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Who wants a blog post?!

Well I got time to kill on my train to Vienna so I figured I’d jot some things down.

I think I left off with Copenhagen, to make things brief, the trip was amazing, especially cruising bikes to the beach with Jerome then going to the hippy district and playing some backgammon over 8 dollar beers. Later that same day we went to an awesome club and danced the night away. The train ride home, 13 hours, wasn’t too bad.

Shit got all sorts of crazy when I got home since my friend in Paris had bailed saying he was too busy with school to let me crash at his place for a night en route to Cannes so after trying to contact everyone I knew with French connections I managed to piece back together some sort of mutant version of the trip that I had been planning for a month. Discouraged, tired, and depressed I just decided to surrender and forgo going to the French Riviera and Paris until a later date if ever this trip.

So now because of one little change of plans, losing somewhere to stay in Paris my schedule is FUBAR. I’m basically just doing whatever sounds good now, trying to throw together some trips to see other friends I’ve made here in their home countries. So far I’ve gathered one trip to my absolutely lovely German friend’s small town kind of near Hannover. I’ve been welcomed to Jerome’s in Arnhem so long as he doesn’t have work, I could roll to Flanders in Belgium, Bratislava, 3 different cities in Poland, Budapest, and possibly Paris and Berlin assuming people keep their word.

However, Little did I know while in Denmark that I had a paper due the day of my return to Prague. I had been operating under the assumption that it was due before the examination term ended in September. So after frantically trying to figure out when the paper was due I bit the bullet and spent several nights locked in the study rooms at my dorm working on one of the worst papers I have ever written.

The rest of the week was spent enjoying the sunshine in Prague because the weeks prior had been rainy and cold. The best thing about nice weather in Prague is you don’t need to think about finding somewhere cool or hip to hangout at because you can just hang outside and I think the general consensus is that drinking, reading, laying, sitting, standing outside is always better than inside.

During this span of outside hanging I met some very nice Swiss guys, a nationality I had yet to come across in Prague. I was also privileged enough to spend some time with a very nice, cute, sweet, German girl and all I can say is that you never realize how beautiful Prague is at night until you have someone to share it with. Not that Mark is insufficient, Mark it’s not that I don’t like you, but I mean come on, you’re a dude. You get what I’m saying right? Right.

So lets now fast forward a few days.

I am currently on the train home from Vienna. Michael and I decided to take a trip there to stay with Branden Gebka. Branden did a really great job showing us around and taking us to cool places but in the end it got the best of Michael and I so after only 2 nights we were ready to go back to Prague. Being a tourist and a college student simultaneously is fucking hard.

Vienna though was amazing. Never in my life have I ever seen a city so grand, so regal. The main area is just palace after church after government building all built hundreds of years ago but so majestic and overwhelming you couldn’t even really believe what you were looking at. Michael and I took a day trip Friday morning to the summer palace/gardens and it was just unbelievable that something like that exists. I kept asking, “why does this place exist?”

I’ve come to learn that words can’t really describe the things I see in Europe. Or maybe my vocabulary just sucks. It’s not about what the buildings look like, or what the gardens look like, it’s about how you feel when you see them. There’s just this feeling of insignificance that comes over you. It was like when I stood at the base of the alps, gazing upwards, realizing that I am a mere ant to these mountains and it’s the same when comparing America with Europe. America is a meager 300 or so years old while Europe is over 1,000 years old. But I mean America still fucking rules and we don’t need palaces or gardens or old churches to make our cities seem superior, we got fucking sky scrapers n’shit and to me, that’s what a city really is, tall ass buildings made out of iron and steel.

However, Vienna was still amazing, but as I sit here on the ride back to Prague, I couldn’t be happier. Prague is the best, nowhere I have been can top the feeling you get walking around Old Town or Malastrana at night arm in arm with someone or drunk with your friends feeling like in that instant you own those narrow cobblestone streets.

Now I go home, recouperate, finish another paper, and finalize my travel plans for July. To quote Jack, “and we’ll say ‘now the end is near’”.