Following
the format of the previous update, I'm just going to copy and expand
on my bullet pointed travel journal, occasionally complaining about
the unintuitive nature of formatting images in a Blogger post, since
this is where we get to myself (and others) actually drawing...
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9/27/12
- Our last morning in Prague. Got up early for a false alarm saying our train to Ostrava left at 9 AM, when it actually left at 1 PM. Crawled back into bed after the mistake was realized.
- Woke up (for real) grabbed a cappuccino from a nearby coffee shop and an apricot-filled crepe from the little street market/festival that had been going just up the street from our hotel all week.
- Met everyone(-ish) and took a short walk to Rocky's, Prague's largest Irish Pub, for a round of hard cider before the train left.
- Took another very lazy, sleepy train ride from Prague to the small, border town of Ostrava. Hans, one of our party got ambushed by his family, whom he hadn't seen after living in the states for more than a decade, including two nieces whom he had never met before. They drove us to this beautiful lake-cabin-hotel.
- We settled in, put our stuff away, showered etc. Then Hans led us on the long walk to his parents' cabin.
- We were treated to a bottomless pot of homemade goulash and dumplings, nonstop trays of appetizers, a keg of some great, local pilsner whose name I could've sworn I wrote down, and three bottles of homemade slivovitz —a local liquor, almost but not quite entirely unlike rubbing fluid— to celebrate Hans' homecoming... and the lifting of the hard liquor ban.
- Aside from Hans, None of our party spoke more Czech than "Pivo, prosim," (well, and the dirty words he taught all his co-workers and then warned them not to use in front of his family), and no one there spoke any English, but we managed to have a great time and make our gratefulness understood.
-
And
then, for the first time in my life, I blacked out, and it couldn't
have happened at a better time. The last thing I remember was Art
telling Hans it would be a good idea to walk us back to the hotel,
and suddenly I'm asleep in my bed. No extremely long stagger for me!
9/28/12
- No hangover for me, either. Must be something about getting blackout drunk on a very, very, very full stomach (it certainly wasn't proper hydration, that's for sure).
- We had, what I'm pretty sure is a pretty traditional central European breakfast at the hotel: Bread bacon, espresso, honey, cheese, mineral water, and of course, hair of the dog that bit us. The little bit of a hangover I had never stood a chance!
- After that, I headed out to the beach, deliberately leaving my camera behind so I would be forced to draw if I wanted to remember the scene. I whipped out some fancy markers that I had purchased for a class three years ago —and never used in that class— and put them to use on the mountains and forests across the lake from us.
- We headed into town to buy our train tickets back to Prague to connect with our Prague-Munich return trip.
- Is it weird that I regret not having my camera with me when I went to the bathroom in the Ostrava train station? Or the other couple times I regretted not bringing it into various public bathrooms? Sorry...
- It was just so cool, though. They had normal urinal backs (the tall kind, obviously), but they all terminated in this communal, raised, tiled-in trough with a central drain. Little details like that are how you know you've walked into a Central European bathroom as opposed to, I don't know, New York or L.A. or... anywhere else. But no, I stupidly left my camera in the bus.
- Then, began our three-country-one-afternoon pub crawl. A time to check out the countryside of Central Europe, and complain about no longer getting Passport stamps.
- Stop 1: Polski Cieszyn
- Tyskie Beer at a cafe in a little plaza
- A wonderful little exchange by two of our party:
- Art: What town is this?
- Wally: 3:30...
- Stop 2: Slovakia, I didn't catch the name of the town.
- Met one of Hans' friends who lived here.
- Stopped at the "Jack Daniels Whiskey Bar" for beer and slivovitz
- Grabbed dinner at the Restaurant on the Gate.
- There, Gambrinus was the beer of choice, as well as even more slivovitz. I had what was, essentially a Chicken Cordon Bleu, while also picking at an extra plate that had apparently been delivered by accident.
- Central Europe is really very cheap. It's kinda easy to miss in the Czech Republic or Poland, since they're not on the Euro, so you have to actively be running the conversion if you want to figure out how cheap, but Slovakia's on the Euro, and I don't think anyone's dinner was more than €5,00.
- Stop 3: Back to Ostrava for a trip to the brothel and a couple clubs afterward
- I don't know if this technically counts, since a lot of people went to bed instead of to the bar...othel
- He who hesitates, gets to choose between the brothel's dregs and racking up a bar tab comparable to what an hour with a prostitute would've cost anyways. Now I know...
- Probably the highlight of this leg of the trip: The brand of toilet paper dispenser in the bathroom of the brothel was "Big Willy: Der Super-Spender". Hilarious, no?
- Cabbed to a couple bars in town. Grabbed a few beers and passed out back at the hotel.
9/29/12
- Had the poor fortune of getting on a very crowded train that teased us with vacancy for a stop or two. Right when everyone was getting comfortable, all the occupants crowded aboard to fill the train to bursting. 4 hot, crowded, hungover hours from Ostrava to Prague...
- Couple-hour 'layover' in Prague. Went out, wandered around for a bit. Stopped at McDonald's for lunch. Everyone grabbed a Royale with Cheese while incessantly quoting that scene from Pulp Fiction.
- Had a much more peaceful ride from Prague to Munich. Got back to town just as Oktoberfest was closing, so we had to contend with an U-bahn full beyond capacity with beligerant drunk people in lederhosen.
- Made it back to Peggy's, unpacked, repacked, groomed, and slept...
9/30/12
- To Innsbruck. Another crowded train ride, so crowded, in fact, that the morning train sold out and we had to get on the afternoon train.
- Chinese food in Munich while waiting for the train.
- I'd say the later train was worth it because it allowed the half of our party in the other compartment to meet our new, very temporary, party member: Danielle
- Pretty girl, approximately my age, blinks 90 times a minute (and thus, reminds me of the Twilight Rifftrax, another point in her favor)
- Highly recommends solo travel as a means to figure out what to do with one's future, so, valuable tip for next time across the Atlantic (or anywhere else outside of my normal chunk of Southeast Wisconsin), I guess.
- Wandered Innsbruck as a big group; saw the sight, grabbed cocktails at a rooftop bar.
- Left my camera with my luggage, foolishly.
- Ergo, lots of kicking myself, as well as the decision to declare Innsbruck a vacation from being a "GAD Tourist"
- And then we headed to the B&B, which was gorgeous, and Art's friend Jen's family were awesome hosts.
- Dinner was pork, sausage, baked potatoes, and half a dozen different salads. I never really liked potato salad until I had it in Europe...
- The beer of choice was Zipfer, and it was easily the most easy-to-drink beer I had the whole trip, dangerously so...
- On the subject of easy to drink, Jen's family brought out homemade hazlenut schnapps and walnut schnapps.
- Three bottles of schnapps and countless Zipfers later, my omnipresent sketchbook was one of the top attractions, and I was more than happy to allow the interested parties to fill in a couple pages.
- Other people drawing in my sketchbook is kinda awesome. It sorta... I guess... commemorates the people I was with, especially those I was only with briefly. However, it's also kinda sad because it's hard not to feel like there were more drawings by strangers in a couple hours than by the purported artist who's owned this sketchbook for a couple months now.
- Took a late night stagger around the grounds to see how beautiful they are on a cool, crisp night.
- Anyone who accuses me of passing out outside is a dirty liar. I was awake until the moment I was checked up on and sent inside, looking up at the stars, reflecting on stuff, and just generally not being ready to join four guys in a bunk bed until I absolutely had to.
10/1/12
- The infamous "Breakfast in Austria, Lunch in Italy, Dinner in Germany" day.
- Woke up to breakfast at the B&B: Coffee, rolls, deli meats and cheese, orange juice, mango juice, cake...
- Hour drive to Italy, very hungover, missed the scenery heading in.
- Ate lunch in Brixen, Italy, so close to the Austrian border we had to order our ravioli and lasagna in German.
- Ravioli unlike any I've ever eaten, the noodles were so thin, they were practically crepes.
- Wandered Brixen for a bit, checked out the churches and the miscellaneous sights. After a brief foray into the concept of keeping the break from being a "GAD tourist" going, I realized I couldn't help it and threw myself at every wall, cobblestone path, fountain, and pile of garbage I saw.
- Capped the trip off with the best gelato I've ever had.
- Sent our new friend on her way to Venice while we headed back to catch a train in Innsbruck.
- For some reason, in spite of practically having a whole car to ourselves, we decided to cram into one compartment and spend the whole ride back to Munich plugged into our assorted iPods, lip-synching and air-drumming to whatever we happened to be listening to (a whole lot of CAKE, in my case...)
- Dinner at Schneiter-Weisse. Great beer (Tap5: Meine Hopfenweisse, a thick, hoppy, bock), great pretzel soup, mediocre sauerbraten, and terrible news.
- It was at dinner that I learned I would be flying back on the second, not the third as I had thought.
- So, after dinner, the whole group headed out for cocktails at a quiet Mexican bar to send off myself and the others who would be heading out the next day.
10/2/12
- Got up early, crammed everything in my suitcase, got on a bus to the airport, and waited for my plane to land, let me board, and slowly suffocate me in a gigantic pile of humanity.
- All in all, a pretty miserable flight, crammed in the middle of so many people while at the peak of a nasty cold, but I did manage to leave my iPod on during takeoff, so that's a plus...
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