PART VI - MUNICH

so then we drove to Munich, which is actually called "munchen" but again, we can't say it right so we bastardize it with Munich. anyways we drove to bavarian beer country. ok wait random, so in czech republic they have a beer called "budwieser" and it's the original budwieser. so during communism they were not allowed to sell it internationally but now that the country is a democracy they are trying ot sell it around the world but america's bud is suening them. well come to find that czech bud has been brewed for like 500 years so actually american bud should change their name. random. anyways i saw lots of hops fields throughout bavaria. and then we drove into munich and i saw this!! another accenture building!
this one was pretty centrally located too.
we got to our hotel which was part of a chain of hotels called "novotel" it was pretty cool and had really nice funky decor. i recommend it. it's mainly business oriented so they have interent, a big plus. not my super cute organge purse i bought on the streets of lugano switzerland.
this was downtown munich and if you look really close you can find me up in front. i'll give you a hint, look for that mangy little blue hat. oh there i am! My mom and i ate a brat which was fucking amazing. we had to go back to split another because it was that good. then that night we went to a haufbrahauss. it's basically a beer hall and they have an oompa band and stuff. it's suuuuper cheesy and touristy but this time it was done in the right way.
apparently hitler used to hang out here. totally creepy. in fact alot of the buildings when they rebuilt them all over the city they left the bottom parts messed up to remind people of the horros of war.
so here was our waiter carrying over big steins of beer.
no serioulsy they were huge.
I put it next to my head so you could get some understanding of how huge it was.
and also i decided i kind of like german beer. pretty tasty and all that for 6 euro! eeemagine how drunk you could get on 12 bucks.
it was the end of the trip so in honor of being a tourist i decided to do an homage to the greatest tourists in the world. the japanese...this buds for you guys. Actually interesting story that this girl on the tour told me. this coudl be a lie but i choose to believe it. so i was wondering why asian tourists always do the peace sign. do they really want peace in the world? are they trying to spread love? well according to this girl it started because of the obsession with hello kitty. girls would put up their two fingers on both hands and hold each hadn up to their cheeks so it looked liek whiskers, hello kitty whiskers. anyways this got shortened and became the one handed whisker which we mistake for the peace sign. do you think this is true? i do.
i found this picture later on my mom's computer and i dont 'even know when she had time ot sit with a bunch of german men in leiderhousen. so random.
in the back they had these racks with locks where regualrs could rent out a spot for their stein. taht way when they come in they get to use their own glass and they drink beer from their glass. So basically that was all i did in munich, drink and eat. not much more to tell.

PART V - PRAGUE & CZECH REPUBLIC

So we left austria along with the alps and headed to the Czech Republic. but before we left we stopped at this awesome restaurant/raodside cafe. i love this place! it had a salad bar and was kind of like a road stop sizzler. they also had a counterpart called "rosenberger." if you are ever in austria i recommend it.

So then we entered Czech Republic and the scenery imediately changed to sunflowers. there were sunflowers as far as the eye could see. like you could really frolick in them for miles.
another thing that became very noticeable was the poverty. i mean you could really tell that it had been only 17 years since they ended communism. it was deep. there was alot of farmland but it was all abandoned because after the russians left they made the land available to whoever could rightfully claim it. well there is alot of land that has yet to be claimed probably either the people died or they moved to another country and dont' want to go back to reclaim their land. but it's there. We stopped in this small village that had a run down castle which was apparently owned by the king of lichtenstien, a long lost member of the hapsburg family of vienna. When austria became a democracy they kicked out the royal family, took all of their land, art, castles. basically left them pennyless. but apparently these were some distant relatives who were ruling lichtenstien and they still rule. so when WWII started the austrian govt had all this great art that they wanted to save from the bombing so they asked the king of lichtenstien to store it for them. so they smuggled it out of the country into lichtenstien and after the war they wanted it back but the king of lichtenstein was like "um what are you talking about? we didnt' sign any papers. this is now our art." totaly fucked up right. so anyways there is this castle in a village in the czech republic belongs to the king of lichtenstien and he got it back after the russians left and he's fixing it up so he can put all of what used to be austria's art there and make money off of it. that is some shady shit if i ever heard it.
this village was way creepy. it still had the loud speakers up on the phone lines from when they used to blast communist propaganda. you think they'd take them down. apparenlty alot of people now realize how much everything costs with the euro and they thing communism would be better.
"sale" in czech.

So anyways we left the village and headed to prague. At this point i had heard that prague was cool and whatever but i really had no idea. it is awesome! so beautiful. here is the view from a mountain.
i really like the tall gothic church that is in the middle of all of it. It's amazing that their architecture and buildings survived communism, and even more amazing that it was not hit at all during either of the world wars. Again this was another place where i have no idea what the things i saw were called because czech is way too difficult to decipher.
in front of the palace they have the weakest changing the guard i have ever seen. ok i've never actually seen a changing of the guard but i would imagine that it woudl nto be this ghetto. the guys totally were checking out our czech tour guide, they did move even though they weren't supposed to, and you could walk right in front of them and take pictures with them and stuff. i dotn' know what they thought they were protecting.
palace inner courtyard. we somehow made it through the guards.
here is that catherdral from up close. i gotta say for me it competes with notre dame in beauty. it was really amazing inside. too huge to get into a whole photo.
up in the mountains they have a replica of the eiffel tower that is slightly taller because it's on a mountain. come on prague! you are better than this!
here is the tour guide that i spoke of. her name was sara in czech which is "sarka" which is pronounced "sharka." she was pretty cool and told us about how she grew up in communism and her grandma had to secretly baptize her. and how she moved to america for a few months and worked as a maid to learn english and now she's in law school in praha. i liked her. my mom on the other hand was obsessed with her. she took all kinds of pictures including this one.
i gotta say though, sarka, the denim body suit/bodice/mini was not the best choice.
here i am in front of the astronomical calendar. it tells solar time, or astrological time, or regular time, or all of them. i dont' know i really couldn't understand what sarka was talking about. anyways it's a highlight of prague. there is my hat again, rearing it's ugly head.
we went to a little bar and drank czech beer and this very somber looking man played us czech music and he totally was a communist. i can tell. anyways he looked like he's seen alot in his lifetime.
and there is a final shot of prague. i highly recommend it. i didnt' get to go out at night because i was with my mom but i will definitely return with young people. but prague was a shoppers paradise. they are well knows for their amber and garnet and there was jewlery everywhere. also they had lots of bohemian glasswear (crystal) and that giant cathedral had stained glass that was made of crystal. sooooo cool. again i blew some major czech money on some good jewlery. it was good times.

PART IV - VIENNA & AUSTRIAN COUNTRYSIDE

ok now we are driving to vienna through austria and i am seeing the north face of the alps through which the von trapps travelled and i guess i can see how they made it to switzerland. i don't know, i need to see it again. I mean the mountians over here are not as huge, it's the ones that are shared with italy that are massive. this is not to say that climbing these alps would not have been a pretty crazy endeavor. so anyways i'm sick with a head cold which sucks. yesterday we were in venice which was like a bagillion degrees hot. serioulsy it was 100 degrees with humidity and i almost started crying from a general feeling of wretchedness. I did shop however because that is what i do, it gives me sustenance. i bought murano glass jewlery. i had forgotten how rude the italians are. i mean don't get me wrong, italy is the bomb, but goddamn those people are so rude. ok gotta return to the scenery.

note the time stamps stopped. at this point i had no idea what time it was or what day it was. we hit vienna that evening. she won't admit it but my mom had this idea of strauss and mozart being blasted through the public streets at all times of day. It was not this way.

sitting in a hotel in vienna and watchin tv as i wait for our luggage to get here. holy crap they import some crappy television to other countries. for instance the shows they choose to dub are "sabrina the teenage witch," "yes dear," oh god "charmed"!! interestingly enough though i didn't realize that charmed was set in SF. how random. Lois and Clark the new adventures are also dubbed which definitely was not crap in the 90's but is definite crap in the 2000's. I have one question to answer by the end of all of this. What is schnitzel? someone told me once but i can't remember. is it german for food?. ahhh they get baywatch too! ok baywatch is quality. i love you mitch buchanon! onto more deep topics though. serioulsy we have been in europe for 4 or 5 days. honest to god i have no idea. i have been without internet and cell phone for what seems like ages. i am serioulsy in a non metaphorical way thinking "what is this? where am i?" I feel like i am literally lost in time. 9 hour time difference is fucking with my head. looks like it's gonna be hot as a bitch here in vienna too. fuck! goddamn i tell you this, hear ye hear ye, do not travel in europe in july. i know this is pretty standard advice that people give you but i am reiterating this to you, it's so fucking hot! it's like being on a cruise in the carribbean only at least then you are constantly jumping in and out of the water and drinkin coco locos. ok i'm going to dinner in the vienna woods right now. peace out bitches. vienna woods!! who am i!

here is the local statue of strauss. he looks rather...what's the word, oh yes, GAY!
"hey guys!"
this was some palace. austia speaks german which i cannot decipher either written or spoken. it's really crazy sounding. i saw so many castles and semi cool thigns when i was there but i can't tell you what they were called because i have no idea.
here was another castle. my hair was OOC. the blowdyers didn't have proper voltage to tame my mane, and again i reiterate that it was too hot to blow dry.
this was in the viennese national opera house. this was the most inetersting part of the opera house. it kind of sucked.
then we went to dinner in teh viennese woods and they had two guys walking around playing the blue danube and aidelwies over and over again. ok we get it, you guys like strauss. i wonder how actual viennese people feel about "the blue danube"?

for the most part vienna was kind of underwhelming. but it did have a really awsome history. did you know that marie antoinette was an austrian princess and a member of the hapsburg dynasty? do you know what the hapsburg dynasty is? wiki that shit! it's really quite interesting.

ok so we are now leaving vienna. it was really a whirlwind. i could definitely eeemagine that as a city vienna is very cool to spend a long time in and drink coffee and eat pastries and shit. but on a cheesy tour it was such kitsche crap. kitsche because the other tourists didn't realize how crappy it was. i heard the blue danbube fucking 15 times while in vienna. all the restaurants cater to the tourists and have men with violins playing strauss songs and when they play the blue danube all the tourists go crazy and i wanted to smack them all with my belt of judgement. it's like when you go to a cheesy mexican restraurant and they have a super cheesy mariachi playing "guantanamera" which isn't even a mexican song it's cuban, and all the tourists are like "ahhh sooo fun!!" because they don't know the difference. that was my experience with vienna. it's not viennas fault, it's the tourists. and i gotta say i really hate tourists. they also played adelwies alot but that's ok because i love all things SOM. we went to this museum called the belvedere and saw their klimt collection which included "the kiss." it was the bomb. they also had some PBR, pre raphaelite brotherhood, HOLLER! you can't get PBR in america, they only have it in europe so that was pretty cool. also fun fact, vienna isn't actually caled vienna, it's called wien. why do we call it vienna ? i have no idea. now we are on our way to prague which is apparently not actually called prague but rather praha. it's like if everyone in the world called los angeles "lasgles" and you were like "why the hell do you call los angeles 'lasgles'?' but we call wien vienna and praha prague instead of just calling them by their names. dumb. ok i'm cranky and kitsched out. i hate tourists!

PART III - VENEZIA!!!

well apparently i didn't have anything to say when i was actaully in venice and it might have been that on this part of our journey i got sick, had allergies, and oh yeah, it was also a bagillion degrees! no seriousy it was over 100 degrees there according to the news not to mention the humidity. it was a curly haired persons hell. utterly wretched. i know people always talk about how awful it is to go to europe in the summer and no one listens but i have done it and can vouche for the fact that venice in the summer is truly horrid. if i hadn't been before and this were my only experience i would have hated it and had a bad impression of it forever. well despite how wretched i felt the pictures still came out good.

here's grace.

so then we headed to st. marc's square and my journey of healing began.
this was one pigeon among millions. last time i went to st. marc's square i tried to take a picture in the center but all these birds came out of nowhere, i froze, started crying, and had to be carried out by a guy with us as he threw his jacket over my face. i mean seriously i was histerical, no exaggeration. but damnit i wanted that fucking picture! but alas i had no picture so i decided that this time i would get my photo.
my everest...well by some stroke of luck the square was fairly empty as far as birds went. it gets really bad when all the asian tourists come otu and buy bird seed and throw it everywhere and the pigeons flock from all over and cover the square. but it wa slike 8am so there were hardly any tourists. so i had my mom stand in position, get a good angle and as she counted to 3 i ran to the center and posed and then ran away in a hot minute. and yet i look so relaxed....I don't know how i do it i just do it.

so then we took a gondola ride because even though it's cheesy you have to do it. I knew it wasn't going to be super authentic when our gondelier was texting and using his cell phone the whole time.
note he is on the phone in this picture. oh yeah and we had to take the gondola with other people on our tour because it's too expensive to do it alone. also this nice ride got us into the shade and was a nice cool down from the bagillion degree weather.
this also struck me as odd. the gondola next to us had a sarape draped over it. wtf?
yes i wore a baseball cap! would you blame me! i mean really it actually helped. next thing you know i'm gonna buy teva sandals. no no i would never do that.
here's a better picture where i posed and accessorized.


i leave you with this shot. this was me at my most uncomfortable. despite my smile i was actually on the verge of tears. i was hot, sweaty, had a runny nose, coughing, and our tour guide was running late. i wanted to just die. so wretched. all that aside i did some good shopping in venice. last time i went i didn't buy anything and this time i bought murano glass earings, a necklace (pictured above but not in it's full glory) a pendant. i'll put up pics of all my purchases in a later post.

PART II - THE ALPS

Satuday 22nd 10am
we're driving through the swiss countryside and it's very much what i emagine switzerland being like. I'm imagining that everyone who lives here in Lucerne wears leiderhoussen, makes cheese, and is singing right at this moment "one little girl in a pale pink coat heard, 'ladyyodilayiyodialheewhooooo'." I really wonder how much watching the Sound of Music growing up has completely spoiled my view of middle european countries. Anyways zurich was pretty cool. I could tell that if i had some bling i could have done some major damage there. Although i didn't realize how fricking expensive it was! geez it was like England! everything was double what it would cost in america not to mention that the swiss franc is worth more than the dollar. i say again, are we not America! ugh so ashamed. Anyways we went to this really good desert place that david had recommended called sprungli and had luxemburgli. I don't think there is any american equivlanet to luxemburgli. They were like little buffed melt in your mouth pastries filled with flavored merangue. for reals they were good. I feel it is also important to note that zurich has an extremely high volume of sex shops. Like there was one on every corner. Also another key fact we bought a coke light for 3.50 swiss franc which is like spending 5 bucks for a coke. ridiculous. ok we're about to go on a cruise and over up the french alps! woo!!!

The next day we drove to lucerne and travelled through the north face of the alps on our way to venice. serioulsy it was the most unreal experience of my life. this was the scene from out boat cruise in lucerne
then we got on a little train and then a bucket thing that went up to the top of some place called stansserhorn i think. it was really high.

but when we got to the top this was the view and it was SOOOOO worth it.
look at this! EEEEEEMAGINE!! can you? i mean really it was vast and there were glaciers and shit. it was at this point that i really started to ponder the sound of music, maria, climbing every mountain, etc etc. I mean really how did they cross the alps? it makes no sense. 12 children and 2 adults? i think not.

"a dream that will need!!
all the love you can give!!!!
everyday of your life!!!
for as long as you live!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

here is my super tourist shot.
i saw this and i had to stick my head in it. danke ya ya!

so then we drove to venice with this as our backdrop.
I think i was pondering, how to catch a cloud and pin it down?and i leave you with this image and my thoughts...

Saturday 22nd 11:30pm
the swiss alps were unbelievable. i felt like jody foster in "contact" when she says "so beautiful...no words to describe...should have sent a...poet." that was how it was. And then we took this winding road because the shortcut tunnel was super crowded and so we literally went through the mountain on a road that napoloen had taken on his way to the vienna conference. And then on the side of us was this road that julius caesar had taken. eeemagine! anywyas i guess i do have words despite the fact that i'm not a poet. But every turn and bend had a scenic view that was absolutely ridic. In fact it took me back to the time when tory and i used to say that things were "the dick" when they were cool, and for sure this was definitely the dick! i saw glaciers! then we went to lugano, which was the dick too. It was like lake como, only not that rich but still beautiful. And then we went to some other place that i don't know what it was called but sofia lauren's summer house was there. And then we drove by Lake Como which i am definitely not rich enough to be kicking it on but god how i want to be rich. anyways now we're in a hotel on an island in venice. it's like when i came in college and we stayed "in venice" but really stayed on an island nearby because it was cheaper. That's kind of what we're doing tomorrow but i decided that to follow through with my behavioral therapy i'm gonna try to take a picture in the middle of st. marc's square with all the pigeons. i'm gonna make my mom memorex the whole things, should make for some good pics of me screaming, crying, hyperventilating, etc etc.