By Aaron Melton & Nick Fioretti

So me and Nick being productive at work one day came up with some stereotypes for cities in Washington State if they were in high school.  If you read this and you can come up with some better ones by all means add them as a comment. I think it would be cool to get a funny list of city stereotypes for Earthwalkers.

Auburn - The dead beat parents kid's house. You go to this kids house to drink beer and smoke weed in the basement.

Bellevue - The rich kid no one likes, but your friends with them anyways because they have fun pool parties.

Bellingham - The hippy, stoner kid that like the Fishes, Grateful Dad and Dave Matthews and still wears a North Face Jacket. Will typically drive a Subaru to school.

Chehalis - The kid you know is not going to graduate.

Enumclaw - The stinky kid that likes horses a little too much.

Fife - The car kid. In the 80's he would have been the person who rolled up to school in his Chevy Camaro, leaned on his car and popped his collar so everyone would see him. Now days he is the skinny kid that needs the street racing decals and deep bass speakers in his car to get laid.

Forks - The melancholy vampire so prevalent in todays American public school system. Upperclassman don't typically like this kid because he comes off as a whiner. However, naive females will fall in love with him because they think they can change him and make him happy.

Kent - The token black kid.

Olympia - The ASB president that gets elected by 5%  voter turnout. Most of the votes come from the clique group or people haggled at lunch time who vote to shut this annoying person up.

Redmond - The nerdy, smart kid. Couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a baseball, typically dresses really dorky for P.E. and couldn't buy a date while in high school. Usually had B.O. in the late afternoons. Typically end up working at Microsoft and Intel after high school.

Renton - The fat kid with acne that tries to awkwardly fit in with the Seattle type. Due to his insecurities will wear the latest brand name athletic apparel. However, even with the brand name clothes he is still fat and ugly. Seattle lets Renton hang out with him because it makes him look better, but the clique does not like Renton.

Sea-Tac - The slutty girl.

Seattle - The cool kid that doesn't try to be.

Spanaway - The kid not all there because his or her parents did meth.

Spokane - The poor, white, skinny kid that tries to act gangster. Will typically wear a wife beater and a sun visor slightly skewed on their head to show his rebellious nature. Will also wear shorts on a balmy 40 F degree day in March.

Tacoma - Has the cooler older brother Seattle that everyone knows him by.

Tri-Cities, Puyallup, Wentachee, Vancouver - The clique kids. They are all the same friends since Kindergarten, wear the same clothes, listen to the same pop music. Eventually they will all go to the same community college and end back in their hometown with a mediocre job.

Ok, your turn to add some!

http://picasaweb.google.com/goodsaks

HALF-WAY DAY

Thursday, September 4^th.  Time to get to Budapest and meet up with Jonah. The day began as a bit of a clusterfuck, and as I write this on a bus rambling down a Hungarian highway in the rain, I am not out of the woods yet.  Part of this is my own doing.  I did not plan ahead sufficiently with the bus and train schedules and was too late for the direct morning trains.  The woman at the City Hostel helped me look up some alternatives, including a bus.  I know Student Agency runs busses to Budapest, but their office was closed.  Then it started raining and I could not find the bus stop to take me to the bus station. 
Luckily I got to the bus stop shelter just before it started really pouring. Somewhere along the way, my digital watch slipped off and is gone forever.  Luckily it was a last-minute Target cheapie.

Once I got to the bus station, nobody spoke English and the Eurolines window was closed.   Luckily, the lady soon opened the window and informed me that, contrary to what hotel girl told me, there is no 1:30 bus to  Budapest.  The next Eurolines bus left at 3:30 and did not get in until 7:45 p.m.  But she was kind enough to tell me another bus was bound for Budapest on another bus line at 2 p.m., only an hour wait.  That bus, it turns out, was over 20 minutes late and I started feeling I would never get to Budapest. 

I started exploring the possibility of taking a cab to the train station and catching the direct 4:30 train to Budapest.   Unfortunately the cabs were 15 Euro, where the entire train ride was only 16!  I was about to do it anyway, but decided to check back in at the bus station and saw the bus was finally here.  It was coming from Prague, and stopping in Budapest, Belgrade and Sophia.  The bus was filled with some classic Eurotrash and I guarantee I was not only the sole North American on the bus, I was the only westerner.  I had no idea the price or how long it would take, but braced myself for the worse.

I gave the driver a 10 Euro note and he took it.  I am not sure what will happen when I get there.  His friend or his assistant is sitting in the jump seat next to him smoking cigarettes, which is the last thing I need now and I am sure not allowed on this bus. 
I have to say, we have been blazing toward Budapest without making any stops and I might just get there by 5:30.  My hands are hurting typing on this bus, so let’s hope I make it to Budapest and the hotel in one piece and turn this shitty day around.

Epilogue

All's well that ends well.  The bussed zipped right into the Budapest Bus station by 5:15 and I found my way down to the metro station, bought a 72 hour pass right before the lady randomly closed the window (luck!), and some friendly metro station information ladies showed me where to change trains.

I got to the hotel by 6 afterall, and the rain stopped for the rest of the night.

Bus to Bratislava – Less than an hour away but a world of difference

The bus ride to Bratislava was a breeze and super-cheap at 6 Euro (about $8).  I cannot believe this city is less than an hour away from Vienna.  There is virtually no discernable Austrian influence here.  I suppose the fact that Bratislava was just inside the iron curtain is largely to account for this fact.  More people speak English here than German. 

I have to admit, I did not know much about Slovakia compared with other countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain.  I had the great fortune to run into a Slovakian guy named Peter while we were both trying to figure out why Govinda vegetarian restaurant (run by the Hare Krishnas) was closed.   Peter is a Slovakian from an eastern city and had recently moved to Bratislava.  His English was excellent and I asked him about his language skills.  He told me that he took English in school, and had been in Colorado one summer for some undisclosed reason, and lived in the U.K for a while.  He explained that most younger people learn English and the influence from Hollywood has an impact too. 

History Lesson
We attempted to find the vegetarian restaurant listed in Lonely Planet (I later discovered it had closed), and instead grabbed a bite at a crummy middle eastern sidewalk joint right on Ochoobna, the pedestrian and tram-only street on which my hotel is located.  I was never too sure about the split up of Czechoslovakia.  I knew there was no bloody civil war, but not much else.   Peter gave me the impression that because the former country was governed by Prague, the Czechs had more influence and more attention from the government.   Slovakian and Czech are linguistically similar, but Slovaks have an easier time understanding Czechs because they are much more exposed to the Czech language, and they were especially so before independence.  There is no major animosity between Slovaks and Czechs, but Slovakians wanted their own government.  And now they have it.

Not Exactly Prague

Judging from my guide book, Slovakia is not the most exciting place to visit, other than the High Tatras mountains in the northeast.  Certainly to say that Bratislava is a poor man’s Prague would be understating the difference.  When Czechoslovakia split in two, Slovakia got the shit end of the stick.

Bratislava itself can be done in a day if you travel like me, and no more than two days even for normal people.  I booked the City Hostel from my place in Vienna in the morning.  I wanted a private room ensuite because I am feeling a bit under the weather with a sore throat.  For $42 I got my room in a great location.   It is not really a hostel at all.  There is no common area and no wifi (c’mon!) and it functions exactly like a hotel. 

As soon as a put my stuff down, I ripped out the two Bratislava map pages from Lonely Planet book and was off to see the town.  First stop: Bratislava Castle, which dominates the old town.  Like the Czech castles, once you get up there, it is not that interesting (and not that old, having burnt down in 1811 and been rebuilt in 1953).

Bratislava was once a very important Hapsburg city.  Today, it provides an amazing internal contrast.  From the castle you can look out over the old town and toward the concrete block jungle on the other side of the Danube River;  another monument to miserable communism.  Dominating that view is  the “UFO” (Novy Most) bridge, topped by a bizzare 1970’s Soviet creation that at least makes a memorable photo.  Picture what Seattle’s space needle would look like if the Soviets had built it, and angled it strangely and you can get a feel for the Novy Most bridge. 

I took a few photos with my phone (still awaiting my camera charger in Budapest), walked around the palace, back through town to the small Monument to the Slovak National Uprising, and over to get a glimpse of the Presidential Palace.  None of these things are very far from each other and none are particularly inspiring, although the palace would impress if I had not seen what I have already seen in this trip and in my life.

In some cities, you grab the map and what you think is in walking distance turns out to be a huge haul.  I can remember walking to the Park Hyatt in Tokyo for 40 minutes when I thought it would be a seven or eight minute walk.  Other cities, like Bratislava, are the opposite.  I walked right past my hotel at one point because I was budgeting for several more minutes just to get down the street from eyeballing the map.  After dinner I settled in to my simple but clean hotel room to write this blog and upload and edit photos and rest, just what I need tonight!

When I uploaded my photos from Bratislava on my phone, I found that they were all erased! Oh well, nothing was that incredible anyway.  I’ll try to grab some from the web.

Onward to Vienna

Unfortunately, I had to wake up early the next day for my ride to Vienna.  Taking a train meant transferring a couple of times, and for just 30 Euro (about $42) I got a direct ride.  I was picturing a shuttle van but the Expedition travel company just sent a guy in a Skoda (the Czech-made car) and I shared the ride with two nice ladies from Melbourne, Australia.

The drive to Vienna was much prettier than the drive from Prague to Cesky Krumlov.  It started out in a winding two lane road through spruce and pine forests.  After a while, the scenery opened up to fields of sunflowers.  I am still not used to having no borders to go through!  Cesky Krumlov is only about 100 km from Vienna.

Misgivings about Austria  

I have always been a little creeped out about Austria.   I never, ever judge individuals from a country because of their government or history (I would hate to be judged for some of the foreign policy decisions myu government has made).  But while Germany took major steps to deal with the Nazi era, Austria, the country that spawned Hitler and many other leading Nazis, the country that invited the Nazi's in, just went on its merry way.  No reparations, no apparent guilt.  While there was political oppostion to the Aunschluss, even the German Nazis were surprised at how jubilant Austrians were and how the Nazi soliders were showered with cheers and flowers. 
My ambivalent feeligns about Austria were confirmed by my friends’ recent visit to Vienna.  They lost their wallet in a cab, and at least two different people, including hotel staff and police, uttered anti-Jewish comments to the effect that if the cab driver was a Jew, they would never get it back.  What the fuck?  Are there really even any Jewish cab drivers in Vienna these days?

Nice day in Vienna

The weather in Vienna was spectacular.  It felt like it was in the high 60s and was nice and sunny.  Krumlov House hostel had recommended the Hostel Ruthensteiner, so that is where I went.  Finally, almost half-way through the trip, I was to experience my first true dorm-room situation.  Vienna is expensive and I was so exhausted from staying up late and getting up early that I did not bother looking elsewhere.  The Ruthensteiner is a great facility.  They have a good kitchen, a cool outdoor garden with tables to eat, plenty of lounge space, a bar and clean rooms with big lockers and en suite bathrooms.  The staff was also helpful.  Better yet, they seem to really enforce quiet hours after 10:30.  I feel asleep at about 12:30 a.m. and did not hear the other people coming in, probably thanks to the Ambien sleeping pill I took.  But I sure heard them in morning clanging around and waking me up.  Luckily, I was able to doze off again until my alarm went off in time for me to scramble out of the room in time for the 10:00 a.m. check out.

Schonbrunn Palace

No sooner had I put my things in the room than I was off to Schonbrunn Palace.  I was pleasantly surprised at how close it was to the hostel, which is located near the Westbanhof Metro Station.  A couple of metro stops and a quick train switch and there I was.  A tram also ran there directly but took 20 minutes.  While buying my 48 hour metro pass, an Austrian guy came up to me at the machine to sell me his one week pass.  I was extremely suspicious at first, but a few things about him eased my mind.  First, he began speaking to me in German, not thinking I was a tourist who would not know any better.  Secondly, he gave me his card, which identified him as an underwater photographer.  He had worked in the Bahamas at a program affiliated with the University of Miami, and we discussed where he had stayed and it all seemed to check out.  So for just 5 Euro I had a pass valid for the rest of my trip. My suspicions were proved correct later when  I checked with the information booth and they confirmed its validity.

Schonbrunn is spectacular in scale and architecture.  Not nearly as famous as Versailles, or the Hermitage/Winter Palace in Russia, it is almost as impressive on the outside.  I learned my lesson and did not buy a ticket for inside; even the staff at the Ruthensteiner confirmed that the interior rooms were nothing special.  Fortunately, the good folks at Schonbrunn posted informative signs about the history of the place and the Hapsburgs that were accessible in the free portions of the palace.  It was a tad interesting to follow the Hapsburg family tree from the thirteenth century down past Franz Ferdinand and into the 1950s.

My camera battery completely lost juice on that last photo of the Cesky Krumlov Palace, so I was forced to use my phone for pictures.  Resourcefully, I found a few other tourists with a cannon powershot and they lent me their batteries for one or two photos.  All the pictures I took with my own phone were erased somehow when I uploaded them onto Picasa, along with all my Bratislava photos.

Walking Tour? No.  Orchestra Scam? Yes!

The walking tour that was supposed to leave from in front of the National History Museum never materialized.  All over the Museumplatz and other tourist areas, young guys dressed in what purports to be 18^th Century jackets were hawking tickets to these concert nights.  The British guys Josh and Andre whom I had met at the Czech Inn impressed me by going to see Othello at the opera house in Prague, which was very reasonable priced as well.  Inspired by their cultural adventrue, I decided to humor these punks in the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band jackets.

Their glossy binders featured the program for the evening at the “Royal Orchester Wien Mozart & Strauss Konzerte” and photos of an opulent concert hall.  The seating chart made it appear that there were several layers of seats, wings, balconies, etc.  The walking tour was going to be 14 Euro, and this concert would be 30 for a student ticket.  Hmmm…about $20 more for a memorable night hearing Mozart and Strauss in a Viennese concert hall… I bit and ound up with a ticket for the 8:15 show, giving me a couple of hours to see more sights in Vienna.

Highlights of Vienna

According to the research I did, the top things to see in Vienna were the palace  and some sights clustered around the center of the city.  Having knocked the palace off first,  I wanted to get all of this in before I left Vienna, walking tour or not.  Before the show I had time to walk around the impressive Austrian Parliament and grab a snack at the lively Rathaus plaza, an esplanade lined with portable bars and restaurants.  I made my second bad choice for the evening there, scarfing down the absolute worst falafel and hummus I have ever eaten.   I know that “Austria” is not a name that comes to mind when one considers falafel and hummus, but the falafel was dried out and crumbly and the hummus tasted carbonated, and for about $9 without so much as a piece of pita bread, it was no bargain.  Nevertheless, the atmosphere was nice; 80’s music and a smart after-work crowd mixed with a few tourists sitting among some palms.  Palms??  What the hell are these trees doing here?  They looked to me very similar to the saw palmettos abundant in Florida. Do they move them inside for the winter?

Next stop was the Stephanplatz, a big cathedral listed as a high priority tourist site in Vienna.  The cathedral did look cool and I would have been more impressed had I not just come from Prague. 

Back to the Royal Vienna Orchestra

With the bad taste from the spoiled hummus still lingering in my mouth, I entered the concert venue, where the coat check Gestapo demanded that I check my jacket and then when I did, charged my one Euro for it!  If I had not been feeling so under the weather and tired I would have told him to fuck-off but I did what I was told; must be something in the air here that makes people obedient to authority.  He gave some lame excuse about it being so hot inside with 400 people and all.

You know the scene in Goodfellas, where Joe Pesci’s character is getting “made” and walks into the room and sees the fish mounted up on the wall?  He’s about to say “oh shit” or something but doesn’t finish the thought before they blow his head off.  Well, with much less gravity, the minute I crossed the doorway  and glanced upon the concert hall, I had my own “oh shit” moment. 

The room resembled a medium-sized catholic church. A few chandeliers hung from a valid cathedral ceiling, and the stage was about as big as one in a high school auditorium.  In fact, take away the ceiling and the faux “old Europe”-looking backdrop and I could have been walking into a performance of “The Westbrook High School Ensemble presents a ‘Night of the Classics.’” 

The saving grace of the evening was meeting Manisha, an incredibly cute and sweet Aussie.   Commiserating about the absurdity of the seating, concert hall and sales pitch made it almost all worthwhile.  The hawkers had told her that her ticket came with a free glass of champagne, but when she asked the bartenders for it during intermission, she found out that she had been duped.

Remember that elaborate seating chart the Sgt. Pepper’s touts showed me? Well, in reality there were about 20 rows of wood chairs that looked like they could have come from the Citibank employee cafeteria.  No balcony, no mezzanine, just one flat room and rows and rows of removable wooden chairs.  And the annoying ushers were still making a big deal about where everybody’s seat was.  I had been “upgraded” to “SILVER” status because “BRONZE” had sold out when I bought my tickets.  So I got a 50 Euro value for only 30 Euro!  Translation: I was seating three rows closer to the stage.  I opted to sit with Manisha back in Bronze (her ticket had only cost 25 Euro).  Seated next to Manisha was John, a friendly Brazilian law student who himself got roped in on the Stephanplatz.  When he told the hawkers that he had already booked a room in Prague for that night, one of them told him “don’t worry man, you can come stay at my place if you buy the ticket now.”  I feel really, really sorry for the people who paid upwards of 60 Euros just to be closer to the front.

To add insult to injury, the concert had a few opera singers belt out some numbers and even an extremely lame couple of ballet bits. The dancers had very little room to maneuver in front of the musicians.  The whole experience was tacky and inauthentic.   If Vienna was a cruise ship port of call, the “Wien Royal Orchestra” would be tailored made for it.  I felt like a jack-ass for going but at least did not pay for the expensive tickets.  Lesson learned: Don’t ever buy a ticket from anyone in any kind of period costume.  You’d be better off loading the Blue Danube Waltz onto iTunes and sitting at a café eating a strudel.

To the credit of the symphony, the music sounded good.  Then again, my untrained ear would not know the difference between the University of Central Florida Junior Ensemble and the London Philharmonic.  Judging by the relatively young age of most of the members of the orchestra, I have to doubt  that they were elite, especially considering that they were playing for a bunch of sucker tourists, myself included.  My guess was that they were on the par with cruise-ship performers; they know what they are doing,  but there are not exactly at the pinnacle of the entertainment ladder.

The concert had me so annoyed that I decided to leave Vienna after just over 24 hours and head to Bratislava.  Now I can check Slovakia off my list.  I am writing this entry on the quick , one-hour bus ride to a city that is best known today for being the setting of the movie Hostel, which luckily I have not seen.

Okay, the some other city of somewhere else joke in the titles has run its course. 
My motivation for going to Cesky Krumlov was to get out and see something else in the Czech Republic, to go to a place that all my friends haven’t been to, and also to experience this reputedly gorgeous town.  The bus-ride to Cesky Krumlov took a couple of hours as we passed nondescript cornfields and nothing-looking towns.  What is the obsession with the t.v. show Friends in Europe?  I guess the humor is much more universal than a show like Seinfeld.  Every country loves to show Friends, and that included the Student Agency Bus Company.  But first, the animated movie The Ant Bully.  I stopped aying attention after ten minutes or so, but occasionally glanced up to check on the plot.  What came first Avatar or the Ant Bully?  Whatever came later was somewhat derivative of the former in terms of plot, if not style. 
Music Digression

Tuning out the movie gave me a chance for the first time since the flight over to break out the headphones and really listen to the music stored on my android phone, much of which I frantically downloaded immediately before leaving on the trip.  I was excited to listen to some holes I had filled in my Stones collection, such as the live tracks on Get Your Ya Ya’s Out (I downloaded the bluesy Prodigal Son and Love in Vain, both of which originally appeared on Beggar’s Banquet) and Still Life.  I also picked some cool Johnny Cash cuts. 

Johnny Cash did some lame covers in the 70’s, but his late career renditions of other’s work and his duets were pretty cool.  Just hearing a familiar song coming out of his pipes gives it gravity it might have never had before.  My favorite was Bob Marley’s Redemption Song, with Cash and Joe Strummer from The Clash, one of my favorite bands.  But even If You Could Read My Mind sounded cool.   I have always loathed nearly the entire genre of 70’s male “folk,” or more accurately, “singer-songwriter” stuff.  James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, Gordon Lightfoot, etc.  The strange thing is, I like 1960’s folk rock, like Donovan and Simon and Garfunkel.  And while I never understood the lyrics to If you Could Read My Mind, and frankly hate that song, I liked it when Johnny Cash sang it.  That one line “I don’t know where we went wrong but the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back.”  Wow – extremely depressing - and all too familiar unfortunately.  I was also able to recover all of my Live at Folsom Prison and San Quentin tracks that had been lost when my old computer crashed. Cocaine Blues in particular is an amazingly bad-ass cut.

Cozy Accomodation

No sooner did I exit the bus upon our arrival at the station than did the rain come down.  The Czech Inn had booked me in to their affiliate, the Krumlov House.  It is a really cozy little hostel close to all the old town charm (nothing is too far here).  I really lucked out and the cheery Kiwi at the reception desk, upon hearing I was a light sleeper, gave me an entire dorm room to myself.  So the $17 I paid for a dorm bed actually bought me a private room with private bath…still no dorm sleeping yet on this trip!

September Travel

My plan of taking the majority of my trip September has been working out well.  Sunday, August 29, my first day in Prague, was the last day of the real summer tourist season.  I noticed the difference immediately afterward.  Less people, no worries with bus, train, or hostel reservations and more attentive customer service.  I was not expecting this chilly weather for August and early September though.  I would have no complaints if it were not for the intermittent rain.  

More Digressions

At one point in Prague, I started getting annoyed that it was raining.  Then I stopped and thought to myself, I am a healthy guy who gets along well with my family, smart, likes where I work, and is on a six week trip of Europe, visiting countries that were torn apart by war, Nazis and Soviets.  I am not going to complain about a little rain on my vacation.

After checking in, I immediately took to the streets and up the hill to the town’s hallmark, Cesky Krumov Castle.  The sun came back out and I got a few great shots.  Cesky Krumlov really is a wonderfully pretty place.  It is too bad I got in so late.  The tower of the castle was closed, but I still got some great shots when the sun came out again.  These photos marked the end of my camera battery.   With no charger, I had to switch to using my phone camera, which is a poor substitute.  Luckily Jonah will be bringing me a charger when we meet in Budapest.

Castle and a Great Meal

I had a great stroll for a couple of hours, including the castle gardens, and then returned to the Krumlov house and got acquainted with a friendly group of young Brits from Middlesex and an attractive festival promoter from Barcelona.  We all decided to go to dinner at Laibon, a vegetarian place recommended in Lonely Planet.  It turns out, everyone from the group had already eaten there earlier in their stay.

Laibon was fantastic.  It was a thrill for me to have so much choice at a restaurant.  David, the affable Czech owner, also makes incredible teas and desserts.  We had a great meal in a warm setting, although the temperature was dropping outside.

Czech Summary

Prague is a nice as everybody said it was.  I still think you can cover it well in three days, but understand by some people prefer to spend more time there.  Ceske Krumlov makes a great day or overnight trip (in the warm weather you can go river rafting around there too).  I love seeing cities like Prague that just exploded into their own once the Soviets left.  It would have been exciting to be there in the wide-open early 90’s, when any North American with a college degree could make a huge impact. 

When I think back to the cold war references to Czechoslovakia, I realize how shrouded and obscured it once seemed.  Dan Ackroyd and Steve Martin’s “Wild and Crazy Guys” sketch depicted Czechoslovakians, and in Stripes, the members of Bill Murray’s platoon took a wrong turn and wound up in a Soviet prison there.  Of course, I did not see any more than one city and one small tourist town, but it’s nice to see what a country can accomplish when left to its own devices and with a willing, industrious population.

Everybody’s been to Prague it seems.  Of all the places I am going on this trip, Prague seems to be the most traveled by my friends and acquaintances.  The reason for this city’s popularity becomes clear at first glance across the Vlatava River and up at Prague Castle.

Audio Bore of Prague Castle

It’s all true.; Prague is great and as picturesque as it gets.   I went to a few attractions in town, but the best part of Prague to me is just wandering around the old town and taking in the views. Prague Castle was actually kind of anticlimactic when I was there; it looks more impressive when viewed from across the Vlatava.  While on the topic of Prague Castle, I made the mistake of getting the self-guided audio tour.  $26 for a boring tour that consisted in large part of describing the various chapels within the Prague Cathedral, none of which I give a shit about and most of which were fairly recently constructed and have no great historical significance.  The $26 was for a student ticket at that! 

A bit on student tickets.  They love giving student discounts in Europe.  So much more so than back home.  My student i.d. has no expiration date and no birth date.  The cut-off age seems to be 26 for most places, even with a student id.  Mine was last valid in the 90’s, but I have easily saved over $30 so far on this trip with it.  At Prague castle, they asked for my i.d. and my age, which I gave as 26.  Then they needed some form of identification to make sure you return the audio handset.  I couldn’t give my passport (I wouldn’t give it in any circumstance), and if I gave my driver’s license, they probably would have noticed that I was over 26.  Luckily I carry an old work i.d. card in my wallet from a previous job.  It is fairly official looking.  I started keeping it in my “auxiliary” wallet when I lived in Costa Rica.  My passport and cash would be tucked away safely in my money belt, but if I got held up, I could toss my wallet with identification and a $20, which would placate the robber.   This actually happened once, and it worked fine (except I had my real driver’s license in there that time). 

So, the radio carbon-dated student  i.d. did the trick and I only got ripped off for $26, not $40 or whatever obscene price the audio tour would have been a full fare.  Andre and Josh, two really friendly young English guys who were also staying at the Czech Inn came there with me.  I also met up with Jan at the castle, a perky engineer from L.A. who was also being hosted at the same time by Fred, our awesome couchsurfing host.

Accomodations in Prague

Fred, a Belgian expat who has been living in Prague for three years, is a professional that works for one of the major airlines.  His luxury flat was in a fantastic location in old town, near the Nam Republiky metro stop.  Fred had confirmed that I could couchsurf with him, but I was unable to reach him when I arrived in town, so checked in to the Czech Inn (pun intended) to take a nap after barely sleeping in Stockholm the night before.  I tried to nap for a while in the five bed dorm room but woke up when Josh and Andre came in.  You cannot expect people to be silent during the day in a dorm room, so I struck up and conversation with them and we wound up exploring Prague together for a while. 

The Czech Inn was recommended in Lonely Planet and some other traveler along the way had vouched for it as well. The staff are all terrific.  The entire place is modern, sleek and user-friendly.  Plenty of clean bathrooms and showers (none of this one shower to a floor bullshit) and a nice bar/restaurant where an all you can eat breakfast is served.  I think my room cost me about $17 and breakfast another $5 or so.  The Czech Inn is not quite centrally located; you must take a tram to get to the tourist sites, but it is not that big of a deal.  It was worth $17 to have a place to relax while I was waiting and hoping to hear from Fred.  I did not even sleep there.

First Day Exploring

So off I went with the young Brits via tram to the other side of the river.  We crossed the Manesuv Bridge to get a good view and some photos of the famous Charles Bridge, and paid just a few dollars to enter the Charles Bridge Museum, which sits atop the bridge tower on the old town side of the river.  The Charles Bridge museum was well worth the money, providing great views and extremely informative displays about the entire history of Prague – with the limited time I had, there was actually too much for me to read, a rare occurence.  We then made it down and over just in time for the ringing of the Astronomical Clock, a display featuring a moving skeleton and bishops.  It is pretty silly but  on the requisite sights list while here.

Sun and clouds kept battling it out that Sunday.   One minute I was zipping up, the next taking the jacket off and putting my sunglasses back on again.  Just before six p.m., when Andre and Josh split off to see Othello being performed at the Opera House, Fred texted me.  He happened to be right in the neighborhood, so the timing was perfect.  Fred drove Jan and I back to his flat, and then we walked around a bit hoping to find some authentic Czech food for dinner.  Everything was closing early on Sunday, so after a few good Czech beers in a pub, Fred took us to a groovy little Mexican restaurant in his neighborhood.  Jan and I treated  for dinner, as is my custom for any couchsurfing host.

Jewish Museum and a Home Cooked Dinner

On Monday morning, Jan and Fred went to play badminton.  I went back to the Czech Inn to return my towel and have the all-you can eat breakfast for which I had already paid  Another great feature of the Czech Inn; breakfast until NOON and no check out until noon.  Breakfast includes hot eggs, with or without bacon, a few kinds of bread to toast, cereal and the other usual stuff. 

After breakfast I hopped the tram (they sell 24 hour public transportation tickets at the hostel, good for trams and the metro) and headed out to Prague Castle with Andre and Josh.  After that I hit the Jewish Museum complex, which consists of several synagogues, the cemetery, and for an additional ticket the “Old New Synagogue.”  Running short of time, I bought just the ticket for the cemetery and museum, which still was about $17 I believe.

The cemetery really is a sight to behold; a forest of haphazard, slanted, irregularly worn headstones.  The Pinkas synagogue is a solemn holocaust memorial that includes a unique exhibit of childrens’ art collected from the Prague Ghetto and nearby Terezin concentration camp.  Before they murdered its inhabitants, the Nazis used Terezin to produce their propaganda films depicting concentration camps as almost like summer sleep-away camp.  I cannot remember the details, but an incredible woman undertook to allow the children to create art as a coping mechanism, and the art you see here survived the war somehow. 

The art exhibit is such a powerful supplement to the holocaust memorial with the names of the murdered Czech Jews, because it adds a human element to the names on the wall.  Through their pictures, you see the hopes, fears and imagination of these children.  Some even included imagined futures in Palestine.  Then, next to the drawings, they have the names of the children, their birthdates, and the day they were killed.  You do the math and see that they were murdered by the Nazis at ages 8, 10, 12 etc. and the cruelty and horror of it all hits home.  I have been to Yad Vashem in Israel and the Holocaust Museum in D.C., so this was nothing new to me; I got choked up nonetheless. 

 The Klaus synagogue features explanations of Jewish customs and holidays.    I could not even find the Spanish Synagogue so have nothing to report about it.

The Jewish museum complex closed at 6, and I was getting hungry anyway.  Jan had offered to cook dinner, and she made a pretty tasty dish with vegetables and rice noodles and added ground beef (cooked in a separate pan to spare me).  Dinner with win was fun, but we were all too tired to go out afterward. 

Low-Key Last Day

Fred was kind enough to drop me back off at the Czech Inn for my third night in Prague and first night of the trip where I would actually be sleeping in a dorm room with other people.  As it turns out, while using the wifi in the lobby, I saw a guy with a Stanford Law sweatshirt and struck up a conversation.  Ben was on his post-bar exam trip before beginning work at a top-flight New York law firm.  He reminded me a little of myself when I was on my post bar trip, except he was more adventurous and probably smarter.

I really enjoyed chatting with Ben and also discovered that he had a four bed dorm room to himself.  Rather than each of us risking getting stuck with some random(s), we mutually agreed we would be better off if I switched into that room.  Thus, in a sense we had a private double for the price of a dorm room ($17 per person).  The weather was pretty lousy that day, and I was having fun talking with all of the people in the Czech Inn lobby.  The recent grad who played football for the ASU Sundevils (my old school’s arch rivals), the girls from Toronto, the Scottish guy, etc.  Almost everyone was doing the Prague-Budapest circuit, with most people also stopping in Vienna. 

I forced myself to go out and see some more of Prague.  Vysehrad Castle was not very interesting (again, looks better from below), and then I took a photo of the “Dancing House” by request from Jan.  The Dancing House is a distorted piece of architecture right along the Jiraskuv Most bridge across the Vlatava.  If you are in the area it is worth a snapshot, but not worth going more than five minutes out of the way for.  I then finally crossed the Charles Bridge, visited the pissing statues outside the Kafka Museum and framed a great shot of the mechanical schlong jutting right over a sign for “Children’s Menu – Kids Zone.”  I even walked down to the “John Lennon Wall,” which is just a graffiti covered wall but worth a quick look and colorful photo.

Photos were in short supply as I realized that I had lost my camera battery charger.   A couple of weeks into the trip and my first official item lost, aside from a 100 Danish Kroner note in Copenhagen.   So I had to take my photos judiciously from here on in.

Drizzle was falling on and off, but by the time I made my way home, it had transformed into a steady, cold rain.  As darkness fell, my jeans were getting wet at the cuffs and I was happy to be back at the Czech Inn.  For dinner, a bunch of us just bought some bread and cheese (I had some walnuts) from across the road, and discussed our itineraries.

At this point, I decided to head to the small town of Ceske Krumlov the next day, rather than going straight to Vienna.

I started writing this entry on the 5:59 A.M. E560 bus leaving Khalal station in the northern suburbs of Stockholm, passing forests, office parks and apartment blocks in hushed Sunday morning post-dawn light.  I reached the Upplands Vasby terminal and grabbed my 6:50 Upptaget train towards Uppsala, arriving at Arlanda Airport at precisely 6:57,  in plenty of time for my 8:00 flight to Prague on Czech Airlines.

Couch!

I was worried about the connections last night and, as usual, had trouble falling asleep.  Thank God for my accommodating host Magnus, a couchsurfing ubermensch who plotted out my trip to the airport with expert precision.  My alarm went off at 5:00, although I did not hear it thanks to my wax earplugs.  Consequently, the Aussie crashing on the next couch had to wake me.

Magnus hosted 7 (!) couchsurfers on Friday night and, after two Brits, left, 5 of us on Saturday.  He is heavily involved in Swedish politics and has a cozy two bedroom flat with a living room just a few minutes walk from the Kalhall station, which lies on a commuter line about 20 minutes travel distances from Stockholm Central Station.  Hosts like Magnus and so many others are the reason I love the website couchsurfing.org so much.  Time and time again I am astonished at how people open their homes and give their time to other travelers and I always do my best to pay it forward in my own city.

Oftentimes I prefer to stay with couchsurfing hosts even if there is inexpensive accommodation available because of the cultural exchange, the insight into daily life in another country and the benefit of real local knowledge of a city.  On this trip, however, I really needed that couch!  Bustling with a music festival and medical conventions, Stockholm was packed this weekend, with barely a hostel bed available, let alone a hotel room under $100 a night.   It was also the last real summer weekend.  I was shocked when running a search on the hostel booking websites how few options came up.  Literally only three on hostelbookers.com, two of which were budget hotels in far-flung locations and the one hostel near the city center was in a deary basement and only had dorm bed options (for $45 a night at that).

I had joined the Stockholm "last minute couch request" group and forgot to turn off the instant notification feature.  As a result, I witnessed the plethora of desperate pleas for anywhere to sleep, with titles like "Chinese Girl Sleeping in a Park Needs Help."  In all of my travels I have never seen rooms in such scarce supply.  All in all, I was amazingly lucky to have snagged three nights in Stockholm.  Two with my couchsurfing host and one at a centrally located flat belonging to my friend Tom, a buddy from my home city of Miami.

Money for Something

The upside of traveling in expensive Scandinavia is how easy it is.  There is a rough correlation, full of anomalies to be sure, between the user-friendliness of a place and its expense.  You can eat like a king for a few bucks and sleep for just a few dollars more  in parts of Central America, Southeast Asia and other spots in the developing world, but along with the bargains come unreliable, rustic transportation, dengue fever risk, language barriers and, of course, personal safety concerns, including safety from corrupt police.   Some other places are both expensive and difficult to navigate and not so safe either; the worst of both worlds.  Moscow, for example, seems to fall into this category from everything I have heard.

In Stockholm you are treated to a clean, efficient city with abundant (if not always intuitive) public transportation and a seemingly 100% multilingual, English-speaking, helpful population.  Along with such joys come pricey hotels, restaurants, and trains.

Arriving from Estonia

My Estonia Air flight was delayed one hour, which allowed me time to blog Estonia.  It was relatively easy to figure out how to catch the No.2 bus into the center of the city.  Right away I noticed how helpful people were here.  The first helpful instructions I received were from a perky young woman working for a competing bus company.  Such helpfulness was extended by every public servant and ordinary citizen of Stockholm I encountered.  So accustomed to gruff impatience from civil servants in Miami, I was pleasantly surpised at how courteous the   ticket booth attendees were on the busses and trains here.

Tom, a friend I have known for about 6 years is a true international jet-setter who has visited 135 countries and grew up in Stockholm and has lived in many host spots around the world. He met me in the light drizzle and took me to a studio he owns on the Vanadisplan, in the Vasastaden neighborhood of Stockholm.  Vastastaden is an upscale neighborhood close to the city center the walk tot he Sankt Ericksplan metro station was only about 10 minutes from the apartment.  I was so grateful to have a nice place to sleep that night, although I squandered some of that opportunity by staying up too late messing around on the internet.

Dear Old Stockholm

This sub-heading references on of my favorite Miles Davis tracks, an old Swedish song covered by several jazz artists.   I took a day tour around the old town and city government area, which was decent.  On the tour was Maribel, a teacher from southern Spain, and a friendly German guy named Carsten.  The tour leader was Kristen, a sweet Uppsala University student. 

Tom and I met some of his friends in the Stureplan district, and had a drink at the Scandic hotel lounge around there.  My favorite part of the studio apartment was the micro bathroom.  It was one of those bathrooms where the bathroom was the shower.  About twice the size of an airplane bathroom but without the concave wall, the spout sprays the toilet and everything else in the bathroom.  I guess these are fairly common in parts of the world.  No leaving toilet paper out, or it will be a wet mush.

Hop On Boat

The next day we grabbed lunch and then I headed out on the metro back to the downtown area and took the hop-on, hop-off boat tour.  The day became quite sunny and I re-took all of the cloudy, crappy photos from the first day.  I made it to the Vasa Museum, the famous museum featuring the raised ship that sank after going only a few hundred meters on its maiden voyage in 1628.  It was a good museum and better than the Viking Ship musuem in Roskilde, Denmark.

I found a good vegetarian buffet near the Gamla Stan (old town) metro station called Hermitage.  The owner was slightly gruff, but not rude.  The food hit the spot and it the total came to about $15 U.S., which is not bad for healthy, all you can eat food.  The next night I met Maribel there for some dinner.

The day was so amazing that I wandered all over Stockholm taking in the sun and snapping photos.  Tom, Magnus and I met up at the Grand Hotel on Saturday afternoon and strolled around to Skepps Holmen island , followed by a late lunch at an outdoor cafe.  It seemed as is all of Stockholm was out sunning themselves at cafes or waterfront restaurants.

Summary 

My mood in Stockholm varied according to the weather.  When I first got there, I was so tired and it was so dreary that I did not even care to see much.  But after a good night's rest and getting some great sunny weather, I really enjoyed the place!  It is a cosmopolitan, cohesive city, and the old town and government area is clean and attractive. The Stockholm waterfront is first class and charming.  An expensive city to be sure, but cheaper to eat in than Copenhagen and Olso.  Plus at least you get something for your money; a clean, friendly, scenic place.

Denmark

http://picasaweb.google.com/goodsaks/Denmark?authkey=Gv1sRgCJCNnezk4smtgAE#

Malmo

http://picasaweb.google.com/goodsaks/MalmoSweden#

St. Petersburg

http://picasaweb.google.com/goodsaks/StPetersberg?authkey=Gv1sRgCIP5u4v3g_GgkwE#

Tallinn

http://picasaweb.google.com/goodsaks/TallinnEstonia?authkey=Gv1sRgCMGrjJ7Ploi3iQE#

Photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/goodsaks/TallinnEstonia?authkey=Gv1sRgCMGrjJ7Ploi3iQE#

Tallinn, Estonia

The entire nation of Estonia is a free wifi zone; the parks, the beaches, the forests, etc.  Skype was invented here, as well as Kazaa.   According to In Time – the flight magazine of Estonian Airlines -  70% of the population of Estonia under 70 uses the internet, all schools are wired, government cabinet meetings are paperless and even voting is done on line.  

While the recent recession has impacted every country on the globe, Estonia still shines as a model of economic and cultural progress rising from the bloated corpse of the former Soviet Union.  Estonians are closely related to Finns in terms of language, and their culture is different from the other Baltic states.  Estonia can boast a host of islands, Lake Peipsi, the fourth largest lake in Europe, and has a population of only 1.4 million, 400,000 of whom live in Tallinn.  The population density is only 30 people per square kilometer, among the lowest in the world.  Like all of its neighbors, summer day light near the solstice can stretch for over 20 hours, but near the winter solstice it gets dark very early.

Tumultuous History (What Country Doesn't Have One?)

The country was conquered by Teutonic crusaders and Danish Vikings, dominated by German barons, ruled by Swedes, won brief independence from Czarist Russia, was annexed by the Soviets in the tragic Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, taken over by the Nazis (who were actually welcomed in large part by the population after enduring a brutal Russian occupation) and then re-acquired by the Soviets.  The Soviets subjected the Estonians to the crushing gulag system where scores of thousands were exiled or executed.  Despite Stalinist apartment blocks in parts of town, somehow the charming, ancient old town of Tallinn was spared by and large from Soviet concrete.  Estonia was welcomed into NATO and the EU in 2004, and will adopt the Euro next year….if the Euro has not yet collapsed.

I arrived 61 years to the day after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed and 21 years after the “Singing Revolution” began, in which millions of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians formed a human chain to protest Soviet rule.  Independence came at last in the early ‘90’s, and the last of the  (by then former) Soviet troops left in 1994.  Not only did the Soviets impose their will on the Estonians, they also imported ethnic Russians to settle the area.  Today, about a quarter of the population is ethnic Russian.  Many of the Russian immigrants never had any desire to learn the culture or language, and there are still some older Russians who have grey passports; they are not citizens of either country. 

Tallinn itself was conquered by Danish king Valdermar II, in 1219.  The Danes were Christian by then, and smashed the pagan idols of Estonia while introducing the cross.  The foregoing scene was the one I mentioned in my Copenhagen post that was depicted in an impressive painting in Fredericksborg castle in Denmark.  Allegedly, the Danes received their flag, the oldest in Europe, when it fell from the sky during the battle.  The word Tallinn itself derives its meaning from “Danish town.”  During my old town tour, we visited the very spot where the legendary battle took place.

The Russian Issue

Almost all the younger generation in Tallinn speak English.  Regretfully, I did not have the opportunity to explore the other parts of this small country; the islands, beaches and forests will have to wait for my next trip here.  My tour guide for the prison tour I took later explained that there is still a great amount of animosity between Russians and Estonians.  When a Soviet war statue was moved to make a trolley stop, the invective from the Russian radio and newspapers was so strong that it caused Russians to riot in Tallinn.   Perhaps I am getting a biased view, but the tour guide was half-Russian himself.

Modern Airport and Medieval Town - the exact opposite of New York City

I noticed the difference between Tallinn and St. Petersburg instantly.   The entire vibe of the place felt lighter.   Compared to stupid and antiquated Pulkovo airport in St. Petersburg, where there is nowhere to wait after passing security until shortly before your gate opens, Tallinn Airport is clean and sleek.  I have never had such an easy time getting my luggage off a flight as I did here.   The flight attendant on my Estonian Airlines flight looked like she had come from central casting playing a perfect Nordic goddess.

Estonians are considered to be reserved, but I found them to be friendly when approached.  Tallinn boasts the only surviving Gothic town hall in Northern Europe, dating back to the late 14^th century.  Sitting on top is a weather-vane like character called Old Thomas, who has been safe-guarding Tallinn (at least architecturally, although apparently not very well defensively by and large) since the 1500’s.  The colorful buildings in the town square were built a few hundred years later, and include the oldest continually operating pharmacy in Europe, which dates from the 1420’s. 

On the city tour, and in my private wanderings, I saw the old guard towers of Tallinn, including “Fat Margaret”  the Coast Gate, Kiek in de Kok (“peek in the kitchen” – so named because from the towers one could peer into the homes of residents of Tallinn) and some others with less catchy names.  The tour took us past the former KGB headquarters, where the basement windows were blocked in for good to conceal the torture and beatings.  Today, Tallinn has a big Baltic cruise-industry influx and is on the circuit including Helsinki, St. Petersburg and Stockholm. 

Arrival and Finding a Place

I shared a taxi from the airport with a Kiwi guy in his fifties who had made his way west along the Trans-Siberian railway from Mongolia.  Later I met a young Aussie who had journeyed overland along the same route, but started in Beijing.  Those types are the real travelers. 

Uncharacteristically with no reservations and no couchsurfing hosts lined up, I jumped off at the Tallinn Backpacker’s hostel, which received great reviews on the hostel websites as well as in my guide book.  I read they had several sister properties close by, and figured I could book a room at one of them and avoid the dorm.  I am getting too old to stay in dorms.  My ideal accommodation would be a private room with en suite bathroom in a popular hostel, where I could have my privacy but still meet other travelers.   And that is exactly what I got.

 I stayed about a seven minute walk from the main place, at a sister hostel called Viru, named for the bustling street in the heart of the old town section on which it is located.  The Viru hostel could not have been much closer to the main square.  The Tallinn Backpackers place had friendly staff that partied with the guests and plenty of activity around the bar and foos ball table, as well as a Jacuzzi and sauna that I never used or saw.

I met up with an A Small World contact and native Estonian named Laura, who took me to the modern part of the city to a chic café.  She was sharp and affable and I enjoyed her company.  At night I met up with a couchsurfer named Kadra and we had a great meal and drinks at Hell Hut – a very cool pub/restaurant in the heart of old town Tallinn.

City Tour and Clazz Club

On Tuesday I joined the free city tour leaving from the tourist information booth in the town square.  The tour is staffed by local volunteers, which is incredibly cool, and they only ask for tips.  The day was dreary but the tour was pretty good and covered both the upper and lower new towns and some hidden history of Tallinn.  My tour also featured Sasha, an adorable young woman from Russia who was on her own in Estonia for a short holiday. 

At night I met up with Sasha at the Clazz club, where a lively Brazilian band was rocking.  Clazz is pretty large and we had a fun time.

Soviet Prison and Hard-Core Beer Drinking

For my last full day in Tallinn, I again walked the old town; this time in the sun, where I re-took all of the pictures that the cloudy day had spoiled the day before.  In the afternoon I booked the prison tour of the old prison fortress called Prieta.  The tour left from the Tallinn Backpackers and was lead by Viktor, a hip young Estonian who reminded me of my late friend Victor even before he said his name.  Victor is a great tour guide and I recommend anyone hit him up for some really candid and interesting tours while in Tallinn:  Viktor@juhe.ee.

At Prieta prison, one room had the windows sealed off.  Viktor explained that in the 1984 Moscow Olympics, the sailing events took place in Tallinn.  The Soviet Union did not want cameras to pick up a bunch of prisoner’s faces staring out the window, so they blocked the windows…permanently. 

After the prison tour I climbed Olaf’s church, which in the Sixteenth Century was the tallest building in all of Europe, highlighting Tallinn’s status as a city in the Hanseatic League.  I took it easy on the stairs, pacing myself, because there are a lot of them.  The views up top are pretty impressive, and you can slink around the tower on a very narrow catwalk and take some nice shots on a clear day.  My city tour guide told us you could see Finland, and Viktor, my prison tour guide, said that was bullshit.  She also said it took 8 minutes of non-stop stair climbing to reach the top, and that some people got scared by a rickety wooden part, none of which really panned out, so I will go with the prison tour guide that you cannot see all the way to Finland (which, incidentally, is only a couple of hours journey by boat). 

My final night in Tallinn consisted of hanging out with the international gang at the Backpacker’s main location.  Prior to the nightly hostel-organized pub crawl a drinking game ensued where the object was to drink your height in beer cans.  After each one, you taped the cans together to measure the progress.  I was stunned at how much these Aussie guys could drink.  I skipped the pub crawl and wound up chatting with the owner, Hugo, a Dutch guy living in Estonia.  Hearing the perspective of people who own hostels is always interesting.

The next morning I hopped a cheap cab to the airport and was off to Stockholm, where the word “cheap” was never to cross my lips again.