Day 6: Part 2

Yesterday I got into Berlin. This is my hostel room:


Well it was. When I went up there to check in I notice 4 20 year old girls and thought "This ain't good." When I went up to get my computer they were chatting and laughing. This was 11:30. At one am, I went in, got into bed and all I could hear is "BLAH, BLAH" (in German) and then "Hee, hee, hee" and sometimes shrieking laughter. So I reached into my bag for something sharp and put in my earplugs, no good. Tried music. Still heard them. So at 1:30 I got up and switched rooms. If I can find a place to buy a knife there will be 4 less German girls around.
So anyway, I got here at 4 and shopped and shopped. Did I mention I bought a pair of diamond earings in Prague? Well, I shopped some more. Then I just started walking and stopped 5 hours later. I was tired. Here's me in front of the Brandenburg Gate. The Berlin Wall was just on the other side of where I'm standing. That's also my new jacket.

This is the stupid holocaust memorial:


Moving? No. Here's a piece of the Berlin wall:


There's a marker all around the city where the wall was.
When I was the the Gate I saw this way in the distance and decided to take a picture of it:

It's the victory something. So I started walking, turns out it was 4.5 miles away. Fun! So I took the picture and then tried to find a subway. No! Had to walk the 4.5 miles back but now it was dark and I was in a park with Clark. So that was fun.
On the way back I saw this protest for Tibet in front of the German Parliament (the Dali Lama was in Berlin that afternoon):


And then I saw a memorial for people murdered trying to cross the wall:


But someone had added all their own propaganda about Chechnya to it at the end and was having a fit that the German government was going to remove their crap and pictures and flyers and leaflets. These people who died crossing the wall have like a corner of a chain link fence. Leave them alone!
And here's a night shot of the gate:

On to today!

Day 6: No internet

No wifi today so I´m using the hostels computer and they have some weird foreign keyboard with the letters moved around and no punctuation. Will try again tomorrow, sleepy now.

Got to Berlin okay, spent a lot of money and bought the nicest jacket I´ve ever seen!

Day 5: Rain and Sleepy

Some good and bad things happened today as happens with life.
I thought I'd get up early and get to Prague Castle but when I woke up at 7:30 a.m. it was raining and cold so I went back to sleep and then had breakfast and surfed the net. I was thinking about just staying in all day but it feels like a waste when on vacation and I'm only in Prague for 2 days so I got out about 12:30.
It was about 10 degrees and rainy so not too many people which was nice.
My first stop was Prague Castle:

And my picture of the day. This girl was taking forever to take the one shot and I was getting frustrated but more things happened today and I didn't get a better picture.
From Prague Castle there was quite a nice view of the city:


And inside was amazing too.

The whole town is beautiful, you could take a picture anywhere. I went into a church today and it said "When this church was built in 993..." We don't have that kind of stuff in North America.
There was an exhibition of armour and clothes from the 1500's and the gift shop:

Was selling medieval stuff. This guy with his wife and kid was like looking at a sword. What do you do with that when you get home? Slay dragons?
This was cool:

And on my list of places you don't want to be.
Here's some other budiling:

And the view across the street from here:

The whole town.
So then I broke my watch by slamming my arm accidentally against a stone wall, so I got this one:

Which when I put it on I realized it has a date feature which I love. I can't figure out how to take close-up pictures with my camera though.
Some more things happened. I nearly ate meat, but didn't. I went to a gay bar and felt a bit dejected and was thinking "If I feel like this at 29, I'm going to have to dredge the lake for a man when I hit 50." Then I met a blond Nordic hot hot farmer fellow and all was well again. I was talking to this lady from Australia in my room and she's leaving for Berlin tomorrow and staying at the same hostel as me. The train leaves every 2 hours, she's on the 10:36 am which sounds a little early. Plus while I enjoyed talking to her for an hour tonight, will 5 hours be the same? So I think I'll leave here at check out time, 10 a.m., check out a couple stores around here (they aren't open on the weekend in most of Czech, only the tourist shops are open) and then take the 12:36 to Berlin, arriving at 5 or so. Last city, one week left. I'm enjoying it but I miss my cat and iced coffee and... well, I don't want to focus on the negatives. I'm really having an AMAZING time and I see the whole world differently.
I thought before I came here that the whole world drove on the left except for North America. WRONG! Poland and Czech drive on the right. Where do I get my knowledge from?
I think my statue from yesterday looks a bit like Rhett Butler. I love it. I've never seen a nude male statue in a museum before that had a mustache.

Day 4: Prague and the Night Train

Well, I have a lot of pictures and it's 11:38 at night so guess how long this is going to be.
Every building in Prague is beautiful. I could take 1,000 pictures. Now the problem is someone told the secret of how nice it is so there is 7 MILLION people everywhere, like it's difficult to walk down the street. Also their money is screwed up. 100 Koruny is $8 CDN. So there's a lot of math involved. An iced tea is 47 Koruny, a shirt is 300 Koruny, a pizza slice is 59 Koruny. Are these good prices? Who knows! I haven't been able to find iced coffee in the whole continent so I found one today and was so happy until I realized I had paid $8 for a small. I drank it slowly.
There's a lot of beautiful boys here:


And then some that must have snuck in the back as they look like Hell.
Actually the soldier I found in the Museum of Communism and I thought he worked there so I asked to take his picture and was trying to find someone to take one of us together and it turns out he was visiting with a tour group. Whoops.
So the night train was fine. I got on and was met by a German lesbian wearing tight black vinyl and reading a copy of the Satanic Bible which was different. We locked the door, and thank God the train was half empty so it was just her and I instead of the 6 people who were supposed to sleep in the 7' x 4' car. Maybe 4' is too generous.
So I got here and checked in and went to downtown Prague which is amazing. Loved it.
Then I went over to the Museum of Communism:

Which is of course inside the McDonalds. Here's a picture of Olga, the Russian from my work, in her better days of Communist bliss:

I love the anti-American stuff:

I bought some postcards and a book on Communism as I know almost nothing about it. How much did I pay? Who knows! The postcards were 12 Koruny for small and 45 Koruny for large and the book had no price - not like it would have helped anyway.
Then I went to the Prague National Museum, which has some great architecture:



This is now my background on my laptop:

There's this thing in Europe where everytime you want to use the toilet you have to pay. Everywhere. Don't know why. Even in Communist days you had to pay. I thought Communism meant free toilets for everyone??? Also they charge you to take pictures, in the museum and the Salt Mine it was an extra $5 to take pictures. At least I think it was $5.
The Museum was REALLY old, like 200 years old, and they had these cases set up:

This was a case of minerals and there were like 300 cases in 3 different rooms. Then the same with bugs. And other things.
My picture of the day is me walking in humanity's footstep:

Nice view from the top floor of the museum:

But when I left for someone reason the street filled with about 200 zombies:

I don't know why. No one there knew why. No one at the hostel knows why. Maybe it happens all the time.
This is the astrological clock that was surrounded by a billion people:

So I went to the Museum of Sex Machines to get away from the crowds.

It was surprisingly expensive to get in, I think.
More beautiful pictures of Prague, everywhere is beautiful.




I think you just need to see it at 6 a.m. to avoid all the people. I started taking pictures of people taking pictures as it was impossible not to get them in the shot anyway. All these shots I had about 1 second to take the picture before a group of 700 walked in front. I'll post the pictures of people taking pictures another time, I got some good shots.
Tomorrow I'm going to the castle in the morning and hopefully a bus tour or something as I need to get off my feet.
Czech for goodbye is pronounced nas-khled-ah-no-u. I got a phonetic dictionary from the hostel. I still can't figure out how to say anything. khled??? Speak English!

Day 3: Salty

I'm writing this early as I'm leaving for my train to Prague in 2 hours. I am currently sitting here surrounded by 18 year old Spanish boys as they drink Vodka and play Playstation. It's raining outside. Did I mention drunk teenage boys are loud? Maybe I can get one alone and....

Anyway, it was nice today to have a bit of extra time, to sit in the park and read my book and watch the people go by for an hour. I was feeling a real sense of myself and the planet. Of course now boys are screaming over a fake soccer match so I'm feeling a bit less of that.

I made a note in Auschwitz which I forgot to mention yesterday, I wrote "I never expected to hear the birds singing." It was surreal, how in this place surrounded my misery with a stain that will never leave it, the birds were singing and the sun was shining and life was continuing.

Got up this morning about 9:30 after spending a couple hours talking to Peter, who works in the hostel. I packed up all my stuff and gave back my keys. I haven't even had to loosen my suitcase yet, hardly anyone here takes credit cards and I only brought $100, but that has lasted me my whole time here.

Here's a video of downtown Krakow.
Anyway so I got up and hopped on the "minibus" to the salt mine. The minibus here is like what you would expect in Ethiopia. A very small bus with 10 seats and 30 people crammed inside and the local Polish radio playing Elton John and Elvis Presley.
So I entered the mine, walked down 54 flights of stairs and we were there! Here's a statue:

All the pictures are a bit dark as we were under the ground a quarter mile.
Here's my group going further down:

and here is a collapsed mine:

They either left this up to show tourists or because they couldn't be bothered. Notice how it looks like rock on the wall and floor and ceiling? No, it's gray salt. Everywhere. The steps are made of salt, the statutes, everything. Even the wood holding the place up is 400 years old, preserved by the salt.
It's amazing how cheap everything is here. Official salt in the salt mine box is like $2.

Here's the big church and prayer place. Apparently people used to die all the time in the mine so the workers preyed a lot.

Here is a chandelier made of salt. I like this shot.

This is a river that people used to be able to take boats down but once in the early 1900's a bunch of drunk tourists capsized their boat and suffocated under the boat, you can't dive in salt water, especially this salt water, the water cannot hold any more salt. So they suffocated under the capsized boat.

This is a banquet hall inside the mine where high schools have their graduation party.
When you come back to the surface they shove you 10 people in an elevator 8' by 3' and then all the lights go out and you rocket to the surface at 100 km an hour. It's like a ride at Canada's Wonderland, except scarier.

I do not want this job.

These look like giant dildos from the back.

Check it out.
There was this science fair/festival downtown when I got back:

with musicians and a stage.

This guy staying here said he went to Korea and no one speaks English and there wasn't even any letters in the words. That sounds difficult. What people do is like come here and talk to others and see where is cool and go there next. That would be fun to do sometime.
There was a historical model from the 1600's war:

And here's me holding a live snake:

Something I would never do in Canada. This taking one picture a day of myself is fun, you try to have a really good one.

Another shot of the church in the square, and finally, I wanted to take a picture of some of the food.

This was like $2.50, it's a fresh half baguette with cheese and mushrooms and onions and bbq sauce. Yum.
Got to catch the train to Prague in an hour, let's hope I make it. I'm sure you won't get your throat slit twice in one night.