optimus prime's ass

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Hello from yet another train! Today I'm heading to Vienna, Austria. The 4 nights i had in prague went so fast it's hard to believe i'm already moving on! Prague is so beautiful, and such a huge city but i pretty much did my exploring just in the old town. The first night i role in, there is a bbq going on at the hostel so i hung around and met people there, pretty much just taking it easy after the travel day and a night of little sleep before that. You can tell the hostel and events are planned by guys because the bbq included 2 beers, a big chicken thigh, a huge sausage, and a hamburger. mmmmm. This was the same night that the final round of the world cup was on, so we all went down to watch the game in their bar. It was a pretty boring game with no goals until spain took the cup against the netherlands. Which really sucks because Alux was in amsterdam that night watching the game and said her last night in europe was surrounded by drunk angry amsterdamians. The next day a girl from my room and myself headed into the old townt to do a free walking tour, we missed the first one at 11 so we wandered around while we waited for the other one to start at 2. Prague castle is up on a hill across the river, what better place to see prague! The castle was pretty uneventful, there were guards dressed up everywhere though! The best part were the kings gardens that surround the palace, they weren't really anything special but there weren't many people and it was green and reminded me of canada! haha
Hisotry of the czech republic is pretty much that the land has been taken over constantly over history, for example the communists after the war and up to 1989. This was so much a way of life for the czechs that one of their national songs is called 'where is my home' haha. kind of funny. But the czech republic is so successful now that they're pushing to keep their own currency and not adopt the euro until at least the economy of other countries like greece gets better. Having used the euro in every country before now, it was a bit of a challenge getting used to the czech crown but it works out that there are 4 euros in 100 crowns so it was easy to convert. Kinda freaks you out though when the amount for your hostel goes through on your credit card for 1500 crowns! haha
One story from the tour that i really liked was in this one church. Apparently how ever many years ago it was, there was a thief who snuck into the church in the middle of the night to steal an elaborate neclace that a statue of the virgin mary was wearing. Legend has it that as soon as he went and touched the neclace, the hand of mary came to life and grabbed onto the thief's wrist, then turned back to stone so he was trapped in her grip! He twists and turns and can't get away so he's found in the morning by the priest. There is no way they can get his hand away from mary's strong grip. The arm had to come off, but there was no way they were cutting of the virgin's arm, it was the thiers! Apparently as soon as they saw went through and severed the arm, the virgin mary went back to her old position. As a warning the any other thieves, the church preserved the arm and hung it from the roof, where it remains to this day! So in the corner of this church is a little shriveled up arm hanging from a chain. Don't worry i got a picture!
In prague i also got to see one of the most interesting and oldest graveyards seen on this trip so far. Here's a little background i'll keeo short and sweet. In prague, there was a designated jewish area which was the old place jews could live. And within this area was a graveyard, the only place the jew could be burried. This was for hundreds of years and as the population of people increased, the graveyard got far overused. There are places where the bodies are burried 11 deep so the ground has become like rolling hills from all the bodies. Every person burried here also has a tombstone. That's a lot of tombstones in a little area!! There are tombstones falling all over eachother and layered into eachother. It's really something to see them all crammed together. Do you rember the jewish memorial from berlin i told you about? Well it had wavy walkways and blocks stacked up and up ontop of eachother. A lot of people this that this old graveyard was his inspiration. Some of the graves date back until the 1400s!
By far the coolest thing i saw in prague was actually on a day trip about an hour out of the city. I met this metal head, really nice guy from victoria who was wanting to go out to this bone chapel the same day i was planning on going, so we hit it up together. yes, bone chapel! The little town was called kutna hora and there's an old church that is deocrated with human bones. Where did they get all these bones you ask? Well lots and lots of bodies had been buried in this graveyard during the bubonic plague, and they wanted to make room for more people since it's a graveyard that's meant for the burial of wealthy or well known people in the area. They tossed all these old bones into a huge pile and then didn't know what to do with them! One of the monks or whoever it was decided to decorate the church with these bones. It was like nothing i've seen before! I had been disappointed that i missed out on catacombs with skulls and stuff but this totally made up for it! There were skulls strung up and hanging all over the ceiling, ther was a giant chandelier in the middle that contained at least one of every bone in the human body! Surrounding the area were 6 huge piles of skulls and what looked like femurs that had no sort of connections to eachother, just stacked up into perfect piles. I've gotta show you all the pictures of this, it was really something else. The family crest of the 'artist' was even built using entirely human bones and on it is a bird....a human bone bird. It's really well done and we were super impressed. It's supposed to be about 40, 000 people's bones who eneded up there. But that was about all to see in this little town so we headed back to prague.
The nightlife in the city is supposed to be really crazy, there's a 5 story club playing different music on each floor. The only problem right now is that there is a crazy heatwave in most of europe, today wasnt so hot, but everyone said the club is really touristy and hotter and sweatier than anything they've every experienced! So i passed on that.
Someone was telling us about this really cool place that he only described as 'being up optimus prime's ass.' Intriguing right? I thought so too. So a group of us went to check this place out. And i have to say that his anaology was completely accurate! It was like being inside a robot. For those of you who don't know, optimus prime is an alien robot from the cartoon transformers and has now been meet into an action movie.It cool stuff.
But yeah, in this place they had different levels of rooms to dance, or sit and hang out, even an outside that was all metal. It was like being in a car/robot/junkyard. Engine parts and trinkets everywhere! Even sitting up on one of the levels you had to crouch down to not hit your head on the roof! I think it was the coolest club i've been to, just a weird undergroud sort of feel to it. And who doesn't like dancing to a little elctronica! I woke up knowing it was a good night from the hangover and the fact that i had neglected to actually change into my pajamas and went to bed in the same clothes i wore out haha!

I'be booked the rest of my hostels for this trip so i'll give you a rundown. I'll be in vienna for 3 nights, then bad gastien (in the austrian alps) for 3 nights, then going back to munich for another 3 nights because i really liked it and there are day trips and stuff that i want to do, then to amsterdam for 3 nights and fly out! Rather than have adam come to pick my up in vancouver, i got a flight to kelowna a couple hours after i land. So at 10:23 on July 27th i will be arriving at the airport in kelowna.
so mom, grandma and grandpa...i'm not sure when we'll be able to get together because adam and i are going camping for a few nighs in mabel lake. But we can figure something out when i'm back!

So I've arrived at the hostel, and not even kidding, i was the sweatiest i maybe have ever been. The train got SOOO hot. No wonder the reservation only cost be 1.50 euro. Anyways, laundry has been done (finally!) and i've showered and going to try to meet some people here tonight. So far no one has been in the room so we'll see how it goes.
Bye for now!

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