Praha!!

Prague is the most beautiful city EVER!!

We arrived here and immediately got stood up by our CouchSurfing host. Not to worry though, hostels here are 4€ a night. The hostel we stayed at was Sir Toby's. If you get the chance to get to Prague this is the place to stay. Clean, cheap, and every night they prepare some kind of excellent food. Also try to look at the bartender. He is totally worth the stay.

This entry will be a little shorter because honestly all I've done in Prague is party. The trams run all night and at 3 and 4 in the morning there are still tons of people out in the streets. I haven't seen this many sunrises since Burning Man.

I LOVE this city so much!! I have also met a lot of people here who don't speak Czech which is nice because I picked up some understanding of German while in Germany but Czech is completely ridiculous. The word for goodbye is 'nashledanou'. Really.

Burble thinks he's died and gone to heaven. The women here are ridiculously beautiful and wear next to nothing. The fashion here is a see-through white blouse with a skimpy bra underneath, and shorts so short you can almost not find them.  As we walked through the train station my brother looked at me with tears in his eyes and murmured dreamily, "It's like we went into hibernation in Leipzig and when we came out they had shed all their wrappings...!!" Also the hostel is filled with flirty women, many of whom are hitting on my brother (to my absolute chagrin), so we ended up staying there three nights instead of one.

It started pouring rain as soon as we got here but the temperature has been a steady 78, and sunny through the rain. We wandered around the city in t-shirts in the rain while my brother obsessed about all the soaking wet scantily clad hotties. I am overwhelmed with the grandure of this place, the buildings are HUGE and everything here is epic.

We met a nice hippy named Alex while Burble was busking in the street. He goes to school here and took us to a really odd school party where people were presenting the countries they were from and then teaching people drinking games from their country. It was very strange but I learned a lot about Taiwan.

When I woke up I went hunting for my brother. He's like a cat with a little bell because he plays the trumpet everywhere and I can just listen for it and find him. I found him in a tree. He tends to camp out in random places and play but the police here keep kicking him out. Also you can't play music in the streets after 10 pm.

I wanted to see the city and Burble wanted to stay in his tree so we split up and I headed off towards the castle.
So if you've never  been to Prague, I would suggest it more than any city we've been in so far. This is the first place I just feel so inadequate describing. It has HUGE parks and castles and churches. One of the parks is so big it has its own eco-system. You can get totally lost in the woods and still be in the middle of the city. I have definitely spent a lot of time just wandering around in awe of this place. The city is spread out in a valley with a river running through it. From the castle on one hill and the ruins of another castle on the opposing hill you can see the whole valley. It has huge swaths of green running through it as though the city is being retaken by the forest. It's like no place I have ever been.



There are a huge number is epic churches. I went in to see a couple. They're so incredible inside, filled with light and color. I've been so fascinated that these huge buildings are built for God. I have never really understood what motivates people to believe in God but the devotion of these people to build these HUGE monuments is so interesting to me. They will never see God and never really know if he exists  but still something makes them absolutely sure. 

The castle which costs a small fortune to get into and is filled with loud Americans who are yelling in English about how "aaaawoooooosome" it is and "honey take a picture of me no wait honey take another one I look fat oh wait honey take another one my ass is too big honey does this fanny pack make me look fat??"


I skipped the castle but the gardens are amazing. They have raptors in the garden (birds, not the dinosaurs but if they did have the dinosaurs maybe they would eat the tourists and then I could see the castle in peace.) Apparently there is a group of people in Prague who hunt with hawks and falcons and have taken it on themselves to re-introduce golden eagles to Czech. They have been trying for 10 years but for some reason no one understands the eagles released just fly to Poland. Maybe it's nicer there. The exhibit is so people can see these birds up close and hopefully be more interested in their conservation. I was so impressed with them. They're so incredible and HUGE but it was sad to have them sitting there tethered to the ground. They take them out to fly but it's just sad to think that there are none of them left in the country other than captive ones.



I really enjoyed wandering around the city by myself. One of the reasons I was so anxious to travel is that I need to spend more time alone. Traveling with Burble is nice because he likes to busk and I can do my own thing while he does that. I never had very many friends growing up and I think that being so lonely as a kid has made me terrified of being alone now. In California I have filled my life with people and sometimes I don't realize the value of being by myself. I feel so small in this massive crowded city but itś OK, the more I put myself outside of my comfort zone the larger my comfort zone becomes. After only 6 weeks traveling I feel so capable of handling myself in any situation.

When Burble and I met back at the hostel we hung out in the bar in the basement and did 'ice cream shots'. This is an evil drink that tastes like ice cream and nothing like alcohol until you stand up and the floor is waving at you. I tried to pace myself partly because I am starting to hate being really drunk and partly because the Canadian boy next to me was getting increasingly wasted and belligerent and I was worried I was going to have to break up a drunken Canadian brawl. Also me and another girl were trying to get one of the guys to take off his clothes and dance on the bar so I had to stay relatively sober to make sure he was getting drunker. However then the bartender started buying us all shots. I think I agreed to marry this one guy and then we got lost in an elevator, (it's easy, there's lots of buttons), and then this one guy kept asking me if I had condoms and being the good EMT that I am I gave him a ton of condoms and then went to bed. I didn't realize at all that he wanted the condoms because he wanted to use them with me and he was really confused when I handed them to him and left. I find that after being in relationships for four years I am incredibly inept at understanding when men are hitting on me. I just think they're really nice. I find I am making more of a fool of myself on this trip than at any point in my life, but the odd thing is that I don't care. I can't take myself so seriously these days. I've met a lot of people who do take themselves too seriously here and I just laugh at them.

The next morning I decided that I would never drink again but everyone tells me that I need to build my Czech tolerance.

Hungover or not, we embarked on a guided tour or the city.
I am usually very against these things but it was led by a guy from the hostel and he promised that we would visit no tourist locations. True to his word, we barely saw other tourists the whole time, and he had lots of great stories about the mythology of the city. Apparently they used to be ruled by a young beautiful queen and she was a great ruler but it was out of style for her to be unmarried so the people told her she had to find a husband. She said she would consult the gods and in the morning she told them she had had a vision in her dreams. She said they should let he horse out into the fields and he would walk until he sopped at a man and that would be the man she would marry. She the horse did and it came to a farm and stopped and there was this guy there. So they said that he had to leave his farm and become king. And he did. Turns out this dude was her lover and the horse was just used to going to his house it went there out of habit.

The details on the houses are so cool, there are fantastic creatures hidden in little corners. There's a repeating motif of "the green man", which is a half plant half animal that lurks in unexpected places.

There is also a fountain in the garden that is pretty and innocent at first glance but then when you look at the bottom there are tons of evil creatures from the underworld. If you listen the the bottom you can hear the sounds of the underworld. (The underworld sounds like a lot rumbling "glu glu glu".)

There are all these interesting remnants of the wars. One Czech girl told me that they're country gets invaded all the time. In one house they gathered all the cannon balls from some war and stuck them in the wall so it would look like the house survived an attack.

The guide also showed us various places where the artists made fun of communism secretly because if they did outright they would be tortured. One wall has a beautiful woman holding the communist symbol but she's winking as though she's secretly making fun.

There was also I really nice Inn called either The Happy Crayfish or The Horny Crayfish. Our guide said it was very romantic.

Our guide recommended a genuine Czech restaurant that we had an awesome meal at. It consisted of lots of different dead animals. It was totally incredible but I could just imagine the faces of my vegetarian friends.
After our meal we wandered around one of the parks for hours. It is so amazing to be in Prague in the spring. I have lucked out so incredibly. I am well aware that I am supposed to work in France this summer but I just want to travel forever and have fun and talk to cute people and never have any responsibilities. I think I've regressed. 
We have to leave soon though because I have spent and insane amount of money here and we might have to sleep in a park Sunday night.

I did find a wonderful Czech girl on CouchSurfing who has let me crash at her house. We meant to have an early night last night but we met some guys and wandered around the city drinking beer and eating pizza. Itś been so warm here that everyone is out in the streets all night and the pizza is cheap and awesome. My brother was going to stay with us but he met some girl and we haven't heard from him since.

I love it here but talking to all these students make me realize I need to be in school again. Itś been 6 years since I graduated from high school and that's too much time to let pass without continuing my education. This revelation is unfortunate because I passionately hate school, but find myself looking at medical school more and more seriously and that's pretty much the most school you can possibly do. I must be a masochist...

Also all this partying has given me the plague. I was running a temperature of 101 as we boarded the train for Vienna. That will teach me to take better care of my body, at least until I feel better and ignore my better judgment. I love being young and stupid.