Think I’ll go for the smaller cities for a bit

Ive left Munich and am now in the city of Olomouc – pronounced olla-moats, and still in the Czech Republic – after spending about 36 hours in Prague. The last day in Munich was ok, I went out to Oylmpia Park where the 1972 Olympics were and that was pretty impressive, the only catch being that there was also a bike race and a 10K run going on the same day so the park was packed and partially blocked off. The pay-off, however, was that I got to oggle the European biker boys.

I saw a bunch of team names I recognized but that doesnt really mean much since I dont actually know anything about bikes or bike racing. Please pardon the lack of correct punctuation, by the way, the keyboard is set up differently and some of the keys have 4 symbols assigned to them and I cant figure out how to get an apostrophe or parentheses…

I left Munich by train and was pretty proud of myself for figuring all that out on my own, though the woman at the train ticket-counter thought I was a moron for asking so many questions. I was befriended/adopted by a nice Czech guy on the train. He gave me a banana, we chatted about American politics, he told me he hates all Middle Eastern people…it was a bit awkward. But its a good thing he was around because we had to switch compartments a couple times en route, and of course this was all said in German and/or Czech, and then when we got to Prague he showed me where to get a tram and how to get the ticket and navigate my way out of the Prague train station, which undoubtedly wouldve taken me a lot longer than it should have had I been doing it on my own. So hooray! for him because he was the only nice Praguer I met.

I know Prague is supposed to be this magical, beautiful, romantic city on the river with the St. Charles Bridge and the castle and the quaint everything but Oh My God. So completely overrun with tourists that I couldnt even walk down the Charles Bridge

or see the castle cathedral – because the line wound around the perimeter – and the quaint streets were so packed with people taking pictures of the quaintness that I couldnt stand it. Sorry, rant over. Im sure if Id given it more time I couldve found many redeeming qualities for my experience there. Alas, I did not have the patience or where-with-all to attempt that redemption. I did, however, have a pretty awesome hostel that was covered in funky graffiti and full of – super cute – Australians and Brits. One girl, Becky, was in town for some kind of metal music festival and totally looked the part with flourescent red hair, piercings everywhere, fish nets, and a bottle of rum in her bag. The weird thing is that she absolutely loves Journey. She took some of us out to this restaurant she’d found – found the apostrophe! – which had amazing goulash. And though the restaurant was called The Back Door it was actually underground in what looked – and felt/smelled – like an old cellar. There was a metal bar next door called Hell’s Bells – why these were both in English I’m not sure – that had paintings of Kiss on the walls as well as some really trippy murals on the ceiling of what I assume were homages to metal bands. Another interesting tidbit about Czech culture is that they’re B52 shots include flaming absinthe as the top layer, and then you’re supposed to drink it with a straw while the absinthe is still on fire. Fire and plastic…perhaps that should be rethought, but I think the Czechs have enough going on where that’s probably pretty low on the priority list. So that concluded my Prague experience. I left this morning by bus to come to Olomouc, which has been great so far – my hostel is totally quirky and homey and small, which is really nice after the last two, which were quirky but pretty huge and loud.

Something I’ve been running into a lot is political discussions. Never about the politics in anyone else’s country, just the States. Though metal-rocker-girl went on a rant about the British PM and it was nice to have someone else’s national leader on the hotseat for a minute. While, overall, people have been pretty understanding that not all Americans like Bush or voted for him, etc., it’s totally surprised me that everyone – everyone – knows about the upcoming election, about the details of their campaigns, about Hillary getting booted, about McCain’s running mate and on and on and on. There was a French guy in Munich who gave me a hard time about being American and the state of our political system/health care/obesity, and then he tried to tell me about myself as an American after knowing me for about 3 minutes. I didn’t care for that so much. I wanted to punch him, actually – smug bastard – but I just yelled at him instead. Anyway, everyone’s really curious/nervous for the election, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “you guys have got to get Obama elected.” If he doesn’t – please God don’t let that happen – this will probably be my last trip to Europe because I don’t think they’ll let us back in.