Prague and Kutna Hora

Yesterday was our final night in Prague. What an incredible city. I know that a lot of movies are filmed there, and it literally does look like a back lot at Warner Brothers or Disneyland. I kept expecting to turn a corner and find a Kraft services food tent, but everything was real!
Unfortunately the city is EXTREMELY touristy. It's a known Vegas of Eastern Europe, as in "whatever happens in Prague stays in Prague". We ran into a few stag parties from Germany and the UK, including a group of men from Ireland who were totally wasted and kicked out of a bar at 7pm!

Kutna Hora is a sleepy town about an hour outside of Prague. It was about 100degres while we were there, so we didn't see as much of the town as we might have otherwise. We came primarily to the Ossuary, a chapel decorrated with human bones. Sounds creepy. It was actually very beautiful. The message of the chapel is that the bodies we have, our flesh and bones, are not lasting. What we do in these bodies, will be accounted for elsewhere.

unashamed

The last time that I was in Europe I tried very very hard not to look American. I failed. Even though I dressed a little bit nicer than I usually do, and only spoke in French when I was in public, everyone knew I was American. "You are from New York?" people would say after I asked for something in French. Sigh. "No, je vien de californie..." "ooh, you are from Hollywood (pronounced "Holy-wood")". I would shrink in embarassment when American tourists got onto the metro with their huge backpacks and dangling cameras talking very loudly. David Sedaris talks about this in "Me Talk Pretty One Day". I even remember a pair of girls getting on the metro one night belting some kind of acapella version of Amazing Grace. I was mortified.

This time around, I don't have time to care how touristy I look. I'm only in each country for a couple days, max, so I gotta have the camera easily accessible. And, my cousins and I haven't been pouring over the train schedules from say Bratislava to Prague for the last few weeks, so occasionally we have to discuss our next travel moves in route...in English.

The funny thing about this is that there are so many other tourists traveling in these parts of Eastern Europe. Who would have known. We were in the main square in Prague today and this guy was staring at Ingrid and I. I thought he was going to ask me about my hair or something (which no one has, not a huge shocker, but you know, I thought I'd get a couple comments...), but instead he asks "Why is everyone standing here?" We were standing with a crowd of about 500 other people waiting for this huge, complicated clock to do its thing on the hour. Someone else taps me on the shoulder and asks "did you drop this memory card?" he had an Australian accent. Anyway you get the idea. There aren't very many Czech people trompsing around these parts of the city. Which shouldn't be that surprising, afterall when was the last time I went to Universal Studios?

Bratslava

So the journey continues...

yesterday my cousins and I braved the wind and rain to see the small town of Bratislava, which is in Slovakia. All of the public trashcans were over flowing with umbrellas that had been busted by the wind, which made me feel better--not even the locals were prepared for this kind of weather! Fortunately we all had our Rick Steves rain panchos :)

Ingrid is a fan of the movie Euro Trip, which I've gathered takes place in Bratslava. Really, that's the only reason we went. Surprisingly, there were some interesting sights including a soviet reconstruction of an ancient castle that burned down in the early 1900s. The city was much different from Vienna. In the ways that Vienna feels classical in a timeless and modern way, Bratslava feels outdated. The Old Town is quite charming with cobble stone streets, and some nicely designed public areas, but the rest of the city that we saw was dark and dreary. To be fair, the day was also dark and dreary. It definitely had a late 1980s, tomorrow land kind of feel though. For the first time I saw the huge soviet style housing blocks and industrial complexes, which will probably be a fixture for the rest of the trip.

Vienna

I made it to Vienna!

My cousins and I spent our first--and last--full day here. I really like the city. It's bizarre how familiar everything seems. Somewhere between France and Germany--the beauty of Paris with the pragmatism of Berlin. I especially love the lay out of everything. There are these grandeous buildings, but the the scale is totally pedestian freiendly. There are people walking around and biking everywhere. Being here is tapping into my urban studies roots--the public spaces are AMAZING. There are these funny looking giant purple geometric shapes where people hang out in the sun and just chillax. It makes my heart happy to see people enjoying the city that way :) I could definitely spend more time here...if I spoke German. Almost everyone speaks English though. I haven't even learned how to say "Do you speak English?" in German, because there's really no need. Some kind of foreign country mechanism I have makes me say things in my head in French, which of course, is not useful in Austria. For instance I'll look at a price tag and think "aah, 50 euro, ca c'est trop cher!" and then the next second think "that was dumb..."

More later. My 20 min worth of internet time is about to expire!