Praha the dva

Prague day Two.

I get up late, eat some breakfast and hit the town, attempting to do a guided walking tour. We start the tour about 25 people strong, but not 5 minutes into our walk down Wencelas square, the skies open up and the rain comes belting down.

It lasts the entire 4 hour tour.

My shoes, socks, backpack, and even my journal get soaked. Our guide tries to carry on as we stoop under archways and anything else we can find. We make our way up to the jewish quarter where we see Euope's oldest synagogue (complete with counter-clockwise clock!), a really neat astrological clock and some of the history of this fairy-tale like city. The architecture here is amaying, and a real mix of everything from gothic, baroque, art nouveau and modern styles. During the tour I hang out with a couple of English girls (studying in Aberdeen), a Scottish couple and a rather loudmouth Albertan. We stop for a traditional czech lunch and I order the beef goulash with dumplings. Its really good, but a bit too oniony (they must chop about 1 whole large onion for each serving).

After lunch we head across the tourist-packed Charles bridge and up towards Prague castle. The views are amazing as we climb up towards the castle, looking down into the city below. Due to the rain, our tour takes extra long and we only get about 15 minutes inside the St. Vitus cathedral. While inside, they actually flick the lights on and off ala last call at a bar in order to kick everyone out at the end of the day... quite amusing. The church is quite beautiful both inside and out, and we hear our guide give us a quick story on one fellow who helped build the gothic cathedral, but fell to his death, and his co-workers erected a small statue of him hidden away on the side of the cathedral.

The tour ends and some of us head down to a local bar for a pint. Beer seriously is cheaper than water here (as we found out), and we make plans to go out that evening. Unfortunately, I'm the only one in the group staying at my hostel so we tentatively say to meetup at their hostel after dinner. I head back to my hostel to change my wet clothes and eat, but it takes longer than I expect to get back to their hostel on the other side of town and they are nowhere to be found. Undaunted, I walk the 5 minutes to the place where we were planning on going to drink thinking they just went ahead, but upon arrival, I walk into a completely empty bar. I have one of the girls mobile numbers, but spend 15 minutes trying to track down a payphone, only to finally get through and reach... voicemail!

Totally frustrated, I decide just to walk around for a bit and make my way all the way back out to my hostel, what a bust this evening turned out to be.


Prague Day Three.

Finally some nice weather! It cheers me up from last nights let down, and I vow to only make plans with people from my hostel from here on out. First order of business, is purchasing a train ticket to Berlin, that after jumping from information desk to information desk, I eventually succeed in doing. I still have to book hostels for Berlin and Cologne, so I trek back to the hostel to take care of that.

When I get there I find that the office is closed with a sign saying that they will return at 4pm. Another waste! So I hop on the tram and get back into town and decide to check out the Franz Kafka museum. I enjoy the exhibit quite thoroughly, though I felt a little unprepared having never read any of this existentialists works (there was naturally a bit of background, but the exhibit was designed to capture the nature of his work, and lead to a very unorthodox and interactive display of things to look at, walk through, and touch). Well worth it. I take a few snapshots of this really neat building shaped in glass and curves to look like Fred Astaire and Ginger dancing, then get back to the hostel for internet hostel booking and dinner.

Hostels booked, weinerschnitzel consumed, I chat with my american roomies (one's a philosophy major who has read and really digs "Godel, Escher, Bach" and I'm quite taken aback by that). They and a couple of canadians and one aussie had bought a couple bottles of 3 euro vodka and were planning on hanging out round the hostel that night. I tag along and we play several different drinking games. The vodka is called "boris" and tastes dreadfully awful, so I'm really focused on not losing. I teach them the infamous "yeehah" drinking game and everyone has a good laugh. Its quiet time at the hostel so we all make our way out to the golf course to chat and polish of the rest of the alcohol. All the girls have to get up early tomorrow to catch trains, and one of the Aussie girls looks really rough as she heads to bed. I too have to catch a train the next day, but fortunately its not until 1pm. I bid my american buddies goodnight and doye off to a really restful slumber.

Praha the jeden

I wake up to overcast skies for the third day in a row, and make my way over to the train station, to catch my 5 hour trip to Prague. As the train rumbles along I take many mental, and a few digital snapshots of the lush green scenery sprinkled with tiny red-roofed houses and cottages. I'm surprised at how hilly the czech republic is, its quite lovely.

Our train pulls into holeosovice station just outside of town and the rain is just heaving down. Worse still, the information booth is closed, and I'm left scrambling for shelter and proper directions to the hostel. Step 1 reads take tram n17, but the only tram station I can find has no 17. The czech language is quite difficult to pronounce, and they employ about 8 different accented characters to alternate pronounciations, and when they want to say 'yes', they actually say 'ano' which when heard sounds like no. I waste about half an hour getting soaked and frustrated before finally locating another tram station. This one has a 17, but I'm not sure if I should be on this or the other side of the street to actually head towards my destination. I roll the dice, and it pays off. I'm heading the right way, and enroute to the hostel, which literally is an old boathouse on the banks of the Vlatva river. Unfortunately, its about 20 minutes south of the city, and completely out in the middle of the nowhere. In and amongst grafitti scribbled on the highway overpass is the word hostel and an arrow pointing left, so I take it as a good sign. Walk past a driving range/golf course and I see the boat house.

Upon entering the hostel, I'm greeted by a sweet old czech lady who shows me around, explains about the home cooked dinner, cheap beer, tram tickets, stamps, noon check-out, and hands me a gift containing post cards and a pen (how thoughtful!). I sign up for that evenings dinner (spaghetti bolognaise), and enjoy the meal immensely. I think its the first time I've eaten more vegetables than lettuce in about a week. The hostel is fairly empty, and the dinner has a very summercampy feel to it (with your mom as the chef!). I chat to an American who has been here for about a week already, and is taking a course to teach english as a second language. He gives me a couple of sight-seeing tips, and we chat over a few beers (20 krown is the cost for a really good half-litre bottle, which works out to about 1 canadian dollar!). I decide not to hit the town that night, but just get some reading and writing done instead. This hostel is the antithesis of all the other hostels I've stayed at on my trip so far. Its much more mellow and relaxed (probably due in part to the surroundings!) but I think I'll welcome the change for now.

Vienna der zwei

Vienna Day Two.

No luck on the weather front, so I use the overcast skies as a ticket to sleep in an extra hour. When I awake and do the morning routine, I decide to head out to the Naschmarkt, to see what all the fuss is about. I arrive to see people setup with little tented stalls, selling everything including the kitchen sink. No really, I actually saw someone selling the taps from a kitchen sink. It was like witnessing the leftover unsold artifacts from about 300 neighbourhood garage sales all piled up and concentrated in a 500 squared meter area. There's war memoribilia, clothes, jewelry, records, books, old tv remotes, and all sorts of local foods on sale. I wuss out on the local food, and order the one thing I can safely pronounce in german instead "pizza". Its good value, but tastes kinda bland.

From there I walk up and make another attempt at the Leopold museum, and this time I go in. I really enjoy lots of Egon Schiele's work, and the Klimts on display aren't bad. There's also an exhibit largely featuring these and other Austrian artists called the Naked truth, that was pretty good too. From there I make a determined (and long-winded) effort to see the Danube canal, so I splish-splosh through the rain for about 45 minutes to get to it. I spend maybe 5 minutes there, take 1 picture, then start the long walk back, passing through a really neat looking church called stephensplatz.

My feet ache, and I decide to give them a rest by taking in 'Batman begins' in the english cinema. I think my feet enjoyed the film more than the rest of me, and the ultra-cheesey one liners don't really translate very well from comic book to silver screen. They come off as hokey, but the film overall isn't bad and has a decent story and setup of how batman comes to be.

Back to the hostel to catch up on email and writing, and then out to try again to reach Jas by phone. Finally some success, and I use up my entire calling card just enjoying a really good chat. Leaving the phone booth my stomach rumbles, so I make my way out to a little place selling cheap weinerschnitzel. Finally I luck out with yummy local cuisine thats not too expensive. Its really delicious, and tastes almost the same as a breaded chicken sandwich (only better).

Belly full, I get back to the hostel and join up with some fellow travellers and play pool in the hostel bar. Its teams, so I befriend a german girl (who speaks almost no english) into joining my team for a game. We win the first one but go on to loose the second, and after that I call it a night.

Its tough because I've been to so many great cities recently, that I've become almost desensitized to all this great archtiecture, culture and history. As a result, Vienna just doesn't stack up compared to Rome, Venice, or Paris, but had I just visited this city, or done it in a separate trip, I'm sure my outlook would be different. The crappy weather also seems to unjustly sway my opinion, maybe I'll have better luck next time (in 25 years when I'll be able to again afford such a trip).

Vienna der eins

Vienna Day One.

The train pulls into westbanhof station around 9am, and even with my early to bed intentions, trying to sleep on the couchette proves to be a fairly miserable failure. I'm a walking zombie as I try and chart my course to the hostel. Its a bit further than I thought, but I manage to get there eventually. Looks like I picked another good one, though again I'm too early for check-in. I decide to walk around and explore the city a bit on my favourite mode of transportation in the mean time. I grab a McLunch (guh!) and pass many shops with german and english names.

When I return to the hostel to check-in I'm really impressed by the room. Its just as nice as a hotel room, except there are two bunk beds in place of the usual 2 queens (and there's no television). Its spotless, and all the bathroom appliances are sparkling and new. I grab a much needed shower, then head back out into the miserable rainy weather. I make my way up to the Leopold museum, but find that it closes in less than 2 hours, so I decide to see that tomorrow instead. I get drenched, and walk around the Imperial palace, an opera house (complete with whigged victorian people standing out front with horse and carriage awaiting them... talk about a time warp!), and a really nice garden. I try and call Jasmine at every phone booth I pass, but still can't get through. Make my way to a really nice gothic church, that just happens to be showing a film outdoors that evening as part of an ongoing film festival. I can't decipher what its about but I see the names Beethoven and Miles Davis. Hrrm, some kind of jazz-classical fusion concert? I have no real idea, even though my interest was piqued, I give it a miss and head back to the hostel instead.

The Viennese seem to have quite a fascination with the macabre. From their gothic architecture, to the many monuments and cemeteries they advertise, to the plethora of tatoo parlours and goth kids decked out completely in black, piercings poking out from their lobes, lips and noses.

I go into the bar and surf the web a bit, and try and catch up on some of the news. The keyboards here are crazy (have you noticed all the spelling mistakes and typos in my previous posts?) Some have the 'z' key where 'y' should be, quote characters require 3 digits and a lot of finger gymnastics to hammer out etc. I got a coupon for a free drink so I use that, but decide to have an early night to catch up on much missed sleep these past few days. I also use the time to try and plan out tomorrows events and while doing so, I meet my bunkmates; an Australian couple who are doing a 7 month pan europe/africa and partial asia adventure. Thats crazy! They have round the world plane tickets and are about 2 months into their adventure. They both quit their jobs and saved for almost a year, to be able to afford the trip. Hopefully the weather will clear up tomorrow!