5 Things to Czech out in Prague

Prague Castle!

For years, I wanted to go to Prague. One of my favorite artists, Alphonse Mucha (who designed the window below), is from Prague. Ever since some chick told me about a bunch of great Mucha exhibits she saw in Prague, I've wanted to go there and do that. That made Prague a definite plot point in my trip. Besides, I'd seen pictures. I knew it was an un-bombed masterpiece of a city. Before I ever got there, I knew I was in grave danger of falling in love with the city.

Window with an Art Nouview!

Thanks to a couple of scheduling decisions, I visited Prague in mid September. Now, September is a very nice month in many places. In Prague, September is a cold drizzle that just won't quit. Did I fall in love? No. Will you fall in love? Maybe. Here's a five step guide to enjoying yourself, despite the cold:

1. Bundle up super warm, and look at the buildings at night!

The Vatican, according to Eurotrip.

Did I mention that it's cold? There's no denying that the place has a cold beauty. A very cold beauty. Especially at night.

Random towers everywhere!

And the art nouveau influences on the buildings are really a great feature of the city. Take some time to wander around aimlessly in the streets and look at the needlessly pretty detail on the faces of the buildings. You won't regret it, unless you hate things that are pretty.

Mucha more art inside

(That particular building, the Municipal House, even has some interior decorating by Mucha. And a huge gift shop of art nouveau stuff.)

2. Bundle up super warm and look at buildings during the day!

Not domed to disappointment.

Really, there are a ridiculous number of overly ornate buildings.

All agog at a synagogue.

There's also a castle. Did I mention the castle? Most of it is pretty standard castle. But the cathedral is kind of impressive. And that's where you can find the stained glass Mucha artwork from above.

Yep, pretty much like a Cathedral.

And there are more nice churches. If you're into that sort of thing.

3. Make Fun of the lame, but pretty, Astronomical Clock!

One attraction that is universally panned is the Astronomical Clock.
They say it's on par with the Munich clock. This one seems an even more effective snoozefest. On the bright side, it does have a pretty cool Astrological motif.

Technically, it's an Astrological Clock...

4. Listen to Classical Music in a place with great acoustics and pretty!

If you happen to walk by places when performances are about to start, you can get some very cheap tickets. This was the Mirror room, and they played music like Vivaldi four seasons. The sound quality was pretty great. It was civilized. Maybe too civilized.

Entirely too civilized.

5. Go look at bona fide bone church!

If you get really tired of the civility and class of the beautiful city, take a short train ride to Kutna Hora, a small town outside of Prague. 

Do you ever stop and think to yourself "Hey, self, I wonder what they did with all the bones after everyone died in the plague?" If you went to the Paris Catacombs, you would know that some people developed a femur-stacking hobby. If you make it out to the Sedlec Ostuary, you can see that skeletons are art supplies plus. 

Coat of Arms, Legs, and other Bones.

The whole chapel has a bare bones approach to interior decorating.

There's nothing humerus about a Skull Chandelier.

Facebook Friendships with Travel Friends

So you've been bouncing around somewhere in the world on a massive trip. Your Facebook newsfeed is now in several different languages. (This is awesome, though it sometimes means a sidestep to Google translate to have any idea what your friends are talking about.) Can your new friendships withstand the complicated world of Facebook and internet etiquette across cultures?

There are some very awesome perks of being Facebook friends with the friends you make traveling: 

1. You get to hear The Fox song before anyone else. 
2. You get linked to news stories that are different from those your home country's media is fixated on. 
3. You can practice your foreign language skills and get called out when your Spanish grammar is awful.
4. You can share memories with the people you experienced them with instead of annoying your friends. 
5. You can watch their humor styles conflict with other friends.
6. You can plan future trips to visit each other. 
7. If you are both traveling to a place you can maybe meet up again and explore a city together!
8. They might even read your awesome blog! 
9. They remind you that you didn't dream the whole trip. (As soon as you get home and into a routine, this is a clear and present danger.)
10. They're awesome. You're awesome. That's why you're friends. And Facebook makes it official.

The people I've met have entirely revitalized my interest in Facebook! It's the easiest way to keep in touch with everyone ever, all at once!

But, you won't see these people in person for, at least, quite some time. How do you ever go about keeping in touch? Everyone is starting from a different cultural context, here.

No matter what your cultural context, 

Here's Some Basic Guidelines on How to Keep in Touch with your travel friends: 

1. Be genuinely interested in what's going on in their lives. 
2. Be awesome to each other.
3. Make sure you can remember in which city you met and generally what you did together. 
4. Remember, when making jokes, that it is a little harder to convey tone in a Facebook message. 
5. When you remember an awesome place and the awesome people, take the time to drop your friends a line and remind them that it was awesome and so are they. 

Easy! Done and done. What could ever go wrong?

Usually, nothing. And it's awesome. 

But sometimes--sometimes--you catch up with people and realize that you knew them, really, only for a few hours, and that despite a previously pleasant exchange, their version of an online friendship is fatally different from yours.

Here's some Basic Guidelines on How NOT to keep in touch with your travel (or indeed any) friends:

1. Do not confuse them with other people and reminisce on the wrong memories. (This will not make them feel special.)
2. Do not post how much you hate a country, just because you had a bad day the one day you were there. (People from other countries can see you.)
3. Do not post nationalistic/anti-immigration drivel about how foreigners are bad. (Again, PEOPLE CAN SEE YOU.)
4. If someone is talking about travel plans, do not go into one-upping mode and talk down to them as if their plans or experiences are invalid and yours are in any way superior. (Yes, everyone is impressed you've been everywhere. No, it actually isn't all about you.)
5. Do not scream "I've been there!" any time a reference to a place you've been comes up, even if it's a joke. (It's only funny to you. To everyone else it's a little bit braggy.)

The best thing about new far-flung friends is that you are reminded to stay open to different ways of thinking. However, as openminded as you want these communications to be, be aware that, regardless of cultural context, there are some lines you should consider not crossing.

Here's some Basic Guildelines on How to REALLY, SERIOUSLY, NOT keep in touch with your travel (or indeed any) friends:

1. Look at the messages you are sending, and consider, before you send it, would it be considered wildly inappropriate if communicated in person? If not, do not send it. (It won't go well.)
2. Do not message them just to tell them that they are super hot. (They're aware.)
3. Do not ask about your new friend's sex lives out of the blue. If an acquaintance wants talk about their personal life, they will bring it up. (Facebook is not OKCupid.)
4. If someone tells you they don't want to talk about whatever subject, respect their wishes and let it go. (Persistence is a virtue. Except when it's not. Then you're annoying)
5. If someone does not want to talk about what you want to talk about, do not bait them and insult them. (It makes you look really mature.)
6. In brief, don't be a creeper in person. Don't be creepy. Don't be creepy online.  It destroys friendships. (Unfortunately, there is no complete guide to internet etiquette. But come on.)
7. Do not message people every day when they do not respond. (See above.)

There you have it! A complete guide to cross-ocean friendships. Travel is broadening, and introduces you to new people and new modes of thought. Staying friends with people from far off places remind you to keep a broad and open way of thinking. But there's a line between broad and open and creepy. It's not even a fine line. It's easy to see, and easy to avoid. Don't be creepy.

How to Avoid Being in Munich, in Munich

All year long, it kinda looks like Christmas.

Chances are, if you find yourself in Germany, you'll stop in Munich sooner or later. 

You may be the kind of person that will walk into the old town and discover a beautiful quaint city of eternal Christmas and fall over from excitement. 

Every year, The Glockenspiel scores just below Prague's Astronomical Clock
as "most underwhelming attraction ever."

Traditions are rampant. You can wander around a very traditional food-market, and find all kinds of bratwurst--even horse sausage! But wait, there's more! Like really big May poles!

May Poll Question: do we need a May Pole?

And after seeing all that, chances are you might want to change things up a little and see something interesting. You're in luck! There are things to do near Munich.

1. Visit Neuschwanstein castle!

Located in Füssen, a couple hours train ride from Munich, you can visit this lovely castle that inspired Disney's logo. There are some surrounding lovely mountains that you can stroll through. And a lake. Though I'd advise to to stroll around the lake rather than through it.

View from Marienbrücke: aka tourist photo bridge.

It's a magical place. You can take horse carriages or a bus to the top of the hill. But if you take the time to walk, you might get a chance get swept into a fairytale.

And meet your toad prince!

2. Visit Dachau!

For less of a fairytale, visit a concentration camp! You can get photos and ammunition against any Holocaust deniers you meet. And it's only a 20 minutes bus ride from Munich. 

Legally prohibited from inserting a witty caption.

3. Oktoberfest!

Ok, this one is inside Munich. And there's nothing I can tell you about Oktoberfest that you don't already know.

Unless you do not already know the following key points:

• It starts in September, not October. Next year the first event is Sept 20th, and the last is Oct 5th.
• If you want to get inside a beer tent and drink, make a reservation and/or get there stupid early.
• People watching is awesome: the lederhosen is pretty funny and the dirndls are super cute. 
• Accommodation is super expensive, but you can find a way to make it work.

Oktoberfest is in tents.

And if you've had too much to drink and feel the need to get rid of your alcohol, there are a huge range of roller coasters, drop zone rides, and spinning teacups to choose from!

It's like a monster county fair.

4. The Olympic Stadium

It's something like 20 minutes from the central Munich station on public transit.You can pay to do some stuff, like zip line or whatever. But if you are feeling cheap, it's also a nice place to walk around and relive the glory of sports.

It's like a miniature Mount Olympus!

A stroll on a lovely day is highly recommended, to take in the sun and sit on the grass, and admire the retro-futurist design elements.

Live your Olympic dreams and sit around in a park!

Nine Ways to Love Paris

Don't miss this obscure monument!

How not to fall in love with Paris: Get a really cheap hostel with ratings as high as 50% on Hostelworld. (Unless, of course, you are looking for a mouse to chew through your baguettes. Then please do go for it.)

How to fall in love with Paris: Stay somewhere that does not involve mice chewing through your baguettes. Head out into the city, grab a beret, and blitzkrieg culturehop through the city!

And fair warning: you will see at least three cheesy crowd-setting marriage proposals as you wander around the city. Try not to let it get you down.

1. Photograph Fontaine St. Michel! 

Is it just me, or is his arm about to go?

This is not only a beautiful area to walk around, the crossroads of the Latin quarter, but also the meeting point for some free walking tours! And when I say free, I mean, you really should tip, or the tour guides are legally permitted to judge you.

The walking tours tend to be very good. But even if you're not into walking or tours, stop by this fountain to check out the really sweet lionbirdfish.

You don't want to meet that in a dark alley.

2. Lock your lover to a bridge!

Locke bridge: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding of Boltcutters.

Er, lock your love, rather. Because if you've got a love you are clinging to desperately, there's no better place to put it than on a bridge over troubled water.

Locking lover-padlocks to bridges is a common hobby in Europe, but the popularity of this particular bridge only boomed post some plot-point in Sex in the City. You can write your names and a date on a lock, and lock it to the bridge, and it will stay there forever, or at least until the six-month cleaning crew comes through with boltcutters and releases all those metallic commitments.

3. Look at the Louvre! 

People in glass pyramids shouldn't throw stones.
Unless you want to get arrested.

Day time, night time, the building is one impressive monument to rich people filling space with expensive things. The museum is a must-see, if only to take pictures of forty people taking pictures of the tiny Mona Lisa, which is behind excessively reflective glass. 

The collection is huge and varied, but if you like art, you will prefer L'Orangerie and d'Orsay.

4. Gaze upon Centre Georges Pompidou!

When you feel Art is a pipe dream....

Merely looking at the exterior of this ultracontemporary beauty will irrevocably alter the way you view the world. The building stands in bold defiance to the traditional "aesthetically pleasing" or "attractive" or even "remotely acceptable" buildings that exist all around it. The Pompidou writhes in dialogue with the cultural normativity of the way we, as a culture, feel compelled to hide every aspect of ourselves. It is a vigorous NO to the established norms judging physical beauty. It does not permit you to park your privilege at the door, but rather encourages you to let your preconceptions flow down one of the many available drains.  It is a building without skin, and without skin, are we not all pipes and rectangles? The elegant simplicity...[etc. etc. no pomo]...


5. Saunter up to Sacre Coeur!

We're domed!

Climb that mountain, up from the dodgy neighbourhoods, and march up to the very posh area that makes up Amelie's stomping grounds. But before you explore Montmartre, take a moment to check out Sacre Coeur, which is pretty cool if you like domes.


6. Mosey by Moulin Rouge!

Can-Pan a Performance?

Sure, it's all lit up and pretty. But once you see the ticket prices, you'll realize that you can have much more fun anywhere else in Paris. Of course, you have to drop by for an obligatory photo so you can realize exactly how strongly the cool factor was exaggerated for the movie.


7. Tour the Arc de Triomphe!

Traffic Circle of Triumph!

First built so Napoleon could feel like everyone in his army was tiny when they rode through, the arch is now a very fine centerpoint to a thriving traffic circle. Head to the Arc around sunset to see some really spectacular sunsets that don't photograph well!


8. Catch the Catacombs.

Seriously? Graffiti? Seriously?

Come to terms with the fact that you are going to have to wait in line for an hour or more to see piles of femurs and a few skulls. You are also going to see a lot of plaques of mortality-meditative French poetry, and you will really wish you could read French poetry.

Pro tip: load up a translation onto your smart phone first, because ain't no one got the time to stand around and translate it for you.

9. But seriously, DO go to Musée d'Orsay and Musée de l'Orangerie if you like art at all.

In France, Impressionism impresses you!

By all means, go to the Louvre. But if you want to enjoy art, go to these two museums. There is a lot of Impressionist stuff. (You may have thought you've seen Impressionism before, in other museums. You are wrong. This is so Impressionist it's the Impressive-ist.) They also have some other art styles. Doesn't matter. It's all going to rock your socks.

Calais on a Monday: Not Quite Hopping.

Town hall: like walking by a postcard.

In Bruges? Tired of Bruges? You might decide to take a roadtrip to Paris. 

It happens. And if you are heading to Paris, you might think it's a good idea to stop in Calais. A grand plan!

Just, you know, stop for a hot minute and remember that the days of the week do have an impact on what you can do. Are you stopping in Calais on a Monday? Yes? Oh, good! You didn't want anything to be open, right? 

Of course not! Because it won't be. 

Possibly open. But they wouldn't tell me in English.

Hotwheels and I went all over the town, looking for anything fun to do. All we found were closed doors, closed restaurants, and open flowers. 

Ok, they were pretty flowers.

So we decided to look at everything the city had to offer. And we found some super cheap amazing wine. And so we bought lots of super cheap amazing wine and planned to picnic on the beach. (This sort of activity is a good idea any day of the week!)

There were statues.

Suspiciously tilted...

For another prominent building, you can also go see Eglise Notre-Dame. On the scale of Notre-Dames, this is not the most impressive Notre-Dame in France. If you have to pick one, I'd probably recommend the one in Paris. It's, you know, a little fancier.

Not so much flying buttresses.

And for an unexpected find in Calais: a plaque dedicated to my neighbor and close personal friend, Thomas Jefferson.

Hey homeboy.

The beach is quite nice, and proved an excellent picnic location. None of that pebbly nonsense you find in Nice. It's real sand. The kind your toes dream of burying into.

Beach: contains sunsets. 

We did eventually find the one restaurant that was open in the town. It did not disappoint. Raw oysters. Fish. Wine. Perfect. 

In Bruges: It's like a Dream

It's like a dream. Good luck cutting the tourists out of your pictures.

The film, In Bruges, featured two primary characters with differing opinions of the city. 

Colin Ferrell just wanted to be back in Dublin while Ralph Fiennes reminisced about how magical the city was. Like a dream! 

I read somewhere these characters were based on the writer's first and second days in the city. And I knew exactly what he was talking about. 

How can it not be charming? There is a dog that has spent most of its life in this window.

Window dog is Windog.

The first day you spend in Bruges, you can walk around and see all the tourist stuff. Everything is charming. You can probably find a nice charming tour to take you around the city, and give you a rosy view. I enjoyed the Can You Handle It!? tour, which points out film locatoins and has a roster of snarky cynical sailor-cursing guides that will show you around the nice charming city.

The city is undeniably beautiful, and features unnecessary quantities of decoration everywhere all the time.

IT'S LIKE A DREAM.

And everywhere you look you can see quaint old stonework. And canals, of course, that make the place reminiscent of Amsterdam, minus the heavy drug use.

A FEUDAL DREAM!

There is a central square which you should not, and, in fact, cannot miss, because it is the center of everything ever. Between the cute buildings and carriages, there is nothing to remind you that you are in the modern era.

Except for photobombing tour buses.

There is a very tall, very impressive bell-tower in the square. It's very hard to miss, and you may remember from the film, In Bruges. If you haven't seen the movie, I said nothing. Nothing!

Yeah. THAT belltower.

It's worth a climb, you can see a top view of the quaint city. There are cathedrals and stuff.

Cathedrals. And stuff.

The city makes a beautiful place to walk around for a day. The risk is strong, for any city that size, that if you stay much longer than a day you are going to get restless fast. If you're there on a Sunday, you will find stores closed at unexpected times, and a choice of maybe two restaurants.

There is a lot to like about a day in Bruges. And if you are coming from Amsterdam, especially, the city will feel like a dream. Hopefully with better dream sequences than that movie within a movie.

Amsterdam: Things to do include Anything.

Covering up the typo sign that reads Hamsterdam.

If you talk to people who have visited Amsterdam, they'll all tell you the same thing: AMSTERDAM WAS THE BEST I LOVED IT YOU SHOULD GO THERE! I DON'T REALLY REMEMBER WHY OR ANYTHING THAT I DID BUT IT WAS THE BESSSSTTTT. 

And that is the secret of Amsterdam: it's got the reputation as the Vice City capital of Europe for a reason, and your options are limitless! Everything is legal! Except violence/murder/other-things-that-are-not-legal, so don't get it confused with GTA: Vice City, and stay cool. Remember, the locals have to deal with at least one spacecaked-shroomed-out-drunk tourist screaming and running naked through the red light district every day, so don't be that guy.

Anyway, within the parameters of anything, you can probably find something to like in Amsterdam.

Like Art? Do yourself a favor and go see the Van Gogh museum. You'll see lots of pretty colors, and looking at his take on scale and perspective, you may even feel better about yourself as an artist!

Like History? See the highly minimalist Anne Frank House! It's guaranteed to cheer you up about as much as a concentration camp!

Like old buildings? Walk around! 

Pro tip: watch out for bikes. They don't break for tourists.

You , too, can go Tourist watching!

Like really skinny buildings? Well, someone does.

One of the many thinnest buildings in Europe. Rationale? Tax loophole.

Like making fun of monuments that are compensating for something?

Meeting place for the walking tour.

Speaking of compensating, you can visit a condomerie, and buy your friends a bewildering array of bad-idea protection!

Insert joke here.

Like cheese? Go to the Cheese museum, or better yet, just eat a lot of free samples upstairs and skip the museum!

This museum isn't cutting it.

Like pimped out rides? This one shouldn't be hard to find.

You wish your car had rims like that.

Like sitting around and relaxing? Amsterdam has many very chill parks. Sitting and taking in the nature on nice sunny days comes highly recommended. 

I hear ducks can be really interesting.

Like boats? Take a canal tour.

Canals: less confusing to navigate around than Venice.

Like Red Light Districts? You can walk around and see the ladies displaying their wares in windows, but while it is legal and regulated except for problematic problematic human trafficking problematic.