Kristian and Frances

Well, we've been in Prague for two weeks now, and are settling in nicely. My Mum went home on Tuesday of the first week, we saw her off at the tram stop near our apartment at 4am. She flew to Paris for another day before flying home. She was emailing my other address (the one I haven't checked since leaving home) so I had no idea if she made it home safely, and it seemed like every time I called she was out for one reason or another.

Our apartment is in a lovely part of the New Town, pretty close to the Jewish Quarter, and with a mediaeval church just across the road. It's a beautiful church with a little courtyard with lots of benches for old ladies to sit on with their lapdogs.

I feel as though I am making no progress with the language, in spite of my attempts to speak Czech each day. It is hard to learn a language when the signs and menus are pretty much all in English as well as Czech. But we are becoming more and more familiar with the streets, and explore a new area every few days. We are still walking a lot.

The second week we did less than the first week, because K is sick. Mind you he's been sick on and off (mostly on) for most of the time we've been in Europe, but he is more sick now, and I am nagging him to see a doctor probably more than a good girlfriend should.

I did spend a day (on the 5th of June) walking around the perimeter of Hradcany (the castle area) looking for anything approximating a protest about George Bush's visit on the way to the G8 summit to persuade the Czech Republic to let him build a radar tracking station for his current pet anti-missile system. No such luck. I think I walked for three hours and then to Wenceslas Square and all I found were soldiers/police with guns and muzzled dogs, journalists carrying audio-visual equipment to and from vans and confused Japanese tourists who seemed to be the only people who didn't realise the castle was blocked off that day. I was very disappointed and am not sure a) why Australians have such an exaggerated reputation for political apathy and b) why Czechs have such an exaggerated reputation for political engagement (or did have). But perhaps I am mistaken there. I thought I saw a group of anarchists with molotov cocktails at one point but they were just some drunken lads taking bottles of beer up to the castle parks.

And yesterday (after trying to find a doctor for K) we went to the Prague Biennale in a leafy and pretty area called Karlin and beforehand drank wine in the park, so we looked at the art while slightly tipsy and dehydrated. It was an extremely hot day, probably not by Sydney standards but we are surprised at how exactly like Sydney summers the Prague summer has been so far, with the cycles of humidly hot days and electric storms with rain. We had an ambitious plan to climb Petrin Hill before drinking our wine but our cheese was melting so we just picked some random park.

Speaking of random parks we went up to the famous Letna Park the other day. Instructive lesson for heads of state and town planners: if you're going to install symbolic monuments make sure they don't have moving parts as it might backfire on you. Last time I in Prague there was a working metronome above the city, symbolising the patience and hope for the future of the Czech people (or so I was told). Anyway it hasn't moved at all since we got here and as far as I know it hasn't moved for several years. I guess it just broke down. But Letna was a lively place with beautiful views.

I really like it here. It is the only city we visited on our travels that I could imagine staying for a really long time (and that most definitely includes Paris), because there's always stuff going on and a hundred billion cafes and pubs with food to try, and it remains very affordable as long as you avoid the tourist traps. Sometimes you get surprised by what you get. Once I ordered something called a "Magic Garden" and got steamed broccoli and carrots under a layer of garlic cream and cheese. It was delicious, but the kind of meal you make at home when really incredibly depressed and hide from your family members, not something you'd expect to get at a restaurant. Another time I misguidedly ordered a "Sweet Omelette" and basically got an omelette with raspberry jam inside and wet tinned fruit on top. A lot of these things are a consequence of ordering from the "meatless dishes" section of the menu, which seems to be random side dishes and may include deserts. Hm.

A lot of other nice things have happened. We've seen another Czech movie (I Served the King Of England) and met our awesome new friend Vicky, who is a Chicago girl living here and teaching English and has a wonderfully dry sense of humour and was kind enough to take us around the city and show us a lot of great things, including the restaurant/cafe that gave me "The Magic Garden" and an art shop where I bought an aquarell sketchpad for my aquarell pencils.

If anyone would like to send us letters or lavish gifts our address is:

#10, Petrska 9
Nove Mesto, Praha 1
Czech Republic

Until the 15th of August or so.

Til next time,
Frances.

What greeted us in Prague... it's taking time to settle into the life of a man o' pleasures and time...

Tourists like us - may I correct this to say tourists like the prolific English louts/bucks party arseholes who I want to murder in cold blood. Viva la imperialism?

*Sigh*. Sorry, make that a *violent projectile vomit*. I had no idea it had gotten this bad.

Meanwhile, we saw the Czech movie Tajnosti today which stars a Czech singer I like named Iva Bittova, whose music is very wonderful and I recommend, although she didn't actually sing in the movie. She was kind of a pent up mother character who finds many parts of her life unsatisfying, and tries to return to something simple and true through music (which is why it is remarkable/important that she isn't really able to sing, in spite of the actress being a singer, an easy temptation for a director would be to have her finally come out of her shell and sing wildly at the end, but in fact that doesn't happen), and it was very beautiful story which made K and I feel happy to be in Prague. We have been a bit homesick since getting here, and I think this because we will be here for such a long time and that's a bit scary.

Something else good that happened today is that we found a really good supermarket reasonably close to our house. By really good I mean it has a variety of fresh and seasonal ingredients as well as more than two kinds of cheese, which is something that has been obviously lacking in the smaller supermarkets round these parts. It is definitely a start. I can't wait to start cooking for myself again! I am rubbing my hands in anticipation. We move out of our hostel and into our flat tomorrow.

Hello friends and family.

I realise I have a lot to catch up on. I have been a bit less inclined to update than Kristian recently, and everything is a bit scrambled in my head. So I think I will work backwards, and probably not all in one go.

We're in Prague, and this is lovely but also a bit strange for me, because of my strong feelings for it and the fact that the city has changed a lot in the last five years, and is quite different in spring/summer as compared to winter (as I expected) and although I will always love the city's history and its culture which is known to me, I would this time around forgive other people for thinking the city brusque, messy and sleazy (not only in the sex way, but also the commercialism). There are some changes I'm a bit sad about, so it's bittersweet (but definitely sweet) to be back. The knowledge that it is tourists like me/us that have brought about these changes makes me sad as well.

Of course the city is just as beautiful as ever, and I still know it like the back of my hand. Last night after we arrived there was a lightning storm, so we turned off the lights and just enjoyed it. It felt like we were back in Marrickville/Sydney again sort of. I danced around to daggy Prague radio in the hallway. I do believe I heard Midnight Oil as well as a lot of late 90s sounding house music. ICQ uh-ohs mixed in, that kind of thing.

It was a hot day today, the weather's been strange in general, and I got my worst sunburn thus far today, even though I put sunscreen on. The only result of that was that now I have pretty patterns on my back, haha. There seems to be cool changes in the evenings to break the horribleness, but all day we saw people pouring water over each other and even having watergun fights

Cesky Krumlov was so gorgeous, we really enjoyed our time there and had some awesome vegetarian food, even at a place we expected to only serve meat. Our crazy bus to Prague only cost AU$10 (for a 3+ hour journey) so we will definitely be back, even to have that meal again!

Ljubljana is very cute as well. In one of my categorising moods (probably on the bus from work going through newtown), I divided sydney hipsters into the "cotton" variety and the "polyester" variety, and Ljubljana seems to be entirely composed of the cotton variety, you know, the kind of hip young person who rides bikes and reads books and is unafraid of colours other than red, white and black. Nice. Got to go. Love!

This is only quick! As often, we haven't much time.

A few days ago we left Hvar and set sail (via ferry!) to Split, which is another Croatian Port town. We only stayed overnight, so haven't much to report on the place. Next morning we took a train to Ljubljana via Zagreb.

Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia, Zagreb the capital of Croatia.

The train trip took some 7 hours in total, which was mostly due to the slow train we were on, our three car train dragged itself from the flat and stony southern Croatian coast through to the green mountains and forests of the north. It was all very wonderful and the slow speed of the train was welcomed as it gave us extra time to take in the landscape.

We spent about an hour in Zagreb, waiting for a connecting train. Frances and I went for a short walk and saw a few blocks of the city, and a grand cathedral, but little else, and nothing that has been recommended to us, so there is plenty to go back and check out there.

The train from Zagreb to Ljubljana had us in a little compartment to ourselves (apart from the slovenian man), and the trip was again wonderful, for the most part the train followed a river which twisted around through some beautiful green mountains with the occasional grey and black outcrop of stone. There was barely enough room in the valley to accomodate the train, river and narrow road, but somehow the Slovenians had managed to squeeze in small towns and farms along the edges. It was a really enjoyable trip!

On arrival to Ljubljana we trekked to our hostel and arrived sometime around 10pm. The next day Frances and I wandered around Ljubljana without aim. We sat in a bar on the edge of the river which the city sits around and had some drinks and lunch. It was too hot to take the walk up to the castle, but on the report from Franceses mum, it didn't seem like we missed an awful lot.

Ljubljana is an odd little capital. I had expected a small tightly packed old city, with a slow pace and nothing approximating an office block. What I found instead was a small city, but with a wonderful mix of the old and new. The old town was quite small, hugging a bend in the river, outside of this however was a mix of all kinds of things which gave the city a very modern and exciting feel. The university attracted a lot of young people, so it all had a very youthful vibrant feel. Certainly a place I could stay in for some time.

Unfortunately after we ate dinner, which consisted of too much beer and so much food we couldn't finish, it was into bed to get ready for another day on the train.

Our next train trip took us across Austria from south to north, and into the Czech Republic. It was another great train trip, this time our compartment was all to ourselves and the 8 and a half hours passed relatively quickly. The landscape was a mix of rugged Austrian mountains to wave after wave of rolling hills and small, colourful villages.

We arrived at Ceske Budejovice and encountered a little bit of panic - we could not find a bus station, and then having found this bus station (on the top level of a shopping mall no less) we found that there were no means to buy a ticket. In the end it was discovered that you just buy tickets on the bus, but there was some nervousness until we figured that out. Frances and I generally work well together in a crisis, or mini-crisis, because each of us seems to step up for the other as the circumstances require. It's good like that.

So we took an evening bus from Budejovice to Cesky Krumlov which was a nice ride through Bohemian countryside at dusk.

Krumlov is a wonderful little town. It is beyond cute. I can't describe it because I'm too rushed! A small bundle of a town, with a castle sitting on a hill overlooking the town, which is standard fare really, a small river does a tigh S curve through the centre of town, restuarants and cafes sit on its shore, people in rafts float by. And a trio of bears guard the entrance to the castle. Grrrr. Real bears, eating oranges.

Tomorrow we get another bus to our "final" destination of Prague. But we'll come back to Cesky Krumlov, because it's super!

Oh and to make things better, we're both pretty much over the colds/sickness that has been bugging us for the last week. YAY FOR THAT.