I know, I know, it has been awhile. That is because nothing particularly blog-worthy has happened since I last wrote. No incarcerations. No robberies. No jumping off cliffs. No begging for money from random tourists. We have been eating well, drinking lots of red wine, and wandering around nice cities. Some people might call this a trip-gone-smoothly. I call it poor blog material. And anything that is blog-worthy is not blog-friendly, you know? Life is hard.
So last time I wrote, I was in Bosnia. I don't believe I talked about our last night in Sarajevo, when this Aussie guy called Greg invited us to this wine party. At the mention of wine, Kaje and I were, of course, keen, so we were all over it. Turned out to be one of the best deals of the trip. We paid the equivalent of 10 euros and got a free wine glass and got unlimited wine from a bunch of wineries all over Croatia, Bosnia, and Hercegovina (sp?). AND there were tons of canapes, all made with truffles...You know, those fancy things worth thousands of dollars because only hogs can dig them up from under the ground? (I think that's the story). So we ate lots and drank lots and hung out with the sophisticated artsy crowd of Sarajevo. Yes, we were the least sophisticated people there, by a considerable and very visible margin. I was wearing jeans and Uggs and a yoga zip-up...I was way underdressed and I was a bit too excited about the bottomless wine glass. There were pretty cigarette rep girls wandering around in red cocktail dresses giving free cigarettes and lighting them for you. Greg was all over that. I smoked a couple, due to massive peer pressure from Greg and the fag rep girls. And Sadam Hussein was there. There is a picture on Shutterfly with him in it. Kaje is in the foreground, laughing, and he is in the background. That was the day he got sentenced to death, so I can understand why he needed to go out drinking. After we closed down the party, we went to the place where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, sparking the beginning of WWI, and re-enacted the assassination. Is that rude?
Next day, we headed to Mostar, where I wrote the last blog. It is a town on a river with a famous bridge. During the Bosnian War, the Muslims and the Croats (Christians) banded together to oust the Serbs, then turned on each other and bombed and shelled each other, including the bridge. It's been rebuilt now, but the Muslims and Christians still live on opposite sides of the river and hate each other. The city, like Sarajevo, is full of bombed-out buildings and there are bullet holes everywhere.
We finally made it to Dubrovnik, Croatia, after days and days of trying to get there. It was really pretty, but really dead. There's really not that much to say about Croatia, to be honest. We ate four Italian meals, drank a lot of red wine, saw a beautiful sunset, hung out beside some very turquoise water. Could have been very romantic...but, alas, there were no guys around. We headed up to Split and took a ferry back to Italy, where we went straight to Florence for some more fabulous meals, some more wine, loads of shopping, and a couple CRAZY nights playing asshole with a motley crew of maniacs. I'm not kidding about it being crazy. I would say it was about as crazy as a night playing cards in a hostel can get. Crazy.
Next was Vienna, which was beautiful. We wandered around, saw the Sigmund Freud Museum (which bored the bejesus out of me...the coach isn't there...it's just a bunch of photos and report cards and books in display cases...I thought there would at least be some Phallic ink blots or something, but nothing), the Belvedere (where the famous Klimt painting "The Kiss" is...very, very cool to see in person). We drank coffee in Cafe Central, where Freud, Lenin, and Trotsky used to play chess, and went to the opera "La Boheme" (the opera on which Rent is based). We got standing spots though, and we were exhausted (hungover) and way underdressed (again) so we only stayed for the first act. Plus we couldn't see much, because all the action was on the 1/3 of the stage that we couldn't see. Which is probably why our entry was only 2 euros. It was pretty cool just to see the inside of the opera house, though. And to see a sequence from Rent, only without the heroin and HIV and homosexuality.
We had one crazy night in Vienna, thanks to Red Bull. Red Bull comes from Austria, so it is really cheap there, and Kaje and I were a little low-energy, so RB&V was the drink of the night...I ended up (accidentally) having seven Red Bull, which beats my record from last summer, and had some strange physiological and psychological effects. (Calm down, Mom, I'm fine. My heart has resumed its normal beating pattern and the shakes have subsided). Anyway, we had a good time and stayed up very, very late. So when we finally started to fade and went back to the room, four of us in our dorm were having a little chat and trying to find my camera, which was lost temporarily. Unfortunately, I'm realizing that I can't tell this story without being able to affect an angry Finnish accent and posting a picture of our long-haired Albino Finnish roommate, who we called Adolf. We were buds with Adolf earlier in the night, but he had gone to bed early as he had to work the next morning. See, Adolf actually lives in Vienna, but stays in a hostel. So we don't really have that much sympathy for him. He is staying in a dorm. In a youth hostel. Noise happens. So anyway, we're all making our way to bed and looking for my camera (overhead lights were off) and Adolph, who wears a black satin sleep mask over his eyes, sits upright in bed and yells (imagine the white-blonde ponytail, the sleep mask, and the Finnish accent now) "F*** you, asshole!" Initially, we froze in confusion. He said asshole, singular. Who was he addressing? Then he followed up with, "Take your town meeting somewhere else!" Tom (T-Dot), our Kiwi roommate, said, "What's a town meeting?" And Adolph said, "It's where people go to talk a lot." We thought this was pretty hysterically funny, so Adolph didn't get the response (silence) that he was hoping for. He moved out of our room the next day.
We are in Prague now, and it is beautiful. It is my favourite city yet in Europe...Paris has been bumped. We haven't had loads of fun yet, but I am making a valiant effort to like beer. I figure that if I am going to become a beer-drinker, the Czech Republic is the place to do it...But I don't think it's in the cards for me. I'll probably keep faking it as long as I'm here, though. It's cheaper than water...
The end of this trip is coming way, way too quickly.
I miss you all!
Love,
Chels
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