Prague

If you have many ten dollar bills, and you have nothing to do, you can find some tourist attraction to ease your mind. Entertainment comes in 10s. Of course, finding the native population of this city is virtually impossible....which is why I've spent about 10 dollars a day.

Prague has been interesting. I have no idea what normal people do here on the average day, I don't know how they manage to eat out. I've seen about two modern buildings, and they only draw us foreigners. Where are all the usual people?

In any case, there are a lot of really intersting old buildings here. Gothic, Rococo, Art Nouveau....whatever else. Cubism. Prague is supposed to be the master, or the home of all emerging art forms. The hub. I wish there was a present day tour; there must be a reason , apart from cheap liquor, that the Prague Quadrennial is held here.

The landscape is beautiful, the fall colours were also quite lovely. Since we keep heading south, we keep hitting each city in the peek of it's autumness. This is a dream come true for me!

We had two very interesting days. One day we took a train to Kutna Hora to see the bone chapel -as in, people made flower pots and chandeliers out of excess plague victims remains. It's pretty neat, and I swear to god it smelled unnatural in there. But the church was in the UGLIEST small town ever. It was like visiting a town twice the size of Alvinston for some weirdo relic.

Then yesterday, Spencer and I snuck out of the hostel to have an alone day. We went to the northern part of the city (where no tourist deigns to go!) and we visited the zoo. My first zoo ever! (I think?) It was amazing. Prague's zoo ranks 7th in the world. THe cages were clean, the animals looked happy, and the did have a fair amount of space. However, without a struggle to survive, can you really call them happy animals? They just kind of sit there and get stared at. It's amazing to be sure, but they don't seem very much like animals, just house hold pets.
I saw an elephant (my favourite) and some giraffs, fishing cats and spider monkeys. The saddest lot though, were the gorillas. They were quite content, and they had the biggest jungle to play with. Three of them were dozing, and a wee one was annoying them to play. The bigger gorillas were dozing and pushing him away or rubbing his head to quell him. It was so saddly human. I wish I could have seen them in the wild.

The last day we were all supposed to have alone time. I planned, again, to go see the old synagogues. Unfortunately, it was another holiday.... and everyone elses plans fell through too. The tram museum was closed for Spencer, the Sex Machine was too expensive for Scott, and apparently it was too cold to go paddle boating, since they were closed. Then we ordered pizza, and it was horrible. Worst last day in the city ever.

I have finished this post in a wee gem of a town called Olomouc. O-lo-moats.
Today, we biked over to this giant pond, very reminiscent of Campbells Park, but with less hills and no maple syrup. We found a swinging rope that dropped one deep into the lake. So of course, I jumped in. It was really chilly, and the bike ride home very wet. But Dave , a random Australian we have adopted, and Clayton both followed suit. It was great. Im off to a hockey game now.