at 4 in the morning, admidst the torrential rain...and to my surprise, those foolish Austrians hadn't installed a coin machine on the dryer. It was free! I couldn't believe it! So like a madman, I hauled everything I owned over to the laundry room, and camped out there into the morning hours shoving everything into the dryer until it was toasty dry. I finally got back to bed about 6:30 am and crashed for the next 4 hours as the rain started to dissipate.
We spent all day Friday wandering the city of Vienna, checking out the massive buildings and crazy statues that they have there. They have a lot of violent statues, I've noticed...statues of people clubbing each other over the head with big sticks, poking each other with long metal rods, and strangling and fighting each other to the death. Unlike the French with their plain graceful statues of Greek gods and goddesses, the Austrians like their gory violence and show the actual stories of the gods and goddesses taking place in their statues. Austria is a tough-feeling country with a lot of male machismo all around. You ride Vienna's underground, and you've got the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger yelling out all the stops for you in German: "STEPHENSPLATZ!!! KARLSPLATZ!!! HESSENGASSE!!!." It sounds really tough. I made sure I got off at the right stops or else I felt the train would come and kick my ass. Even the handles on the subway doors require brute strength to get them open. You've got to turn the handle and yank really hard, all within a few seconds. No wonder why this country produces so many tough men (and women). It's a workout everyday just riding public transportation.
But Vienna is a beautiful city. Seems like half the people there are dressed up as Mozart. Either there's a Mozart impersonator convention going on in town, or Vienna is trapped in time and hasn't picked up the latest copy of GQ to figure out what current fashion trends are. With all these faux Mozarts walking around, I felt that the REAL Mozart was getting slighted here, so I jumped on a tram with Eric (who was like the walking dead at this point) and found the cemetery where he and all the other decomposing composers were buried. Dumb luck reared its head again. After an hour wandering around lost in this cemetery, unable to find the titans of classical music, I gave up, and on the way towards the exit, I just happened to run into the whole entire lot. Beethoven. Mozart. Brahms. Shubert. Strauss. The list kept going on and on. Man, there must be a curse in Vienna that kills off all these composers once they arrive. If I was a composer, I wouldn't want to live there for fear of dying. It's like those silly horror films with the dumb white people going into the haunted house...and staying there despite all the ghosts and creepy stuff trying to kill them. Get the message, people: Get out!!!
Eric kept deteriorating, so he split for the campsite and I spent the evening wandering around Vienna. I bumbled into a film festival outside their main town building. They were showing a film of Placido Domingo singing opera, and they had people eating and drinking in the grounds around it. I then hopped on a tram and found a restaurant called Centimeters that bases the price of its food on the length of the sandwich you order. Pretty clever. They had metric rulers all over this restaurant. I opted to get some strange pancake thing filled with meat and covered with au gratin sauce. I love the German language...it makes me laugh. Reading a menu in German is a riot for me. Every word sounds like a sound effect.
On Saturday morning before we headed out of Vienna, I grabbed some strudel at a local bakery to eat on the bus. We then went to Cafe Central, which is a coffee house/restaurant. I read about it in my travel book and figured it would simply be some regular coffee house with students and the regular intelligentsia hanging out on couches with their laptops. Oh my gosh...stepping into this place, I was suddenly transported back in time. Inside I was greeted by a grand palace with gothic arches. It was so beautiful. I sat down and got their Viennese Breakfast, which consisted of Julius Meinl coffee (I love that stuff), a hard-boiled egg that I got to crack with a dainty spoon, and a big plate of assorted rolls...all for about €5,90, which is awesome!!! The Austrian waiter was a hoot as well, dressed in his dapper red jacket and going "Soooooo" before everything he said to us in his broken English. Cafe Central was such a pleasant surprise, and a great way to end my brief Vienna experience.
But now we are in Budapest, and this place confuses me even more. The language is even screwier, and I can't even begin to pronounce anything. This is the farthest east I'm heading, because I've got to start heading back west in a few days to travel back home. I'll be spending a few hours working on the final itinerary today. Looks like a trip to Munich might be in the works. Eric is finally looking back to normal again, so we'll probably check out some of the former Communist sights here and try not to get suckered by the locals. I'll give you the low-down on Budapest in the next day or two, so stay tuned.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
The Prague Blog
Good morning, everyone. I would have greeted you in Czech right now, but with all the hard consonants and "Ka" sounds in this language, I didn't want to coat the computer monitor in spittle. Czech is a strange language that looks a little like Russian, a little like Polish, and makes no utter sense to me. But thank the Lord that pretty much everything is translated in English here, which seems a little bizarre since we are nowhere near an English-speaking country. I would have thought that German would be the secondary language here since Germany is nearby, but I guess after WWII, these Czechs here didn't want anything more to do with those stinkin' Sudetenland jerks and just kicked out any German they laid their hands on.
Prague is a unique place indeed. It feels like you're walking through an alternate universe here, where things feel somewhat like what you're accustomed to, but then you realize that things are slightly off...like the time when Homer Simpson traveled back in time, screwed things up by clubbing dinosaurs over the head with a bat, and then it started raining doughnuts. I haven't seen doughnuts fall from the sky yet, but I wouldn´t doubt it if it happened. Prague feels like a mixture of so many different styles and eras...some Gothic here, some Renaissance there, some drab Communism here, and capitalism just bursting all over the place. If I threw a rock, chances are it would hit a McDonald's around here. Or a KFC. Sad to see that our country's impact on the Czech Republic tends to be strictly fast food joints nowadays. I guess that's the price you pay for a capitalistic society.
Prague is a city lost in time that feels like it's trying in spurts to come up to speed with everyone else. There seems to be so much history and things to see here, and yet, you look all around and there's not a whole lot of tourists...or people for that matter...crowding the streets or rushing around in a hurry. Not much traffic here, either. This is the first time in Europe where I haven't been afraid of getting knocked over by a motorized vehicle. Prague has a minimal underground subway system and tram system that most people seem to use here, and it works just fine.
This hostel that we're staying in, the Boathouse, is a real treat. To you, it probably sounds like we're sleeping in somebody's barn amongst the rats and the rowboats, but that's not the case at all. The hostel is located along the southern part of the river in Prague in what used to be a boathouse at one time. If you can imagine a large mobile home-like structure up on stilts with long ramps leading up to it...that's our hostel. What makes this place amazing are the women that run the show here. Two women in their 50's check you in, make you wonderful dinners in the evening for cheap, will do your laundry for a small price, and will give you advice and treat you with the greatest respect. It's like having your Mom here. Oh, it's so wonderful! Nothing beats having a home-cooked meal. And the backpackers coming through here have tended to be pretty nice. It's a very social hostel where the crowds and the dynamics change on a day-to-day basis. Our first night here, we met a few Canadians and Americans and tried to play the Czech version of Monopoly, where Boardwalk and Park Place are now unpronounceable names that you've never heard of in your life, and instead of dollars, you're now working with Kroners. Like I said, it's like you're living in an alternate universe here, where things aren't quite right.
Coming here to Prague after riding on a 16 hour bus ride was a little tough. We came into the city about 6 am in the morning on a Sunday, and it took a few hours to jump start ourselves and figure out how things worked here. The first problem was acquiring coins to plug into the automated ticket machines, since they only take coins in this country. That's been one of my biggest complaints in the countries I've visited...how they never accept bills in their machines. If you're a local with a lot of spare change in your pocket, it's no big deal. But as a tourist with lots of big bills, you're constantly screwed and have to go buy small items to get some change to buy your tickets. And that's where McDonald's comes into play. Although I hate saying it, McDonald's IS our embassy here. What other place in the world can you go into and get cheap food, change, and a FREE public toilet ALL within minutes??? McDonald's has saved our asses on many occasions here in Europe when everything else is closed or not catering towards the tourist's daily dilemmas. I may not like their food or their philosophy, but McDonald's is quite the savior.
Prague is also a country that can take advantage of you if you're not careful. When we arrived here, we were so hungry, so we went to one of their hundreds of sandwich stands scattered throughout the city. Sandwiches are dirt cheap here. As we were ordering two sandwiches, the lady at the stand started pouring shot glasses of cheap lemon whiskey and was urging us to drink with her. We declined, but she was so insistent that we drink with her. We thought that maybe this was just what they do here, and we didn't want to be rude. So after we received our change, we partook in raising our shot glasses, saying "Cheers!" in Czech, and drinking with her and the 3 other patrons gathered around the food stand. Everyone seemed so happy, and we were highly amused. And that alcohol...oooh, it burned. I felt like it was Rotgut or something and would eat through my stomach. So we sat down to eat our sandwiches, and as Eric was counting his change, he realized that he was missing about 300 Czech Krowns. The lady had not given us the right change, even though it appeared she had. So for two sandwiches that cost about $3.00 USD, we had paid about $20 for them. We realized that we had been hosed. Oh, we were definitely hosed on that one. That lady knew we were right off the turnip truck and took full advantage of it. So we basically paid for a whole round of shots we thought were on the house. Not only were our stomachs burning, but our minds were after that screw-up.
Time to go explore the city some more today. I think I'll check out the Museum of Communism today (I know...it sounds hilarious, doesn't it?) as well as the Mucha Museum, and then see where the day takes me. Probably have a few cheap beers since they are so plentiful here. And I gotta have the REAL Budweiser (Budvar) here. Tasty beer, that Budvar. Those Czechs really know their beer.
Prague is a unique place indeed. It feels like you're walking through an alternate universe here, where things feel somewhat like what you're accustomed to, but then you realize that things are slightly off...like the time when Homer Simpson traveled back in time, screwed things up by clubbing dinosaurs over the head with a bat, and then it started raining doughnuts. I haven't seen doughnuts fall from the sky yet, but I wouldn´t doubt it if it happened. Prague feels like a mixture of so many different styles and eras...some Gothic here, some Renaissance there, some drab Communism here, and capitalism just bursting all over the place. If I threw a rock, chances are it would hit a McDonald's around here. Or a KFC. Sad to see that our country's impact on the Czech Republic tends to be strictly fast food joints nowadays. I guess that's the price you pay for a capitalistic society.
Prague is a city lost in time that feels like it's trying in spurts to come up to speed with everyone else. There seems to be so much history and things to see here, and yet, you look all around and there's not a whole lot of tourists...or people for that matter...crowding the streets or rushing around in a hurry. Not much traffic here, either. This is the first time in Europe where I haven't been afraid of getting knocked over by a motorized vehicle. Prague has a minimal underground subway system and tram system that most people seem to use here, and it works just fine.
This hostel that we're staying in, the Boathouse, is a real treat. To you, it probably sounds like we're sleeping in somebody's barn amongst the rats and the rowboats, but that's not the case at all. The hostel is located along the southern part of the river in Prague in what used to be a boathouse at one time. If you can imagine a large mobile home-like structure up on stilts with long ramps leading up to it...that's our hostel. What makes this place amazing are the women that run the show here. Two women in their 50's check you in, make you wonderful dinners in the evening for cheap, will do your laundry for a small price, and will give you advice and treat you with the greatest respect. It's like having your Mom here. Oh, it's so wonderful! Nothing beats having a home-cooked meal. And the backpackers coming through here have tended to be pretty nice. It's a very social hostel where the crowds and the dynamics change on a day-to-day basis. Our first night here, we met a few Canadians and Americans and tried to play the Czech version of Monopoly, where Boardwalk and Park Place are now unpronounceable names that you've never heard of in your life, and instead of dollars, you're now working with Kroners. Like I said, it's like you're living in an alternate universe here, where things aren't quite right.
Coming here to Prague after riding on a 16 hour bus ride was a little tough. We came into the city about 6 am in the morning on a Sunday, and it took a few hours to jump start ourselves and figure out how things worked here. The first problem was acquiring coins to plug into the automated ticket machines, since they only take coins in this country. That's been one of my biggest complaints in the countries I've visited...how they never accept bills in their machines. If you're a local with a lot of spare change in your pocket, it's no big deal. But as a tourist with lots of big bills, you're constantly screwed and have to go buy small items to get some change to buy your tickets. And that's where McDonald's comes into play. Although I hate saying it, McDonald's IS our embassy here. What other place in the world can you go into and get cheap food, change, and a FREE public toilet ALL within minutes??? McDonald's has saved our asses on many occasions here in Europe when everything else is closed or not catering towards the tourist's daily dilemmas. I may not like their food or their philosophy, but McDonald's is quite the savior.
Prague is also a country that can take advantage of you if you're not careful. When we arrived here, we were so hungry, so we went to one of their hundreds of sandwich stands scattered throughout the city. Sandwiches are dirt cheap here. As we were ordering two sandwiches, the lady at the stand started pouring shot glasses of cheap lemon whiskey and was urging us to drink with her. We declined, but she was so insistent that we drink with her. We thought that maybe this was just what they do here, and we didn't want to be rude. So after we received our change, we partook in raising our shot glasses, saying "Cheers!" in Czech, and drinking with her and the 3 other patrons gathered around the food stand. Everyone seemed so happy, and we were highly amused. And that alcohol...oooh, it burned. I felt like it was Rotgut or something and would eat through my stomach. So we sat down to eat our sandwiches, and as Eric was counting his change, he realized that he was missing about 300 Czech Krowns. The lady had not given us the right change, even though it appeared she had. So for two sandwiches that cost about $3.00 USD, we had paid about $20 for them. We realized that we had been hosed. Oh, we were definitely hosed on that one. That lady knew we were right off the turnip truck and took full advantage of it. So we basically paid for a whole round of shots we thought were on the house. Not only were our stomachs burning, but our minds were after that screw-up.
Time to go explore the city some more today. I think I'll check out the Museum of Communism today (I know...it sounds hilarious, doesn't it?) as well as the Mucha Museum, and then see where the day takes me. Probably have a few cheap beers since they are so plentiful here. And I gotta have the REAL Budweiser (Budvar) here. Tasty beer, that Budvar. Those Czechs really know their beer.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Having a Praha Moment
Hello again everyone! My my my... it's been awhile since we really sat down and chatted. So how are you? How are the kids/significant other/family/pets/weather/sporting teams/whatever you value in life? Uh huh....uh huh...I'm listening....uh huh...oh, I see...interesting. Wow!!! You've had a lot happen while I've been sucked away into my European vortex here. We'll have to catch up more when I'm back across the pond, especially about "you know what." That's some real juicy gossip you've got there!!! Wooo!
This past week has been rather hectic for me and Eric with all the travelling around and sightseeing. And the blog has reflected that with the minimal lack of postings. But we're finally in a place where we've got some breathing room and can slow down once again: Praha, a.k.a. Prague. Prague is a beautiful place, with a nice winding river, beautiful people, and...
What's that you say??? Did I skip over some important details, like how I suddenly went from Paris to Prague in a heartbeat? Huh...you're right. I guess that does seem a bit odd. Now that I think about it, how the heck did I get here after all? This wasn't at all part of the original plan. I was supposed to be in Greece or Turkey by now. What hapened???
First, let's go into the Way-Way-Back Machine with Mr. Peabody and Sherman here to fill you in on some of the random stuff that occurred in Paris. As I mentioned earlier, Paris is a great city in my opinion. I know I saw it from a tourist's perspective, and the outskirts are supposed to be bad and the city is supposed to be having major racial tensions right now...but from what I saw, I thought it was a top-notch city. It wasn't dirty or smelled like cigarettes or had nasty rude people like people have been telling me over the years. Paris reminded me in a lot of ways like my fair city of Chicago, except a lot more spread out and minus a giant lake. I just enjoyed the vibe there, walking around and seeing cool things everywhere I turned.
On our first day, after nearly being crushed by the swarms of people at Le Tour de France, we ambled down the Champs-Elysees (the main drag in Paris where all the big events over its history have occurred. Check out all the film footage from WWII and the armies/parades are always marching down this street. One end of the Champs-Elysees is now like a Michigan Avenue with all the big shopping stores) and saw the Arc d´Triumph. We then went over to Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower) and tried to go up, but a security guard busted me for carrying dangerous items in my backpack, such as a pocket knife and a jar of peanut butter. I'm still trying to figure out how a jar of peanut butter poses a national security threat to France. Maybe they see it as encroaching upon their Nutella market here. Come to think about it, finding peanut butter in France is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It doesn't exist. We had to find an Arabic grocery store to locate a jar. But man, I didn't realize how much I missed that stuff until I had a peanut butter sandwich again. Wow...great stuff. It's the simple pleasures in life that you somehow miss.
So we didn't get to go up the Tower...at least not right off the bat. Two days later after seeing the long queue at the Musee d´Orsay, we headed back over to the Tower sans peanut butter and WERE able to climb up it. And I'm so glad I did. That was a real highlight on this trip, and I didn't expect it to be as cool as it was. We climbed the stairs up to the first and second levels, and even from there you could get an awesome view of the entire city. We didn't feel the need to pay the extra Euro to ride the elevator to the tippy-top to see a slightly higher perspective of Paris...the second level was sufficient enough. They had a Ben and Jerry's ice cream stand up in the Eiffel Tower, and I noticed how Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream wasn't there (while Cherry Garcia was, along with some weird Max Haveland character I've never heard of before), which I consider a major travesty especially since we helped liberate France from the Nazis. I think I'll write Stephen Colbert when I get back to the U.S. and let him know about this so he can take prompt action to fix this issue. I think I met more Americans up in the Eiffel Tower than anyplace else we've been to here in Europe. It felt like an American embassy in some ways, and what American embassy doesn't have the proper ice cream?
The Louvre had some great stuff, but it was overrated in my opinion. We only had three hours to spend there before they shooed us out. With 15 minutes to spare at the end, we saw Winged Victory and the Mona Lisa, which didn't do too much for me. The David in Florence, Italy impacted me. Mona Lisa...not so much. Maybe if I could have gotten closer instead of being stuck 15 feet behind the velvet rope and having to view it through 3 panes of security glass I would have liked it more. The real art museum that WAS worth it, in my opinion, was the Orsay. We spent 4 hours there, and I saw paintings I never would have expected, like Whistler's Mother, Van Gogh's famous self-portrait (of the 100's he did), and several Monet and Renoir paintings. Great stuff all around. Totally worth it.
We took a short train ride out to the Palace of Versailles to see that, since that is another thing you're supposed to do when you visit France. We only had an hour to see the Grand Apartments there since they closed at 6 pm (with France's 35 hour work week, nothing is open late, which blows if you're a tourist). And France doubled the prices of Versailles within the past few months, just because they knew they had you in their tight little grip. I wasn't too happy with that. So we saw King Louie XIV's enormous moment to himself. The palace was beautiful and ornate, but with all the Asian tourists being herded around while we were there, it turned into a traffic jam and wasn't very enjoyable. We then went outside and walked the entire 5.5 km around the big lake/canal in the gardens outside. Felt like being at the Washington Mall, except with nicer grass. Just a big, rectangular pond that seemed to go on and on forever. Overall, I'm glad I went to Versailles since it is a historical place, but it way too overrated.
The hotel we were staying at, Hotel de Cozy, was a cheapie hotel with a crazy staircase we had to climb up every day to get to our room. They had linoleum with a wood grain pattern that was printed slightly off-register, so if you put on some 3-D glasses, it would probably pop out at you and poke you in the eye. But like the name, it was a cosy little hotel, and our next-door neighbors could totally vouch for that with all the groaning and bed spring action coming from next door. For the first time this trip, we had televisions in our room, so like nerds we tuned in religiously to CNN to catch up on world events, like the bridge disaster in Minnesota...and the bridge disaster in Minnesota...and the bridge disaster in Minnesota. Yep. Looks like we're all caught up on world events.
We left Paris on Thursday and headed on a train to Bayeux, which is in Normandy. Bayeux is a cute little town overrun with Brits, Americans and Canadians, and rightfully so since Normandy is a pilgrimage site for these three countries because of the events of D-Day. We hired (rented) bikes the next day and rode out to the beaches of Normandy to check out the cemeteries and battle sites. We went to the British Gold Beach first, ate a sandwich, then cycled through the cow pastures and rolling plains of grain and corn (beautiful stuff...just beautiful) to get to Normandy American National Cemetery, where all the soldiers who died at Omaha Beach were buried. I knew I'd get all choked up at this place, and sure enough, inside the Visitor's Center, within a minute of hearing the patriotic music and seeing the video of people sacrificing themselves for their fellow soldiers, I got all teary and choked up. It's like the guy's equivalent of watching a sappy love movie...it just makes you crumble seeing all this.
So, after gaining my composure again, we went out to the cemetery to see the rows and rows of crosses and Stars of David, which just stretches on for awhile. We then walked down to Omaha Beach, which is just a nice, serene beach now with no evidence that the bloodiest fight in history was fought here. We then jumped on our bikes and rode back past the small churches and villages to Bayeux to have some crepes and reflect upon our day. I honestly believe that as Americans, we should all be required to visit Normandy and see the cemetery there. It makes you realize what sacrifice is all about, and how lucky you are to be an American and living in a country that is free. It's a moving experience, and I'm very glad I went off the beaten path and made the journey to see it.
After Normandy, we took a train back to Paris and then went on a never-ending 16 hour bus ride into Prague, because, hey, why not? It's Prague! So here we are now, enjoying the sights, the cheap beer, and taking a few days to decompress after the whirlwind week we just had.
Time to go again...the people at the Boathouse Hostel I staying at are eager to push me off this computer since I type for so long. "Czech" out the blog in a few days and I'll give you the low-down on Prague and let you know what's going on here. Peace.
This past week has been rather hectic for me and Eric with all the travelling around and sightseeing. And the blog has reflected that with the minimal lack of postings. But we're finally in a place where we've got some breathing room and can slow down once again: Praha, a.k.a. Prague. Prague is a beautiful place, with a nice winding river, beautiful people, and...
What's that you say??? Did I skip over some important details, like how I suddenly went from Paris to Prague in a heartbeat? Huh...you're right. I guess that does seem a bit odd. Now that I think about it, how the heck did I get here after all? This wasn't at all part of the original plan. I was supposed to be in Greece or Turkey by now. What hapened???
First, let's go into the Way-Way-Back Machine with Mr. Peabody and Sherman here to fill you in on some of the random stuff that occurred in Paris. As I mentioned earlier, Paris is a great city in my opinion. I know I saw it from a tourist's perspective, and the outskirts are supposed to be bad and the city is supposed to be having major racial tensions right now...but from what I saw, I thought it was a top-notch city. It wasn't dirty or smelled like cigarettes or had nasty rude people like people have been telling me over the years. Paris reminded me in a lot of ways like my fair city of Chicago, except a lot more spread out and minus a giant lake. I just enjoyed the vibe there, walking around and seeing cool things everywhere I turned.
On our first day, after nearly being crushed by the swarms of people at Le Tour de France, we ambled down the Champs-Elysees (the main drag in Paris where all the big events over its history have occurred. Check out all the film footage from WWII and the armies/parades are always marching down this street. One end of the Champs-Elysees is now like a Michigan Avenue with all the big shopping stores) and saw the Arc d´Triumph. We then went over to Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower) and tried to go up, but a security guard busted me for carrying dangerous items in my backpack, such as a pocket knife and a jar of peanut butter. I'm still trying to figure out how a jar of peanut butter poses a national security threat to France. Maybe they see it as encroaching upon their Nutella market here. Come to think about it, finding peanut butter in France is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It doesn't exist. We had to find an Arabic grocery store to locate a jar. But man, I didn't realize how much I missed that stuff until I had a peanut butter sandwich again. Wow...great stuff. It's the simple pleasures in life that you somehow miss.
So we didn't get to go up the Tower...at least not right off the bat. Two days later after seeing the long queue at the Musee d´Orsay, we headed back over to the Tower sans peanut butter and WERE able to climb up it. And I'm so glad I did. That was a real highlight on this trip, and I didn't expect it to be as cool as it was. We climbed the stairs up to the first and second levels, and even from there you could get an awesome view of the entire city. We didn't feel the need to pay the extra Euro to ride the elevator to the tippy-top to see a slightly higher perspective of Paris...the second level was sufficient enough. They had a Ben and Jerry's ice cream stand up in the Eiffel Tower, and I noticed how Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream wasn't there (while Cherry Garcia was, along with some weird Max Haveland character I've never heard of before), which I consider a major travesty especially since we helped liberate France from the Nazis. I think I'll write Stephen Colbert when I get back to the U.S. and let him know about this so he can take prompt action to fix this issue. I think I met more Americans up in the Eiffel Tower than anyplace else we've been to here in Europe. It felt like an American embassy in some ways, and what American embassy doesn't have the proper ice cream?
The Louvre had some great stuff, but it was overrated in my opinion. We only had three hours to spend there before they shooed us out. With 15 minutes to spare at the end, we saw Winged Victory and the Mona Lisa, which didn't do too much for me. The David in Florence, Italy impacted me. Mona Lisa...not so much. Maybe if I could have gotten closer instead of being stuck 15 feet behind the velvet rope and having to view it through 3 panes of security glass I would have liked it more. The real art museum that WAS worth it, in my opinion, was the Orsay. We spent 4 hours there, and I saw paintings I never would have expected, like Whistler's Mother, Van Gogh's famous self-portrait (of the 100's he did), and several Monet and Renoir paintings. Great stuff all around. Totally worth it.
We took a short train ride out to the Palace of Versailles to see that, since that is another thing you're supposed to do when you visit France. We only had an hour to see the Grand Apartments there since they closed at 6 pm (with France's 35 hour work week, nothing is open late, which blows if you're a tourist). And France doubled the prices of Versailles within the past few months, just because they knew they had you in their tight little grip. I wasn't too happy with that. So we saw King Louie XIV's enormous moment to himself. The palace was beautiful and ornate, but with all the Asian tourists being herded around while we were there, it turned into a traffic jam and wasn't very enjoyable. We then went outside and walked the entire 5.5 km around the big lake/canal in the gardens outside. Felt like being at the Washington Mall, except with nicer grass. Just a big, rectangular pond that seemed to go on and on forever. Overall, I'm glad I went to Versailles since it is a historical place, but it way too overrated.
The hotel we were staying at, Hotel de Cozy, was a cheapie hotel with a crazy staircase we had to climb up every day to get to our room. They had linoleum with a wood grain pattern that was printed slightly off-register, so if you put on some 3-D glasses, it would probably pop out at you and poke you in the eye. But like the name, it was a cosy little hotel, and our next-door neighbors could totally vouch for that with all the groaning and bed spring action coming from next door. For the first time this trip, we had televisions in our room, so like nerds we tuned in religiously to CNN to catch up on world events, like the bridge disaster in Minnesota...and the bridge disaster in Minnesota...and the bridge disaster in Minnesota. Yep. Looks like we're all caught up on world events.
We left Paris on Thursday and headed on a train to Bayeux, which is in Normandy. Bayeux is a cute little town overrun with Brits, Americans and Canadians, and rightfully so since Normandy is a pilgrimage site for these three countries because of the events of D-Day. We hired (rented) bikes the next day and rode out to the beaches of Normandy to check out the cemeteries and battle sites. We went to the British Gold Beach first, ate a sandwich, then cycled through the cow pastures and rolling plains of grain and corn (beautiful stuff...just beautiful) to get to Normandy American National Cemetery, where all the soldiers who died at Omaha Beach were buried. I knew I'd get all choked up at this place, and sure enough, inside the Visitor's Center, within a minute of hearing the patriotic music and seeing the video of people sacrificing themselves for their fellow soldiers, I got all teary and choked up. It's like the guy's equivalent of watching a sappy love movie...it just makes you crumble seeing all this.
So, after gaining my composure again, we went out to the cemetery to see the rows and rows of crosses and Stars of David, which just stretches on for awhile. We then walked down to Omaha Beach, which is just a nice, serene beach now with no evidence that the bloodiest fight in history was fought here. We then jumped on our bikes and rode back past the small churches and villages to Bayeux to have some crepes and reflect upon our day. I honestly believe that as Americans, we should all be required to visit Normandy and see the cemetery there. It makes you realize what sacrifice is all about, and how lucky you are to be an American and living in a country that is free. It's a moving experience, and I'm very glad I went off the beaten path and made the journey to see it.
After Normandy, we took a train back to Paris and then went on a never-ending 16 hour bus ride into Prague, because, hey, why not? It's Prague! So here we are now, enjoying the sights, the cheap beer, and taking a few days to decompress after the whirlwind week we just had.
Time to go again...the people at the Boathouse Hostel I staying at are eager to push me off this computer since I type for so long. "Czech" out the blog in a few days and I'll give you the low-down on Prague and let you know what's going on here. Peace.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
France: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
Bonjour again, everyone! Eric and I are about to skedaddle out of Paris after spending 4 great days here. Even though it sounds pretty spoiled, all this touring around can really wear you thin. Since everything in Paris tends to shut down at 6 pm, you have to really haul ass to see all the sights and museums here. No time for lollygagging around. It's a marathon here everyday. But we've seen some great stuff.
I only have a few minutes left before I have to go. But in a nutshell, here's what's good, bad and ugly about France, based on what I've seen.
In the Good Column: Food, sights, nice people (a real surprise), wine, cheese
In the Bad Column: Expensive prices, lack of public toilets, lack of toilet seats on the public toilets that DO exist, squat (or Turkish) toilets, vending machines that only take coins and not their own stinkin' bills, tiny drinks that cost 10 times what they normally should
In the Ugly Column: my hair after 8 weeks. It looks like a rat has built a nest on the top of my head. It's beyond help. I've often wondered what I looked like with an afro.
I only have a few minutes left before I have to go. But in a nutshell, here's what's good, bad and ugly about France, based on what I've seen.
In the Good Column: Food, sights, nice people (a real surprise), wine, cheese
In the Bad Column: Expensive prices, lack of public toilets, lack of toilet seats on the public toilets that DO exist, squat (or Turkish) toilets, vending machines that only take coins and not their own stinkin' bills, tiny drinks that cost 10 times what they normally should
In the Ugly Column: my hair after 8 weeks. It looks like a rat has built a nest on the top of my head. It's beyond help. I've often wondered what I looked like with an afro.
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