Shipping Out

Mom and Dad are in town this week, so I get to play tour guide in exchange for free meals like some sort of trained monkey. Kidding, kidding. But seriously, this weekend was brimming with good decisions:

Going to Kutna Hora with NYU. Had I known that Maria “Motormouth” Homerova was coming on this trip, I would never have signed up. We had to leave by 8:15 in the morning, so the bus was full of people who, unless they have no lives, are definitely not awake by that time on a Friday morning. So once we brave the cold to walk to the bus stop (to be fair, we had the shortest walk), we all settle in and expect to sleep for most of the way to Kutna Hora. Right? Wrong-o. Someone made the huge mistake of handing Maria the microphone to the bus’s intercom system, and literally the woman did not shut up for 45 minutes. I had my iPod on at almost full volume and I could still hear her talking. It’s not like she’s talking about Kutna Hora, either. I’m pretty sure at one point she was looking out the fucking window and describing what she was seeing.

Once we got off the bus, it wasn’t much better. Being a veteran of three Homerova tours, I knew what to expect, but many of these kids had no idea what they were in for. We went into this beautiful cathedral, and she literally walked us around the perimeter, stopping every five feet to describe the next stained glass window. Chelsey and Natalie were smart- they realized what was going on right away and sat the fuck down while everyone else took an hour walking in a circle around a not-so-big cathedral. At least we were all miserable together so no one shushed me this time for being loud and stupid. I tried to get drunk at lunch to make it more interesting but it didn’t really take, which was unfortunate. Jan judged me for drinking cold beer on a cold day, but I’m not really sure what the alternative is. Hot beer? No thanks. The silver mine tour was really cool though, especially because our tour guide looked like he was staring at the bridge of his nose the entire time. I don’t know how safe it was to have this man leading us into a 500 year old mine, but whatever.

Taking my parents to the Church of Our Lady before Týn. That’s the giant cathedral right off of Old Town square- you know, the one you walk past to get to Chapeau (because you probably don’t remember the walk back). We went in there near the end of our sightseeing day on Saturday, and while it’s beautiful on the outside, it’s actually kind of boring inside. Most of the walls and ceiling are white. So we’re wandering around, and we’re all a little footsore, so we find a little alcove of pews to sit in. Right beside us is a creepy little figure of Jesus as an infant, and my dad, who is a neonatologist and really bored by this point, looks over at it and comments that it looks a little microsephalic. Mom, who went to Catholic School but the most she got out of it was a basic knowledge of Latin and countless stories of old nuns beating up kids, told him to stop diagnosing the Baby Jesus and we all had a good laugh. Then this Czech man with a nametag (I guess that makes him a figure of authority) comes over to us, bangs his fist on the pew, says something angrily in Czech, and points to the door. He even did us the favor of walking us out to make sure we actually left. Whatever. I’d like to point out that he made way more noise than we did.

Drinking a liter and a half of burcak on Saturday night and then going to Beer Factory. This sort of speaks for itself, but whatever. Cave Bar and burcak was fine, but it was by far the lamest Beer Factory experience ever. There was a man charging a cover outside, and although I know from experience that if you just stall and pretend like you’re not sure if you want to go in they’ll probably let you in for free, it was raining and no one else wanted to play that game. The place was fucking dead. I was so angry that we had to pay that cover. There were probably 15 other people in there, including a fat Asian man with a rat tail who surprised everyone by grinding with another guy. It would’ve been more fun if the music was better, but every time we went to request a song, even songs we had heard there, the DJ claimed he didn’t have it. Oh, and the drunk British man who pulled his pants down in front of us in Wenceslas Square was just the icing on the cake.

So there you have it. Midterms are in full swing this week, and I leave for fall break on Thursday, so this will be my last post until after I get back from exotic and far-away places. But first, we need to talk about Reporting the Arts and how ridiculous class was today. OK. So we turned in our first paper, written without guidelines of any sort, last week and were supposed to get them back today. In a normal class, you get the paper back, look at the comments, and maybe go bitch about the grade to the professor after class. In this class, he goes through each of the papers and says what he liked and didn’t like in front of everyone. Yes. Fortunately, I got a barely-audible “Good,” Claire got a “I like this” and Natalie was given the honor of a full sentence- “I think this was the best Oktoberfest story.” Then when a few of us went up to him after class to get the papers back, he told us that they’re not for us and he’s keeping them. To top it off, he told us that he isn’t even grading the papers… hmmmm. He also informed us that NYU is making him give midterms grades this year, but instead of doing that, he decided to point out who hasn’t talked enough in class. Oh and we have another paper, guideline-free, due the day we get back from fall break. SUPER DUPER.

I haven’t even thought about packing for fall break and I really should considering I leave in less than three days. London, Istanbul, Athens, and Rome. It should be a blast, although I’m a little disappointed that I’m not going to be able to make it to Sensation. It’s ok, because I still have Fuerza Bruta to look forward to back in New York. Plus, Machova will definitely be well represented. So Kurt, Kush, Chelsey, Natalie, Daniel, Sean, Max, Melody, Becca, Rob, Kaitlin, and whoever else is going: have fun, don’t die, and you better not be sober for it. See you in two weeks!

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Let me start this post by saying that the weather in Prague is totally fucked. When I woke up this morning, it was 40 degrees and cloudy. When I got out of class, it was drizzling. When I got out of the metro on my way home, it was sunny and really windy. When I went to the gym, it started HAILING out of nowhere. When I got out of the gym, it was cloudy again. When I got off the tram on my way home, it was completely sunny. Now I get that October is a rainy month and the weather isn't going to be all peaches and cream all the time, but come on. That is way too much to handle for one day. Also, I've spent almost my entire life living on the coast of Connecticut, where clouds and storms move west to east. WEST TO EAST. They don't come up from the south, pass over us, stop, backtrack, pass over us again, move in a circle, and then disappear. That shit just does not fly back in the states, but apparently, that's how clouds move in the middle of Europe. Someone should really look into that.

Fall is o-fficially here in Prague, and while I love the cold, it's a little early for 35 degrees at night. Lenka told Alexis that winter in Prague usually doesn't come until around January, and after five straight days where it didn't get above fifty degrees, I'm starting to think that she's lying. The leaves are turning, but as with any metropolitan area, it's not as pretty as it is back home. Apparently it's going to be a banner year for fall foliage back in New England because it rained all summer, and I'm a little sad that I haven't been home for fall in three years. In related news, the Red Sox lost and I'm depressed. Moving on.

Weather update: it was sunny when I started this post, and now there are dark clouds in the sky and it's hailing again. Whaaaaaat. And according to BBC Weather, there's a chance of snow for the next three days. Super!

Brie flew in this weekend to see Prague (and me, I guess) and we had a great time. You can read about her impressions here, so I'm not going to go through the laundry list of things we did. But on Saturday night, we went to a local bar (we call it Piano Bar because there's a piano in it, but I actually don't know the real name) so she could experience burcak, aka the nectar of the gods. When we came into the place, which is pretty small, it was full of Czech people enjoying their drinks and singing along while the old bartender was strumming away on a guitar and some other old man was playing an accordian.

• Side note: Last time we went, the place was empty and Nolan was playing "Let It Be" on the piano when all of a sudden we heard this strange singing coming from the back room. The old bartender was singing along to the song IN FALSETTO in sort-of English. Phenomenal.
  

When Brie and I sat down, he stopped playing and everyone stopped singing and he said something to me in Czech. I said "Uh, anglicky?" (English?) and everyone in the place cheered and yelled "Anglicky!!!" at us. Then he asked in broken English what we wanted to drink, and I said "Burcak, prosim," and everyone yelled "Burcak! Yah!!" at us and laughed. Turns out it's still a little scary to have people yell things at you in Czech, even if they are being friendly. Then we made friends with Allan, an old British man who wandered over to our table and asked us how we knew about burcak. All in all, an excellent night. Oh and Brie, just so you know, that is NOT usually what happens when we come into a bar and can't speak Czech.

In other news, I had my first tangible work of the semester this weekend and I think I did OK. It's hard enough to be out of school mode for an entire summer, but it's even harder when you get to school and you don't have much work for the first month. I'd rather be punched in the face with work than have this extra taste of freedom because that way you're sort of numb to whatever you have to do for the rest of the semester. This weekend I had a thousand word travel writing piece to write and a small quiz to study for, and it was like damn, this is A LOT. Of course, it's not a lot, but it's so easy to fall into that mindset. I'm going to have to make the transition quickly though, because I have another paper due the day after fall break and there is no way I'm writing it while traveling.

The revolving door of friends and relatives visiting continues this weekend with my parents, which should be a lot of fun. It's also my last weekend in Prague for a while, so I plan on taking full advantage of that. But for now, it's reading aka nap time.

AA for Food Thieves?

Another week, another lack of updates. I suck, I know. Let me make it up to you with the following email about everyone's favorite hamburglar, sent to us a few days ago by Thea:

Dear students,

Apparently food continues to disappear from at least one kitchen and several of your rooms. Please remember to lock your rooms and apartments when you're not there, as we can't guarantee the safety of your belongings otherwise.

I'm growing increasingly concerned about the person who is taking the food. If you feel you need to talk to someone, please come to my office or send me an email. I can get help for you. If you choose to come talk to me (or Martina) you won't be punished, we want to help.

Best,

Thea

I think I speak for most people when I say, um, what the fuck? This person/these people aren't anorexic cleptos, Thea. They don't need your help, they need to get over the fact that they had stuff stolen and stop taking other people's stuff as an act of revenge. I'm also confused about the sudden concern- she definitely threatened them with expulsion in the last email, so why the change of heart? It's sort of like she's trying to pull off the classic good cop/bad cop, but I'm pretty sure you need two people for that to work. Hrmmmm.... plus, what can she actually do? I doubt there's a program for food thieves in recovery. I smell a trap.

All this reminds me of something that happened my senior year of high school. Everyone has one story that, when they think about their time in high school, just jumps out at them, and this is one of them. One day, some kid took a dump in a school bathroom and then wrote messages on the mirrors using his "fecal matter." Now that's disgusting and everything, but when they made the announcement about it, I realized how funny the situation actually was. He would strike every week or so, leaving his shit poetry or whatever he was writing on the mirrors, and school administrators had absolutely no idea who it was. In time, he developed a sort of cult hero status among all of us, eventually earning his own moniker- The Poop Bandit. They eventually busted him for stealing laptops, and it came out during that business that he was the Poop Bandit. Three years later, there's only one class left at Waterford High that was there for his reign, and I suspect they will pass down the story to everyone else.

I'm not sure if the saga of the hamburglar(s) has earned that kind of notoriety yet, but I certainly hope it does. I can see it now: at orientation in New York for the fall 2010 students, a nervous sophomore will ask about what it was like living in Machova. The four or five Prague veterans will exchange looks and maybe a knowing chuckle, pause, and then launch into the story of disappearing yogurt and stolen pizza toppings. Five years from now, students will be cautioned upon arrival about the dangers of a communal refrigerator. Why, someone will ask, has there been a problem in the past with stolen food? Shaking his bald head and smiling, Honza will answer: You have no idea.

This week promised to be really easy, and it is exceeding expectations left and right. That's not to say I'm just sitting around all day, but let's run down my schedule. Monday was Radio News and Reporting the Arts, and while Radio News made me work and think, all we did in Reporting the Arts was watch a movie. Tuesday was Cultural History of the City, and we spent half the class in a museum and half in the classroom and I spent it all not paying attention. Today, I had Modern Dissent, which is always really great, but Radio News got cancelled. Tomorrow, Jan Urban is going out of town so we're watching a movie in Modern Dissent, and it's field trip day in Reporting the Arts. Yes, that's really my week. With Sean's help I discovered StumbleUpon, which now owns my life, so I'm filling my free time nicely.

Other than that, not much has happened since my last post. I went to Barcelona this weekend with Alexis and Brie and for some much-needed fun in the sun. It's one of the most gorgeous cities I've ever seen, thanks mainly to Gaudi's genius and insanity. We met Alexis' parents there and spent most of our time eating, napping, and exploring. The pictures (assuming I ever get around to posting them on facebook) will speak for themselves, so I don't need to go into too much detail. My favorite part was definitely the last day when we went to this mountaintop park that has incredible views of the entire city and harbor.

Travel highlights:

• There was an old man in spandex pants and a military jacket dancing around to the airport muzak at 7:15 in the morning. Honestly, it was the perfect send-off from Prague.
  
• Paris-Beuvais airport is not even remotely close to Paris. It smelled like cow dung and I'm pretty sure the airport (all 3 gates of it) used to be part of a farm. By the way, if any of us are starting to convince ourselves that Czech food isn't that bad, that it's actually pretty good and what were other people complaining about, stop. I had one of the best meals of my European experience in a dinky little cafe in this dinky little airport. Just goes to show you that the Czechs need to put away the communist cookbooks and branch out a little.
• The seats don't even recline on RyanAir. Love that shit. Our flight attendant had a combination of a Spanish accent and an Irish brogue, which was hilarious. He also tried to sell us electronic cigarettes, because that way we could smoke them on the plane and god forbid anyone has to go 2 hours without a cigarette. We thought about buying a pack just to see what the hell it was like but in the end I decided against the straight shot of pure nicotine to my brain.
• The Czechs are indeed determined smokers, and I'm pretty sure that every announcement on my flight back to Prague ended with something like "Oh, and remember, this is a non-smoking flight. Smoking is illegal. Don't smoke. Yes, that means you."

I got back to Prague in the middle of a rainstorm, AND it was cold. Thanks, Praha. I missed you too!

The Robin Hood of Machova

Once again, I have to apologize for my lack of updates, especially to those who visit this blog as a means of procrastination. The internet here has been constantly shitting the bed this week, so it’s been difficult to fit blogging in when I’m more focused on checking my email and looking up class readings on Wikipedia. Right now, I’ve spent about an hour trying to upload a single photo album on facebook because the internet keeps dying halfway through. Oh, the things my tuition dollars do for me.

Brief stories from Cesky Krumlov, the quaint little village where NYU sent us for the weekend:

• I absolutely could not focus on the castle tour. I don’t know what it was, and I think everyone thought that I was high, but I couldn’t stop laughing at just about anything that anyone said. At any given time, the scene on the tour was the group standing around the tour guide listening to her information and me doubled over in a corner laughing hysterically to myself. I managed to spread the insanity to the rest of the group, so by the end of the tour, we were probably the most obnoxious bunch of kids ever. Weeeeeeeeeee

• I saw people wandering around at like 10 in the morning on Saturday wearing traditional clothing, drinking beer, and eating sausages. I have so much to learn from these people.

• Our inability to be serious on tours continued into the brewery, where Nolan kept singing “I gotta golden tiiiiicket, I gotta golden tiiickeeeet!” and everyone else quoted Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Our tour guide was possibly the most nervous man on the face of the planet, and he prefaced everything he said with “I can say.” There were no free samples at the end :((((

• This was my first experience of staying in a hostel, and it is exactly what people tell you it is- a bunch of beds in a room. It’s kind of like summer camp, except it’s a little sketchier. Thank god we were only there for one night, though, because the snoring was exceptional. There were 8 guys in my room, and at any given point during the night, at least 4 were snoring their heads off. I’m not talking about a little congestion coming through in their breathing. All together, it sounded like the shredder from FernGully in stereo sound. Terrific.

• Not only did our waitress at lunch bring us expensive bottled water when we asked for tap (free), but she charged me for the take-out box for my leftovers. That's the last time I order water in a restaurant- why pay two bucks for a water when you can pay half that for a beer? This is how alcohol dependence starts. Sneaky sneaky, you slippery Czech woman. She was very friendly and smiley, so I should’ve known that something was up. We were eating outside, and at one point she even offered us blankets because it was getting a little chilly. We said no, which is good because looking back on it I’m pretty sure she would’ve charged us for those too. I’ve got to stop looking like a silly Americski.

In other news, Machova is completely out of control. Over the last couple weeks, people are getting food stolen left and right. It started on the second floor, where apparently people would go grocery shopping, come back, and within an hour all their shit would be gone. One time, this alleged thief stole soup out of the pot as some girl was making it when she walked away for a second. This thievery has spread to the other floors- on mine, Sean had a frozen pizza stolen and someone stole my lunch meat (expired, thank you very much. I hope you got food poisoning you fucker) and my butter. The RAs and the building manager had a meeting the other day and decided to put locks on some of the fridges and are threatening suspension if they catch the person.

There are some theories floating around- it's mainly the first floor, so some think that it's drunk people who come home late at night with a serious case of the drunchies and hit up the first floor they find. Nolan and I have our own theory- it's everyone. Obviously it started with someone, but by this point, especially considering the volume of stuff that has been taken, everyone is just stealing everything to get back at whoever took their shit.I'm waiting to go grocery shopping until all this blows over. It's interesting to think how this got started, though. I can see being lazy and cheap enough to like take a little butter from someone else for your morning toast, but to out and out steal something? Nolan had an entire liter of milk stolen, and I can't imagine that the thief was thinking "Hey, it's ok, he'll never even know!" Plus, you'd probably be getting fat if you were stealing everyone's food and eating it by yourself. Talk about an eating disorder. The following is what I think the thief, if he or she is acting alone, would look like. Decide for yourself:


The latest and greatest food thief story happened on Wednesday night, when one of the thieves was making a grilled cheese with stolen ingredients at like 2 in the morning. Well, they thought they heard someone coming into the kitchen, and obviously they didn't want to get caught, so they put the grilled cheese on a plate, ran out the door, and threw it down the stairs! The girls on that floor woke up to find a shattered plate on the landing with the still intact and still hot grilled cheese sandwich on it. It's like, what kind of a reaction is that? WHY would you throw it down the fucking stairs? It's like I'm living in another dimension, that's how crazy some of these people are. They had to be under the influence of something. Now I think all this is hilarious, but the people in charge are putting on their serious pants and getting all bent out of shape about it. We got back from Cesky Krumlov to find an email from the director of the program saying that whoever is stealing food better stop or else! Dun dun dunnnnnnnn.

Weekend Warriors

I apologize for the lack of updates once again, although this time I have an excuse. HA! Read on to find out...

Thursday night, as I mentioned before, was our first European football (soccer for all you Američané out there) game. It wasn't as over-the-top insane as I thought it would be, but it was still a lot of fun. I learned two things:

1. I know jack shit about the rules of football (it can end in a tie? that's lame).
2. Non-alcoholic beer tastes similar enough to regular beer that you don't notice the difference until you're three pints in and you don't feel any different.

I exaggerate. It might have had a little alcohol in it, but the general consensus between all of us was that they watered it down to the point of no effect so that people don't get as insane as they do in places like Spain and England. You have no idea how disappointing it is to wait in line for like half an hour, hand over 5 bucks, and not end up at least a little tipsy. Jak smutné. After the game, a small contingent of us, determined to get drunk, bounced around from bar to bar for a while before we ended up back at Beer Factory, only this time we were literally the only people there. If you've never danced around like an idiot in an empty club to "Soul Bossa Nova," I HIGHLY recommend it. Success all around.

Fast forward to Saturday. Saturday was Damon's 21st birthday, and while that is like the smallest of deals here in Praha, we decided to go all out and get hammered anyways. Now, I had woken up around 2 in the afternoon on Saturday and was already dealing with a cold, so I hadn't eaten anything. Kush and I went out for happy hour, had a few beers, came back, went out with everyone else, had more beers, went to a bar, had more, stopped at a grocery store on the way home, and had some more. Grand total? 10 beers (5 liters), on a mostly empty stomach. Needless to say, Sunday was the worst day of my life. The night was fun, though. We made some older Czech friends, and one of them kept wandering over to our table and taking our picture randomly. Apparently at the next bar people went to there were some friendly Czechs buying them drinks. I dont' know where these people hide, but I have not met a Czech person who looked like they wanted to buy me a drink. Now I'm telling you all this because I want you to LEARN from my mistakes. Nevermind the hangover, I don't even want to think about how many calories I consumed. Tsk tsk. I'm hitting the gym hardcore this week (I'm just playin witchu justin).

I spent most of Sunday in bed recovering, venturing out only to book fall break and take a walk with Kush. With the exception of not being able to eat anything and drinking water and orange juice like it was my job, it was actually pretty nice. I got a jump on watching Entourage and writing a little survival guide for my parents so they don't offend as many people as I did when I first arrived. But blogging my misery was the last thing on my mind, which is my excuse. Bahaha.

Fall break is planned and paid for (by yours truly, thank you very much), and my bank account is unhappy. I'm OK with it. Lisa and I (and possibly Kush) are heading to London for a day and a night, then Istanbul for 4 days, meeting up with everyone else in Athens for two, Rome for two, and then Venice or Copenhagen. Why Copenhagen on Halloween? That's why. I'm so excited, but I'm not going to bore you by translating that feeling into words. Just know that I'm aware how fortunate I am that I get the chance to do something like this.

Nolan's parents came into town this weekend, the first in what I believe is a month straight of parents visiting every weekend. They were incredibly nice and took us all for drinks, which is something I could get used to. GOD I'm going to have such a hard time going back to New York and paying $5 for a beer. It's kind of a problem.

Check back in a few days for a less summative post. I know it can be tedious to read "Today I did this and then I did this and then we drank this and then this HILARIOUS THING happened," so I promise to fill the next post with hilarious rants. Or maybe you like the stories? Whatever. I learn from the best.

This song just came up in my iTunes. You're welcome.

The Birds and the Bees

After I admonished Holley for going a week without posting to her blog, I realized that I hadn't posted anything since that fateful trip back from Vienna. Whoops.

The title of this post is not a reference to sex, but to actual birds and bees, of which Prague has plenty. Being from the backwoods of Connecticut (yes, Connecticut isn't all Lacoste shirts and boat shoes), I'm used to nature. Hell, I revel in it. But when I came to Prague, I didn't expect there to be so many bees hanging around. On my five minute walk to the metro every morning, there's a pretty good chance I'm going to get bothered by at least one of those little tyrants. Alexis and Damon are downright terrified of bees and have run down the sidewalk to escape a potential sting at least one time apiece. I try to put on the tough-guy act and pretend like I'm not scared, but I'll bug out if one lands on my face. I mean, can you imagine? Ugh. Here's hoping that the first frost kills them all, but if they can fly all the way up to our terrace on the roof, we're dealing with monsters here.

The pigeons are also a little out of control. Less than 48 hours after arriving here in Praha, I was almost pooped on by one of them. Maybe the fates were with me that day, or maybe God finally decided to pay back that karma I earned by picking up a $20 on the street and giving it back to the guy who dropped it, but the poo missed my head by about an inch, grazed my arm, and landed right next to my shoe. I was told by several people that this was good luck, and I'm gonna have to call bullshit on that. I've lived in New York for two years and on the shore for the other 18, and I've never once had a bird poop on me. I'm more annoyed with them than anything else, but Damon fears them. Apparently he walked out onto the terrace after dark one time and was surprised by a flock of pigeons flying at his face, which must've been terrifying. I fed pigeons once when I was in Puerto Rico, and let me tell you, they are not to be messed with.

This week was mostly uneventful. I'm trying to head to the gym regularly because I don't want to come back to the states looking pregnant, and with the amount of beer I consume, it's a very real possibility. On Monday, NYU threw us a welcoming party, which I thought was strange considering we've been here for two weeks. The food was DELICIOUS... way better than any catered event back in New York. And, of course, they had beer and wine, and I must've started at least 10 conversations with "Isn't it great how they serve us alcohol at an official school function?" Smooth is my middle name.

Alexis just made me Thai peanut noodles and ginger chicken for dinner. Yum. Moving on.

People continue to rage every single night, and I don't understand where they get the energy for that. I'm down for a couple of beers and maybe a glass of wine, but I need at least two days off from getting crazy and partying. I see lots of these people during they day, and 9 out of 10 times they're stumbling around asking people to put them out of their misery. I know how we Americans love things in excess, but there's got to be a point where these people can't sustain that lifestyle anymore. I should really turn this into an anthropological case study... oh wait, I'm not in Gallatin. I need to take classes to get credit for things!

I wish I could tell you that I'm traveling somewhere exotic and crazy this weekend (read: Transylvania? Check back in November for that trip), but it's Damon's birthday and I'm a good friend. But I'm sure that this weekend will be brimming with crazy Praha adventures, so I'm not disappointed at all. In fact, in a couple of hours we're headed to our first European football game. If we can't eke out some good stories from that, then I'm not sure we even deserve to be here.

Props to Columbus

Note: Sorry, this is a long one. I promise I'll tone it down in the future!

What a weekend! Aditi, Alexis, and I arrived in Vienna on Friday and eventually made our way to my cousin Kathy’s apartment. Let me tell you, traveling around in a city that you haven’t even seen a map of is incredibly disorienting. I literally had no idea where I was at any given time until Sunday.

The adventures started as soon as we got to Kathy’s place. She lives on the fifth floor of her building, so being lazy and carrying heavy backpacks, the three of us decided to pile into the closet-sized elevator while Kathy took the stairs. Well, this is a ghetto-fabulous elevator and there’s no interior door, so there’s nothing between you and the moving wall of the elevator shaft. Being a five year old, I decided to reach out and touch the moving wall. Big mistake. An alarm sounded an the elevator jerked to a halt between floors. We were frozen in panic when Kathy’s voice floated like the voice of God from somewhere in the building: “Push five again!” So we push five, and the elevator starts moving, but as soon as we get between four and five, the elevator jerks to a halt again. Well, the floors aren’t very thick, and the exterior elevator door has a glass panel in it, so we could see a little bit of the fourth and fifth floors. While we’re standing around unsure of what to do, we see Kathy’s head appear in the little window at our feet. “Huh,” she says, almost amusedly. A split second later, a pair of legs shows up on the fifth floor, and whoever those legs belonged to was very angry with us. So there we are, four and a half floors off the ground in a freaking closet, being yelled at in German and trying to follow Kathy’s instructions.

But it doesn’t stop there. Oh no. Kathy suggests that we press other floors, and every time it stops halfway between whatever we press and the floor below it. Alexis decided that we should press the ground floor, because logically, you can’t go through the ground. Great idea! So we press the button, head down, reach the ground floor, and watch helplessly as the lobby disappears above our heads. Finally, the elevator reaches some kind of bottom, and there’s a door, but beyond the door is nothing but blackness. Alexis said something along the lines of how she didn’t want to go out there because it looked like hell, but Aditi was brave and opened the door. It was literally the blackest darkness you could imagine, but we managed to find a light switch using our cell phones. Turns out we were in some sort of storage cellar that Alexis rightly compared to a Nazi bunker. Welcome to Vienna!

Friday night was really fun- we went to a beer garden (because we haven’t done enough of that already) in some awesome amusement park. Delicious, delicious food. I had seen this thing called “pork knuckle” on menus in Prague, but it sounded too gross to order on my own. Boy, was I wrong. It’s this massive pork drumstick, deep friend in awesomeness. There was other food involved, but hey, I really don’t remember much beyond the knuckle. There’s even a picture of me gnawing on the bone willingly. I’m not ashamed.

On Saturday we did all the touristy things- cathedrals, Habsburg palaces, and plazas, oh my! In my quest to drink my way through Europe, I’ve decided to have a traditional beverage in every country that I visit. In Austria, that would be Radler- half beer, half lemonade. It sounds disgusting, but trust me, it’s probably the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. I normally hate extra flavors in drinks- coffee, tea, and especially beer. But it’s just this incredible combination of sweet, bitter, and tart all at the same time. As I write this, a half-empty six pack of Radlers is sitting between Alexis and me on the bus, and we intend to educate Machova about the wonders of mixing beer and lemonade.

We met up with our friend Nolan, who was also visiting Vienna this weekend, at an Australian bar where Kathy was meeting a friend of hers. We were sitting around the downstairs bar, enjoying our Radlers, when suddenly “Wonderwall” came on the stereo. I had no idea that this song was so popular with the Central European crowd, but the entire bar just busted out singing. True, there were a fair number of ex-pats there, but there were definitely a lot of people who didn’t speak English and were simply making sounds similar to the actual words. But hey, I do the same thing when I’m singing along and I don’t know the actual words, so fair is fair.

We met up with Kathy’s boyfriend Jim that night and he made me buy a cheese-filled sausage from a stand. I did not regret it.

On Sunday morning Jim made us all crepes. It was so nice having an apartment to stay in instead of crashing in a hostel- I can’t thank Kathy and Jim enough for taking us in like that! After a fattening breakfast, we rented some bikes for a Euro apiece and biked around the historic area in Vienna. We only had an hour to kill because we were going to a wine festival in the afternoon, but it was so worth it. Europe is so bike friendly and the bike path took us past some of the most beautiful buildings in town. We returned the bikes and managed to get back to Kathy’s place on the tram all by ourselves! We’re such good travelers.

Sunday afternoon was magnificent. We met up with some of Kathy’s friends from work and headed out into the Austrian countryside for a wine festival. Kathy works at the UN, so her friends are all international and really, really cool. The wine festival was in this tiny, historic town full of family-owned vineyards. You paid 9 Euro for a glass and got to drink as much wine as you wanted. The food was “authentic” Austrian cuisine, and while I’m gung-ho about drinking in the local culture, I don’t really want to eat some of the stuff that people consume in Europe. But Kathy’s friends had other plans. One of them handed me a piece of bread with some sort of meat on it, and when I asked what it was, she said “If you like meat, you’re good to go.” So I ate it, and it was pretty good. I asked what it was again and went in for a second bite. “Blood sausage!” she said with a laugh. Yuck. Somehow, it didn’t taste as good after I learned what it was.

Even though I call myself a “beer guy,” I’m starting to really appreciate a good glass of wine. Dad, you must be so proud. The wine was really, really good, and Jim made sure we drank as much as possible since we had to leave early to catch our bus back to Prague. When it was time to go, we said our goodbyes at the festival and the three musketeers braved the train system (no English translations… damnit!), figured out where the bus stop was back in Vienna, and headed home. Oh, and remember the guy who smelled like a stink bomb on the ride to Vienna? Well, he’s back, and this time he’s sitting next to Nolan. Poor kid is dying up there.

Closing story: Less than a minute after we departed Vienna, I decided to bust open a Radler. I’d never had a bottled one before, so I smelled it before I took a sip to make sure it wasn’t gross artificial. It smelled like plain beer, and Alexis suggested that maybe the lemonade settled to the bottom and I should shake it up. Well, it was already open, so I did what I thought was the next best thing and put my thumb over the opening and tipped it over a la Corona with lime. Bad, bad, bad move. As soon as it was tipped over, I felt the pressure increasing on my thumb and a little bit shot out onto my arm. I immediately flipped it back over and tried to slowly let some of the pressure out. Instead of that happening, a stream of beer shot out across the aisle and hit the woman sitting across from me IN THE FACE. She proceeded to yell at me in Czech and called me a stupid American. Alexis was practically dying with laughter the entire time, but I was too shocked by how quickly everything went to shit that I couldn’t really speak for about five minutes. Go me!