Current location: Paris

"Prague doesn't let you go. This old crone has claws. One has to surrender or else....." ~Franz Kafka, Prague's most famous citizen and author.

We arrived in Prague via a 4 hour train ride from Vienna. The interesting thing about traveling from country to country via train is each country's different philosophy on train tickets and the honor system. Italy seems to be the most liberal as most of the time in Italy we could ride a train for half a day and never be asked for our train ticket. In Austria, we got asked a few more times but still somehow made it from Bolzano Italy to Salzburg in first class without being asked once for our ticket. Going into the Czech Republic, our ticket got checked at least 3 different times and our passports stamped twice. But we arrived, in one piece and ready to take on Prague (Praha in Czech) since we were only spending 3 days there. Not enough time by any means but we had to get to Paris to start our Visa process for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (referred from now on as the DRC as my fingers are cramping up on this French keyboard - I might actually have to start typing in acronyms just to get a blog done without my fingers cramping and going back every two words to correct my spelling errors.)

So everybody always said "you'll love Prague, Prague is so beautiful, so cheap, etc. etc." So we were a bit worried. Were our expectations now too high? Would it be a disappointment? Our first glimpse of the "old town" of Prague did not disappoint. It is amazingly beautiful. The most beautiful city we've been to thus far. Brian admittedly said it's even more beautiful than Rome and that is saying a lot.

People are very friendly in Prague. Even the tourists. We were having a bit of a tough time locating our hostel and must have looked incredibly lost. I'm not sure what is more obvious...wearing a sign that says lost on our forehead OR wearing backpacks and holding out a map standing on the corner of a busy street . Anyways, this nice gentleman who was also a tourist came up to us and said "hey you guys look a little lost. I don't know my way around here either but I've got a map!" So he tried to help us locate our hostel and when he coudn't find the street he went and flagged another stranger down on the street to ask for directions to our hostel so that he could tell us. We have been blessed with incredibly nice people like this man on our trip and were are always incredible grateful for the extra effort they make in making our trip just a bit easier.

We only did one touristy thing (besides walking around) and that was going to Prague Castle aka Hrda. It sits on top of a hill that overlooks Prague and is like a little village in itself. Absolutely amazing. The rest of the time we just wandered around the town, had a traditional Czech dinner called Svickova which is like a roast except it's covered in some sort of sour cream sauce and white bread to sop it all up. Delicious.

We also made our first big art purchase. Actually our first real big purchase on the trip as having only a backpack really curbs your appetite for wanting to buy anything at all. We bought a hand carved marionette. It is so cool. As soon as we get the chance to post photos of him we will. His name is Jilska. I wanted to name him Cesky but Brian didn't like that name. We also saw a really boring Marionette show based on one of Mozart's famous operas. As I'm writing this I realize how lame that really sounds but it didn't sound that lame at the time so I made Brian go see it with me. Brian almost fell asleep after the first 10 minutes. And the chairs were not that comfortable. I guess the funny part about the show (an hour and 15 minutes) was that they definitely took liberties with the opera and made a G-rated opera R-rated. Racy marionettes in Prague. Who knew?

Now we are in Paris and it looks like we are here for 2 weeks....That's another long story and probably our most frustrating process to date. More on that when I can uncramp my fingers.

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