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!