The Final Czech Point

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.

Prague is a beautiful city (I feel like I say that about every place I’ve been to, but it’s really true). The Prague Castle overlooks the Charles bridge all the way down to the old town square. Classic European beauty. Unfortunately when we arrived that first day, I was exhausted. We woke up really early in Budapest and it took around 8 hours of travelling to make it to Prague. Yes, it was my birthday, but we didn’t do more than a few beers that first night, which was fine with me. The fourth of July was the next day, and of course we had to go big for that…

Our hostel in Prague was a little different. The hostel itself was pretty nice, especially for the price we paid, but the catch was that we had to sleep in a room that had about 14 beds or so. None of the travelers there seemed especially friendly either… We woke up around 11 or 12-ish the next day because we were so exhausted (we hadn’t been able to sleep in since our first day in Rome) and we walked around the city of Prague. Literally, we walked around the city. We started at the castle where we got to see the changing of the guard. It’s kind of entertaining because if a tourist gets in their way, they will literally push them out of the way. Kind of aggressively too, which makes it even more fun to people watch.

We had these little animated maps of Prague with small pictures of Prague landmarks, but not all of them had captions. Way at the north there was a picture of some funky sail thing I convinced Blaine we should check out. Apparently it was on top of a big mountain, and after hiking to the top in the HOT weather, we discovered it was just a big metal thing that swung back and forth. Needless to say, Blaine was angry. Fortunately, there was a beer garden up there that overlooked Prague. Not entirely a loss.

I just want to take a small paragraph to clarify that in Prague, beer is legitimately cheaper than water. Ok, we can continue.

At the beginning of the trip we decided that it would probably be wise to wait to get any kind of gifts/souvenirs until Prague because A) it would most likely be cheaper, B) it was our last destination and we wouldn’t have to lug everything around for very long. What we didn’t know was that the Czech Republic decided to have some kind of bank holiday the weekend we were visiting. This meant that the local markets were closed, and the only places open were the tourist souvenir shops which primarily sold crystal. Even in Prague, crystal isn’t that cheap. It definitely made shopping a little difficult.

So, it was the fourth of July. We’re American. We have to celebrate. Way back when we were on our flight to Amsterdam we thought it might be a good idea to purchase a bottle of Jack Daniels to save money on alcohol in the long run. Bad idea. We had barely drunk any of it at all, and we were flying out in a couple days. Conveniently, Jack is a very American drink. We decided to kick off our celebration of independence by drinking some Jack Daniels in our hostel while listening to classic American songs such as “Born in the USA”, “God Bless the USA”, “American Pie”, and the timeless classic “Party in the USA”, by Miley Cyrus. Of course, this didn’t make the two middle-aged Chinese women or the three British girls in the room very happy. After those festivities, somehow the British girls came to dinner with us. They had to leave in the morning so they didn’t stay out too late, but literally as soon as we said goodbye to them, a pub crawl came walking by us and we kind of jumped into the crowd. We snuck our way into a club for free and quickly realized that about 80% of people that do a pub crawl are drunk males in their mid-20s with absolutely no dancing skills. It made for an interesting time on the dance floor…

For our last day in Prague we walked around some more (surprise) and saw some more castles and cathedrals. We had to wake up at 5 the next morning to ensure we caught our train at 6am, so we didn’t think it would be wise to go out that night. I guess that didn’t stop us. We wound up in the basement of a Pizzeria playing cards with three German policeman. I can’t really tell you how these things happen, they just do. It was our last night in Europe, and the Germans eventually convinced us to try a little drink called absinthe…

Now just a little disclaimer, absinthe is not what it used to be. Absinthe used to known as a hallucinogenic drink because of its high level of thujone, but nowadays absinthe has such a small fraction of the chemical it is rendered pretty much obsolete. The only thing this Bohemian green fairy has retained is its high alcohol content and awful, awful, awful, awful taste. Do not try absinthe. Don’t.

That being said, a lot of regions have different traditional ways of drinking absinthe. For the Czech, you take a spoonful of sugar (which doesn’t help this medicine go down), dip it in the absinthe, set it on fire, and after it burns out you drop it into the shot of absinthe. I’m not sure why you do that, because even with the sugar it still tastes like pine-sol. I repeat, do not try absinthe.

The morning after wasn’t too great either, and I had a hard time trying to get Blaine to get out of bed. We made it to the train station on time, and after our 8 hour train ride to Frankfurt, we somehow caught the last flight out to DC, and from there the last flight home. After 28 hours of continuous travel, my body had absolutely no idea what time it was. In fact, it still doesn’t.

Ok, so the trip is over, we’re still alive, and the results are in. Thomas’ top country list:

1) Italy - This was a tough choice, but ultimately Italy had the BEST food, cheap wine, and it was fun just Roman around.
2) Switzerland - Two words: water fountains. They were everywhere.
3) Belgium - Chocolate, waffles, and beer. Oh my!
4) Czech Republic - Very cheap, very beautiful. If I were grading them, I’d give them a Czech plus.
5) Netherlands - Cold and rainy, but I got a free air freshener of their world cup mascot. As a result, I’m rooting for them in the finals.
6) Hungary - Didn’t get to see much of it, but I can certainly relate to the name.
7) Germany - I only got to see the Frankfurt airport… but what an airport!
8) Vatican City - Yes, it’s a country. Although they have no food, which brings them pretty low on my list…
9) Austria - I only spent about 30 minutes here, so I’m surprised it made the Liszt (music joke). I did have my birthday lunch here.
10) France - I’m sure this is a great place. For us, it was horrible.

Well, there’s my list. Based on a very scientific criteria of food, scenery, and which countries did not screw us over *cough*France*cough*. Of course, all these countries are wonderful, and I recommend travel to each and every one. You might want to spend a little more time in each place though, because this whole trip definitely felt like a whirlwind. So there you have it! Six continents and 33 countries down. There’s still so much more to see, but I haven’t the slightest clue when that time will come, or where the next journey will be.

Until next time!

Venice the Menace and getting Hungary

Venice is many things. The city on the water. The city of gondoliers. The city of 80% tourists at any given time. The city where even if you have a map, as soon as you set foot on the main island you are doomed to get lost at some point. All in all, it’s not too bad.

Somehow Blaine and I miraculously found a very cheap hotel right next to the train station. Very fortunate too, because Venice is HOT this time of year, and lugging all that luggage to some far of accommodation would not have been fun. We arrived mid day and had one night in Venice, leaving on the overnight train to Budapest the next day. Naturally, we wanted to explore the city.

Now, I love water. I’ve wanted to go to Venice all my life because the concept of a city on water just blew my mind. After visiting it, I must say it was a little more touristy than I was hoping for. That’s not to say it’s not beautiful, it’s just a little too crowded for my taste.

They have little fast food café/bar type places scattered around the island. We ate at one the first night and I had a spritz (everyone drinks them in Venice…?) and the BEST gnocchi I’ve had in my life. I have a supreme weakness to gnocchi. It is my favorite Italian dish hands down. Unfortunately it’s not too common in the states, and whenever I see it on a menu I HAVE to order it. No question. Venice is known for their gnocchi with pesto, and for good reason. It. Is. Delicious.

Venice being the touristy area it is, is a little pricey. Blaine and I, on our little budget, decided instead of going to the bars and spending horrendous amounts of money could just find a supermarket and get a bottle of Italian wine. Somehow that progressed to 3 liters of what ended up being sparkling red wine called Lambrusco. Three Euros for a 1.5 liter bottle of this stuff was just too good to pass up, so we bought two and sat on the edge of Venice living the Italian dream.

Needless to say, after three liters of Lambrusco, finding your way back home can be a little difficult. I actually don’t even think it was the Lambrusco, Venice is just hard to navigate. I usually pride myself on my direction sense. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s pretty damn good. After walking for a half hour in what Blaine and I could have sworn to be North turned out to be completely East, we were a little disheartened. We ended up winding through the canals of Venice for about an hour and a half till we finally found our way home, going through just about every back alleyway possible. On the plus side, Venice is beautiful at night, you just never really know where you are…

The only way to get to Budapest from Venice was to take the overnight train. We didn’t have the best experience with our previous overnight train because it was a little hot and the beds were uncomfortable, so we knew this one probably wasn’t going to be any better. That being said, when we were faced with the opportunity to just have a regular seat for 5 Euro instead of a bed for 19 Euro, we thought it would be a good idea to tough it out and save the money. Bad idea.

This car was absolutely SMOLDERING. There were six people crammed in this little room on the train, and it honestly felt like a sauna. A sauna with five of the closest friends you’ve never met. Once the train started moving it cooled down a LITTLE bit, but not much at all. This train ride was 13 hours long. My goodness.

Luckily, four hours into the ride everybody in our little room got off at Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia and one of the stops along the way to Budapest. We had been blessed with a vacant room. Miracles don’t last too long though, as two others boarded in Ljubljana (pernounced “Loob-lee-ah-nah” as I found out). We spent the rest of the train ride getting our passports checked (seriously, they checked those things every hour) and trying to find a comfortable way to sleep. We were never successful.

Of course if some place is called “Hungary”, odds are we’re going to get along. Blaine wasn’t too sure what Hungarian food was. I told him it was goulash, but he didn’t believe me. I was right. We found a hostel and went out to get some food, because we were Hungary and didn’t eat anything since before the 13 hour train ride. We found a kebab place and while we were eating it I was so excited to be eating that I didn’t realize I had dripped kebab juice ALL over myself. I won’t be wearing those shorts for the rest of the trip…

We walked around Budapest the whole day, finding some goulash, cheap beer, world cup matches, and the Buda castle. For those that don’t know, Budapest is separated into the west (Buda), and the east (Pest), with the Danube flowing between them. Castle Buda overlooks the Danube and Pest following suit. They had a really fancy restaurant on the ramparts of the castle. It looked like some place you’d take a girl to propose to her. Needless to say, Blaine and I did not eat here.

We somehow did our math wrong earlier in the trip, and as luck would have it we could only stay one night in Budapest, this meant that we had to leave early the next day (my birthday) and spend the day trying to get to Prague. This resulted in having breakfast in Budapest, lunch in Vienna, and dinner in Prague. This brings the grand total of countries I’ve had my birthday in to 8. Not bad.

We made it to Prague fine, but I’ll save that for later. This post is getting too long. So, if you want to know about Prague, you’ll have to Czech back later.

Missin' the Swiss, and when in Rome...

Switzerland exceeded every bit of expectation I had.

Of course, I don’t know how much expectation you can really have for a place when your first night is spent trying to sleep sitting up straight on a marble bench with no backing. Arriving in the Zurich station at 2am wasn’t really conducive to finding a place to stay. We were going to hop on the first train to Schofhousin (I completely butchered that name) in the morning to meet up with Blaine’s friend, Kevin. “Friend” is kind of a loose term, as Blaine had really only met the guy on an airplane once. This doesn’t sound sketchy at all, right?

After a horrendous night of “sleep”, we hop on the train and meet up with Kevin. He is one of the NICEST guys you’ll ever meet. Our luck was finally turning around. Not only did he give us a Mediterranean breakfast from a local market, but he let us use his washing machine! I now have clean clothes!!! Kevin then took us out to tour the town and go rafting down the Rhine.

Now, Switzerland is picturesque, the people are kind, but the absolute BEST thing about Switzerland isn’t any of that. The thing that I was so desperately searching for in the past countries was finally here, which immediately bumped Switzerland up to #1 in my book. They had drinking fountains. Now, these aren’t just normal drinking fountains, these are little decorative fountains that spew out fresh water. They. Are. Incredible. Thirsty? No problem, just drink straight from that epic medieval fountain gently spurting out cool, refreshing water.

After I finally calmed down from my fountain excitement, we went out rafting on the Rhine, a river on the border of Switzerland and Germany. I can’t begin to describe how beautiful this place was, but I can tell you that the water was freezing. I jumped off a bridge (everybody else was doing it) about 5m high into this water and I felt like I was hyperventilating. Nevertheless, we were taking the overnight train to Rome that night so we had to say goodbye to Kevin and our short-lived Switzerland trip. It was short, but sweet, and I can tell you that this traveler knows they put the “fond” in “fondue”.

You know how they say that when it rains, it pours? Well, the opposite must be true, because Rome was another bout of good luck. The overnight train is much cooler as an idea than it is in practice, but we were so tired we didn’t really mind. After our Longjumeau experience in France, we decided not to book any kind of accommodation in advance, just to be safe. This led us to stumble across the Ostello Morello, the hostel I’m writing this in right now. It’s a quant little place in the middle of Rome run by nuns. You’d think there’d be a lot of rules since it’s a Catholic hostel, but there’s no curfew, and they let you drink in the rooms (either that or we haven’t gotten caught yet). Definitely a great place to stay if you’re ever travelling to Rome on a budget.

We spent the next few days roaming Rome (ha). At first we started wandering aimlessly, and within two minutes we found the Coliseum. We turned a corner and it was just there. Epic. We’ve seen so many other sites, such as the Trevi fountain, Pantheon, and Vatican City (a place where indeed “all roads lead to Rome), which is another country I can cross off my list. We were able to experience a little night life too, in which I sang a karaoke “Brown Eyed Girl” in a bar at 1am. This means I have successfully done karaoke on 4 continents. Alright. (I use “successfully” very loosely)

Food report: Italy rocks. I’m sure that was obvious though. Panini, pizza, pasta, this place has everything you could ask for, including cheap good-quality wine. All I want to do here is eat. Blaine and I also have a gelato store we frequent multiple times a day. The lady knows us now… Here in Italy there is literally a gelato store every 50 feet, and they are all DELICIOUS. There’s also some kind of free juice here at the hostel. It’s a blood-orange juice, and it is some of the greatest stuff in the world. Right now Italy is definitely in first place for food, and I’m gonna need to see some strong effort from the other countries if they plan to boot the boot.

We made it up to Florence today, and we’re heading to Venice tomorrow, then to Budapest, Prague, and ending in Frankfurt. I was planning on going to bed early tonight, but it seems everybody else goes to bed later here, so I decided to write this. You know how it goes, when in Rome…