Prague and our favorite place in Europe (east of Paris and north of Italy)

After partaking in Krakow's annual Wianke Festival (pronounced "wank"?) and joining the entire town on the banks of the river to watch a "Polapalooza" of eastern European rock on a floating stage, we packed up and headed west to Prague.

Ande fondly recalled her $2 days spent in Prague back in 1998 and both Noodles eagerly anticipated golem haunting and touring the Charles Bridge from which young Joseph Kavalier once jumped. The $2 days are long gone, and although the sites are still beautiful and definitely worth visiting, the city is overrun with drunken UCSB grads ready to "party...party hard...very much" (as proclaimed by a guest at our hostel to the indifferent receptionist he was asking for clubbing advice). One night, our daily budget having dwindled to $1 a piece, we took on the challenge of finding a cheap dinner feast. Ande bought herself one slice of pizza. Jen went to the TESCO supermarket and came out with half the store - a yogurt and roll, 2 bananas, 2 plums, large chocolate bar and a big bottle of water (con gas). Jen shared her $1 dinner with Ande for lunch the next day. Our favorite "friends" in Prague were these 2 American Idiots we met outside of Ande's pizza place who were so excited that we had all just purchased a slice of pizza for 20 cents. Uh, since the exchange rate is 24 to 1 and the pizza cost 24 Kc, we're pretty sure it cost a dollar (Even Ande's "Math 9" skills could figure that out). But they were emphatic in their exhuberance that Prague was the cheapest city in the world and that the real way to calculate the exchange was some bizarre formula that involved dividing by 2 and dropping some zeros. We were equally excited to imagine their faces when they got home and saw their credit card bills.

We left Prague on a rainy morning and headed to Cesky Krumlov, a town about 3 hours south of Prague. At a miserable bus stop way out of town (and way out of English-speaking realm), Ande plopped down on a bench with the bags while Jen ran around in the rain trying to figure out which of the 400 dicrepit buses would take us to Krumlov. When she returned, she found a drenched, forlorn Noodle who had just been splashed by a surprisingly powerful passing decrepit bus. A lone maxi pad stuck to the bench behind her head made the scene all the more pathetic. The Noodles said screw the bus and got back on the subway and back to the train station where they should have been all along. In any event, we finally made it to Cesky Krumlov and were in no mood to like this town at all. But as we walked through the peaceful midieval town with it's picturesque lazy river flowing through it and the castle perched high up on its hills, our spirits started to lift. By the time we checked into our penzion and the smiling proprietress asked us what time we wanted our homemade breakfast delivered to our room in the morning, we were ecstatic.

We ended up spending 5 days in Cseky Krumlov, after originally having planned to stay only for a short time. We ate amazing vegetarian food on the banks of the river at the charming Laibon restaurant. (On our third visit, we discovered the place was clothing optional, as 2 guys decided to strip down and take a swim mid-meal.) We walked all over the town and up to the castle each night to visit the stinky bears who lived in the castle's waterless moat. Each time we turned a corner in Cesky Krumlov, we would gasp anew at the views. By the time we left, we felt revitalized, rested and eternally grateful to our favorite Turkish twins for recommending that we go there.

Now we're in Verona, Italy after a brief and rainy afternoon in Vienna. Although Cafe Central where we hung out sipping mediocre hot chocolate was cool, and Demel, the chocolatier recommended by Let's Go, would have been great for omiage if we had buckets of Euros and a way to keep it from melting in Thailand, the highlight of Vienna was definitely the Korean Mini Series Drama that took place in our couchette on the ride to Italy. The Noodles shared a 4-person sleeping cabin with a friendly Canadian girl and a silent Korean guy who slept with his shoes on and liked to spit his Tic-tacs onto the floor like sunflower seeds. Around midnight, our group was awakened by sharp knocks at our door and a Czech accented, "POLIZIE!" The stunned Canadian opened the door and the 2 police officers shoved a Japanese passport in the Korean guy's face and kept saying "False document. Do you speak English? False document." He stared back blankly. Ande saw the passport and thought maybe he spoke Japanese although she knew he wasn't Japanese and asked him helpfully, "Nihon-jin desuka?" ("Are you Japanese?") Again, Simpsons face. Now we were convinced along with the police that the passport was false document. Poor guy. They dragged him away and we locked the door. As the train lurched forward, his sticky, half-eaten Tic-tacs rolled around the floor and lulled us back to sleep.