Mission: Expedition: Hello Again, Czech us Out!

So, I've been admittedly remiss in updating this blog. I don't confess because I'm deluded enough to truly believe anyone cares - but more because I made a pledge to update it whenever I travelled or explored new places in New York or New Haven and I don't like breaking pledges. I promise, I am usually a woman of my word. But somehow I have travelled abroad twice since coming home from Australia - once to Peru, Argentina and Brazil with family and another time to Rwanda on a service trip with 13 other Yalies (as you can see I did keep a blog for that one, but separately) - and not so much as touched this blog.

Well lesson learned - no more promises when it comes to writing regularly. And now, as I'm getting tired of relieving my conscience to imaginary readers (/family and friends who I already talk to on the regular), my reason for restarting this blog: a whirlwind tour of central Europe with my youngest brother, Austin. We arrived in Prague this morning and will spend the next ten days split between here Vienna, Salzburg and Berlin. Because of the eight year gap in our ages, Austin and I never got to spend that much time alone before I left home for Yale. We figured a trip together would be the perfect way to make up for lost time, while seeing some awe-inspiring sites.

Austin's brain-expanding en-flight Reading Material

Our adventure began this morning when we arrived in Prague. Even though Austin and I slept for most of our flight (thank you ambien!), we were both exhausted upon arrival. After a hearty breakfast of eggs, crepes and syrup (I don't distinguish, as Austin consumed just as much syrup as eggs) we passed out for a few hours. Upon awaking we made our way to the Old Town City Hall - home of Prague's famous astronomical clock.

Czech. Him. Out.

When walking around, it is impossible to fathom how old the city is. The City Hall was sanctioned in 1336 in the era of such fantastical things as court jesters, crown jewels, chamber pots, and feudalism. Perhaps I just read too much historical fiction as a tot, but I've always thought of all history before the Enlightenment in the same way I think of a good story - colorful, but too foreign to be true. That's sort of how Prague seems to me. I see the buildings, see how old they look but can't wrap my head around what their chipped bricks have seen. They had a good deal on time travel at the top of the City Hall tower, so we decided to give it a shot in hopes of better understanding our surroundings.

Strange how in olden times Prague was emblazoned in the sky. And before the invention of the printing press at that!

This ain't no James Gamble Rogers town.

After descending the tower, we trekked over to the insanely tourist-clogged Charles Bridge. I've already been reprimanded by many of my Praha-philic friends (namely one Jimmy Tormey who astutely pointed out that blogpost rhymes with Praguepost. I will definitely be appropriating this gem for tomorrow title. Thanks Jim.) but so far my impression of Prague is that its a stunning, authentic, inconceivably historic city that in the past few decades was forced to don a costume of Abercrombie and Fitch and a fanny pack. That analogy probably only made sense in my own warped brain so let me spell it out: the city is raw and nationalistic at its core, but perhaps to survive economically, many of its restaurants and storefronts seem geared to tourists. The restaurants have those stupid menus printed in 5 different languages with the little flags in case you're too dumb to recognize what language you speak, and Starbuckses (Starbucki?), KFCs, and H&Ms abound. There are also a lot of thai massage places and ethnic restaurants (African, Lebanese, TONS of sushi) yet I also suspect these are tourist lures as I saw few non-caucasian people today. Maybe we just haven't explored the right places yet, and regardless the city is magical. But I ran a four mile loop today and didn't receive much reprieve from western chains, sterile cafes, or tour-book touting families. Ironically, given the name of this blog, I found myself getting very claustrophobic and annoyed. As snobby as it sounds, I don't identify as a tourist. I tend to hate most guided tours, tour busses and package deals. I hate speed touring and as I've made increasingly clear, i hate those flag-laden menus.

Thus, drum roll please, I'm entertaining the idea of changing this outlet's name. If you have any suggestions please send them my way. I was thinking the eternal spelunker? It sounds dirty but spelunker actually means cave-diver which speaks to how I want to get to the hearts of places...and also sounds incredibly dirty. Darn it. So yeah, suggestions.

This was the opposite of fun to run through.

It's getting late, or at least late for functioning on very little sleep so I'm going to stop writing and post a few pictures with simple observations instead.

OUCH Re: the left man.

Broccoli-induced tears. He literally gagged when i tried to get him to eat zucchini tonight at dinner.

There is a strangely large proportion of stores hawking Buddhist wares such as prayer flags, carved Buddhas, incense and scarves with sanskrit on them. Further internet research reveals that there are about 60,000-80,000 Vietnamese in the Czech Republic, most of whom live in Prague. Mahayana Buddhism is one of Vietnam's main religions. Mystery semi-solved.