bohemia like you

It's probably because I've been eavesdropping on Swedish people for the last half year in the hope of picking up the language, but I'm hearing Australian accents EVERYWHERE. In the street. In the park. On the crowded metro in rush hour. The only other people at a deserted lookout. On the stairs, in the shower. In the cathedral. Explaining their design proposal to Austrian curators in a viennese coffeehouse. In every single hostel that I have had the pleasure of being in, the Australians are by far the loudest, drunkest, and dare I say friendliest, majority. There's many opinions on why - the three month uni holiday for students, our culturally sanctioned gap year initiation period where the youngsters find themselves before taking on uni or work, the fact that Europeans don't really travel around Europe that much, or that Australians simply having the money to travel. I don't really mind it - there's always someone around you can bond with and talk about the good ole days with.

I left Vienna behind without a second glance. Although it's a beautiful city, and I do feel a bit "spoilt kid in Europe" saying it, it didn't really grab me. That being said, I didn't really take the tourist route around the town - my first stop was the Zentralbanhof, the massive cemetary where composers like Brahms lie six feet under; reading the International Herald Tribune in the window of Cafe Sperl, the most gorgeous of Vienna's coffeehouses; wandering around Sigmund Freud's old consulting rooms, and spending a lot of time on the metro wondering why all the stops sounded like "schnitzel" and "pretzel". Another thing was that my contact lenses have been playing up, resulting in me having trouble looking at anything directly and a lot of heifer-stuck-in-mud eye rolling behavior (holla to my farming peeps).

One of my highlights of Vienna was, ironically, my day trip to Bratislava. Following a night of drinking games with a bunch of fellow hostellers (Australians, of course) I found myself, hungover as the derries, standing at the Bratislava bus depot, with no money, no clue where I was, no Slovakian in my repertoire and no knowledge whatsoever about the city, except that it had a castle. A couple of gruelling hours later I found myself at the front door of the castle, feeling mightily pleased with myself re: ability to conquer adversity. And I have the Slovak Republic T-shirt, which was the ulterior motive to my trip. I have now walked along the banks of the Danube in three cities - Budapest, Vienna and Bratislava. More to come, hopefully.

I arrived in Prague yesterday and headed straight for my hostel, the Clown and Bard, "Best Hostel in the Universe" according to Brad, who went to the Czech republic just to frequent the bar here. And it's mighty fine, if a bit on the quiet side, and of course putting aside the massive hill and nine flights of stairs I have to climb to get to my dorm. Breakfast goes from 7.00-1.00pm and 2.00pm on sundays, two drinks for the price of one during happy hour, there's a guitar, a massive dog, a pizza place across the road, massive breakfast, free internet, friendly staff and Dvorak on the PA system(?).

Prague is definitely my kind of city. A hell of a lot of people think it's THEIR kind of city as well, judging by the massive crowds of tourists in every street. From the top of the cathedral the most striking thing about the view was not the skyline (which is pretty spectacular) but the camera flashes blinking every two and a bit seconds somewhere down below. Prague has the tourism thing down to an art: touters on every corner, tour groups drifting like packs of sheep, English language signs everywhere. Yesterday I got quite lost and found myself in the real Prague, which was very refreshing, if a little scary.

Today I wandered around everywhere. I climbed to the top of the Prague Castle, walked across the Charles Bridge and looked at the astronomical clock. I called my little sister Georgia for her birthday (again happy 16th sos!). On the arts and culture side, I went to a Mucha exhibition and got inspired to start drawing again. Tonight I'm going to go find some traditional Czech food (which is apparently heavy on the meat, so at least I'm getting my iron Mum). I will write soon with more wonderful adventures.