Mission accomplished!

Hurray. I made it. But definitely not without the encouragement, laughter, frustration, and great times with all the friends and family who helped me in the past 5 years - whether I was in Waterloo or Toronto - a big "thank you"!

Guess who's back?

Right. I arrived back home last Wednesday and will be working on getting the rest of this travelog updated. It's been a busy past few days since coming back and I'll be busy still to get my 1000+ pics online (not to mention ones from Le's memory cards). Then there's the whole job hunt I'll have to get into.

2004.09.19 in Prague

After some 'cheap' Chinese fast food for lunch, we headed down a different path through Old Town to find the local Museum of Communism. This tour of Eastern Europe has been informative about these countries' struggles and their related Communist regimes. The year 1989 was vital for the return of democrazy to many of them and Praha struggled to deal with the rising rebellion like many other major cities. Afterwards we walked by some casino that had a Texas Hold'em sign outside and we decided to check it out after dinner @ Pravek. We tried to get a decent shot of the city's Jewish cemetery (that inspired Berlin's Holocaust Memorial) to no avail - it's actually above ground and costs nearly $15CDN to go in.

Le had some grilled kangaroo at Pravek the 1st time we went and I decided to try the boar, deer, and roe mixed grill dish with almond croquettes. I wish we had a copy of the menu because there's nothing like it with all the choices of meat, veggies, drinks, and side dishes for great prices. Cranberry sauce seems to the sauce of choice with these exotic meats and the almond croquettes (potato balls with crisp almond slices) went perfect with the boar and deer as the menu suggested. Le got a 'side dish' called "Cave roasted potatoes" but it could certainly have been a main dish alone to go with his "Dinosaur Pot Roast" (a steak). The serving of these potatoes was generous, well-flavoured, and came with ham/bacon, and other veggies - for only 30kc! ($1CDN = 20kc roughly).

We headed back to the casino where we checked our bags and signed in with our passports. Two hold'em games were going: 100/200 limit and 50/100 pot limit (PL). We liked what we saw and came back with the minimum buy-in of 2000kc. I first joined the PL game and was dealt AdQd. Stupidly, I didn't raise the pot and the flop came JcJdTd. Amazing I thought - an inside royal straight draw and a nut (royal) flush draw. I checked and called a medium bet. A Q comes on the turn and I'm thinking 'not bad, top 2-pair with ace kicker' - I check and call another bet to see the river come up with a rag. Damn, no straight or flush or (remote full house) made... I reluctantly call an all-in bet since I felt pot-committed (never feel this way, ever!) and end up losing to the 3rd player who originally checked on the river. He showed Jack trips and my 2-pair was garbage leaving me with only 200kc in chips left. I should've folded after not completing any of my draws and shortly after the PL game breaks up. I played for less than half an hour and had nothing to show for except for important lessons learned... I gave my now 300kc in chips to Le and he joined the limit game. We stayed for a few hours more and Le actually hit 9000+kc in chips but it's pretty hard to leave when you feel like you can take even more chips. He ends up leaving with over 350kc in chips.

Hmm. Looks like we'll be staying 1 more day in Praha!

2004.09.18 in Prague

To redeem myself of the loss of Praha pics from yesterday, we found a camera store to burn our memory cards before we repeated the highlights of our walking tour. Unfortunately I didn't get any pics of the magnificent city views from the Praha Castle but Le took some good ones. We tried the other recommended restaurant for dinner and this time it was a real Czech restaurant without an English menu or tourists. We found it easily yesterday as we were looking for Pravek. It was a challenge ordering but the waiter understood us well enough. We picked 2 appetizers blindly and ordered the goulash with dumplings. The beef stew was great and the dumplings, too (just soft bread really).

Both of these restaurants are near the major metro station, Andel, and we hurried from there to Old Town Square again to catch a 1 hour classical music concert. The concert featured Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, Vivaldi's Stabat Mater, and finally Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - all performed by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra in an old church known for its acoustics. We were a few minutes late so our seats were in the back but hearing the music live was great and worth the 250kc ticket.

We bought some souvenirs we scoped out the night before heading to a nearby night club called Darling. The Topvar beer was 99kc but mixed drinks were a whopping 490kc! Holy crap...

Beer Rating of the Day: Topvar = 2 out of 5 stars

2004.09.17 in Prague

The night train's ride wasn't the best we saved some Euros by not paying for a couchette. We just hogged an empty 6-seat passenger compartment! We got into Prague before 8am - the earliest we've arrived anywhere - and ventured to find accomodation. Unfortunately, our first choice (Golden Sickle Hostel) was booked all weekend but they kindly pointed us to another one down the street. This 2nd hostel had a double room which we asked for 1 night and would cost us 600kc (Czech krowns) each! The manager said it was 5 minutes away (what the-?) and it ended up being at some accomodation agency whose manager actually wanted us to stay 3 nights minimum! We passed on that and said we'd look elsewhere and come back if we found nothing...We trekked to 2 other hostels on my list but they were both full as well so we headed back to the 3 nights place. An hour had passed and when we arrived the room was already taken! We headed out the door worried and distraught when the manager said she'll make some calls. After a few calls, luckily and thankfully she knew someone with a similar 2-bed private room for only 500kc not too far away. That's hot we said and we got ourselves a nice set up and a landlady who knows no English but has 3 rooms for tourists. We went on a 4 hour walking tour in the afternoon - I was really frustrated because I had to recharge my digital camera's (DC) battery while we were on the tour, but then I didn't have much room anyway - and I missed a lot of great potential shots. Thankfully Le had his DC with extra memory card and battery... I asked our tour guide for a good Czech restaurant and she told us about some place called "Pravek." We had another recommended Czech restaurant to try from a fellow backpacker we met in Warsaw, but we went to try our guide's suggestion for dinner. After realizing we got off the wrong tram stop for 20 minutes, we found the restaurant and all the directions we received for it were right all along.

Pravek has a cool Stone Age/prehistoric theme and offers diverse meats along with the usual beef, pork, chicken, and fish dishes. They had kangaroo, deer, boar, and roe dishes! The food is not genuinely Czech, but this is a helluva restaurant and probably *THE* best we've ever been to. We tried a roast pheasant legs appetizer which was good - pheasant legs have many skinny bones on them! My main dish was 300g of turkey with herb cream sauce and a huge stack of potato wedges. Dessert was 2 large scoops of ice cream and we also had 2 pints to wash it all down. In total, the dinner was under $15CDN for each of us! The value was unbeatable and the food was delicious and presented well. We planned on going there one more time before we left that's for sure!

Walking around Old Town at night we checked out some of the many souvenir shops and passed hawkers handing out flyers for either local caberet clubs or classical music concerts...

Beer Rating of the Day: Staropramen = 4.5 out of 5 stars

2004.09.16 to Auschwitz

We decided to take a night train to Praha from Krakow so we wouldn't have to stay a night in Krakow... When we arrived in Krakow we had a hard time finding the bus to Oswiecim but we got to the Auschwitz Museum by noon which is 1.5 hrs away.

Took an English tour that lasted for 3.5hrs and covered the Auschwitz camps. We didn't think about storing our main pack in a train station locker so we were lugging those around all afternoon. The camps are the real buildings still around but the entire surroundings are peaceful and sombre. It's incredibly sad and unbelievable what took place here as you can view some incredible artifacts that remained when the Soviets liberated the camps. The second part of our tour was in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp - the larger camp with a train yard and demolished gas chambers. I couldn't believe the enormity of the camp's size and how much of it still remains. Hopefully my pictures will provide some of the impact and shocking sights we saw and respectfully appreciated. On our tour was this ignant Aussie who didn't have a clue at the importance of the Auschwitz memorial. The guy made comments like, 'wow, some really bad stuff happened here...' and, 'these Nazis are worse than what the Iraqis have done." The tour ends with a short film about the liberation of the camps.

We had some pierogies and other Polish food for dinner. But these pierogies were amazing as we ordered a mixed platter of them and had delicious various fillings.

To kill some time before our 22:45 train, we had a pint of Zywiec again at a nearby hotel bar. The bartender/manager was in fact a former Toronto native (proof with his old ON driver's license) and we shot the shit in the meantime. The guy loves Krakow and promoted the town's Old Town square which we would later check out at night. Also at the bar was a Polish Aussie who lives in Tokyo and he bought us a round of vodka shots after some chatting about whatever. Once again, friendly people and welcoming attitudes greeted us in Poland.

I ended buying a black Victorinox "Explorer" knife from a shop in the Old Town square for 27.5 euros. I think it's a great deal and probably the cheapest I'll find in Europe.

2004.09.15 in Warsaw

Some hardworking Polish hammered away outside when we went to sleep at midnight. WTF is that? (We got a 2-bed private room instead of a cheaper dorm room for the previous night (09.14) - we came in late w/o a reservation but the room was nice and still under $25CDN). After nearly 2 weeks of sunny weather I woke up to hard rain, but not before more hammering woke me up @ 7am...

The rest of the day was spent walking around Old Town, visiting the Unknown Soldier's Tomb, the Warsaw Mermaid, and learning about the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. For dinner we had some really good kebabs (shoarma) - there are these little kiosks all over the city. We wanted to buy some Polish sausage @ a supermarket but while the women behind the deli counter knew little English, you just have to point and count how many/much you want. Also, the beer and chocolate is damn cheap here too! i.e. A pint (0.5L) of Heineken costs under $2CDN in the grocery store.

Unfortunately there's not much to see in Warsaw, but the people have been very polite and friendly to us, so it's been a worthwhile visit.

Beer Rating of the Day: Zywiec = 4 out of 5 stars

Less than 10 days remain on my eurotrip - I won´t be caught up on this travel log until I get back unfortunately. But there´s lots to write about so it´ll have to wait! Right now we´re in Barcelona and our schedule has clearly been changed up from the original plan. We´ll be heading to Amsterdam and Prague again in the next week or so - our only ¨re-runs¨ of Europe... See you all soon!

2004.09.14 in Warsaw

We had to go cheap after spending a lot on dinner last night so we bought groceries for our trip to Warsaw. Passing through eastern Germany and into Poland you'll notice the following: grafitti, boring farmland, wind mills (for energy), tiny homes and shacks with satellite dishes, and great forests.

Reached Warszawa Centralna by 19:00 and avoided these suspicious accomodation floaters. We attract agendas, attraction, and stares! Being asian, wearing giant backpacks, and looking lost will do that. The previous night I took photos of PC screenshots for maps & directions of nearby hostels and that saved our ass. It was a fairly warm evening and we stayed at the Oki Doki hostel which ended up being a nice place. The hostel's bar sold pints at a decent price of 2 for 7 zloty. That's under $2CDN for a pint - insanity! After a pint of good polish beer, we walked around town and decided to eat a McDs (shudder). It's been a good long time since I last ate a meal in one but I tried this Greek Mac they were promoting - a big pita, 2 patties, tsatziki sauce, lettuce & tomato - which was actually pretty good surprisingly. I think it was because I was hungry. BTW: the toilet at the restaurant is free with the receipt. Our attractive order taker knew some English and we were pleasantly surprised - she had learned in school a few years ago but is working while going to college. Have I mentioned that Polish women are hot? Once again, North American music pervades these countries' radio stations and the export of US culture is so strong that you don't even think twice about the McD's or BK or Starbucks you see once you get out of a train station in these European countries...