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Home >> Articles >> Life of Myden
Eastern Europe
September 17, 2004
Hello friends, family and acquaintenances! This e-mail is coming to you live from Prague in the Czech Republic!
We are on a 3 week trip of Eastern Europe. We're starting off in the Czech Republic, then heading to Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and then finishing off in Croatia.
We started the trip in Toronto, as we had a wedding to attend to there. As is the case at any event where alcohol is free, it was a blast. It was held at a lovely home, with a backyard pool, which many guests inevitably ended up in, fully clothed, after tossing back a few.
From Toronto we flew to London, via Air Transat (a charter company). Now, those who know me, know that I will put up with any level of discomfort to save a buck, but Air Transat is a whole new level in "no-frills" airlines. The seats are so small that your knees touch the seat in front of you BEFORE your fellow passenger decides to recline his/her seat.
On most airlines, requesting the window seat is a smart move, because you can tilt your head, and have a little snooze against the glass. Not on Air Transat. If you so much as try to turn your head to look out the window you will already have bumped your forehead against it. I dropped an item on the floor and nearly required shoulder surgery after contorting my body ways I never knew to be physically possible to retrieve it. I wish I was exaggerating! I'm certainly not looking forward to the 9 hour flight back to Calgary in a month.
But enough whining. Arriving in London, jet-lagged and weary, we caught our ridiculously cheap flight to Prague on EasyJet (great airline, think WestJet but for Europeans). Prague is a beautiful city, and we got to see a lot of it as we wandered around trying to find our hostel (The Golden Sickle).
They claim to be the 3rd highest ranked hostel in the world, but I'm not sure that's accurate. It's decent, but nothing special (great location though). There's a British fellow in our room, but may as well be a chainsaw as far as I'm concerned because his snoring keeps the whole hostel awake. Last night I waved a towel in his face while he was snoring and scared the tea and crumpits right out of him. He stopped snoring though.
We spent the first night getting lost in the wonderful, old streets of Prague. The restaurants here are delicious (a lot of Italian food) and the most you'll pay is about 10 bucks Canadian each (with a beer and tip).
On Tuesday at 1AM Czech time, we found a sports bar and watched Canada bring home the gold against the Finns. There was a small group of Canadians there, but they were more interested in attempting to pick up chicks (and failing miserably at it, embarassing our nation in the process. Good to see the boys on the ice had better luck scoring. What happened to Kiprusoff, didn't he used to be a good goaltender?
Today we went and walked around the "Jewish Quarter" in Prague, walked through Jewish graveyards, look at Jewish documents, yada-yada-yada. It could be fascinating I suppose, if you had the slightest interest in Jewish history. The Prague castle was much more fun, even though you had to battle wave after wave of Italian, German, and French tourist mobs. This is September, go home!
Tonight I'm trying to convince CB to go out to a Czech discotheque and get bombed on absinthe (green alcohol that has hallucinogenic properties, not legal in most other countries). We're both pretty tired though, so we'll have to see!
Anyways, the trip has been great so far.
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