"I need a jizdenky to Nádraží Holešovice... ishk."

And now: Our journey to the land of excessive consonants and unidentifiable accent marks.

Thursday morning (the crack at the dawn, Ari says, and then quickly takes back when she realizes Katie might actually type it in the blog), we arose and finished packing and headed for the first time to the bus station. After some difficulty in the navigational sphere, we eventually made our way to Treviso airport, outside of Venice. Katie was especially concerned about our difficulty in getting through the extremely lengthy lines of security for all 10 of the completely deserted gates at the airport, and so we were early. Just early enough to enjoy our last Italian(ish) meal of the weekend (for the first time)! From there on out, it was all dumplings and goulash. We arrived, had some extreme issues trying to figure out how to get the bus we needed while standing in the significantly more freezing country of the Czech Republic. Some hilarity arose when we realized that we do not, in fact, speak Czech. Nor, much to our dismay, can we pronounce it. We got a lot of blank looks when we asked for directions to places like Vystevista (insert 2 to 3 bizarre accent marks over this), but we found that if we added "ishk" to the end of every word... we sounded more Czech. To us. We also discovered another thing that the Czech's are famous for: HUGE spiders. They are, luckily, afraid of humans and easy to kill, but we found several in our room and many in the train station. Seriously... they must feed them something different over here (we are thinking dumplings and goulash made from the bodies of tourists). After checking in at the hostel, we wandered back into the freezing rain to find a place to eat. That night we spent a grand total of 9ishk American dollars each for: genuine Czech beer (they are famous for the quality of their beer, and are known as the beer capital of the world), soup (either potato chunk or garlic chunk depending on the person), beef goulash, sirloin with sauce, and dumplings. Turns out, dumplings are like dense, shmooshy, moist bread balls. Also turns out, the Czech economy is still somewhat suffering communist backlash and we reap the benefits of their cheap, meaty food. As it turns out, this cheap meaty food has the amazing power of making the eater feel exactly like what they ate, afterwards. Cheap, meaty dumplingishks we were, yet happy. When we returned to the hostel, we played cards and made friends with some silly Australians, who told us all about their ridiculous adventures in Amsterdam's red light district. Scary stuff. Enough said. But they were cool guys.

The next morning, we ate a terrible hostel breakfast and headed out to explore the biggest castle compound in all of Europe: Prague Castle! We wandered the charmingly medieval courtyards before entering the old castle hall. This is when we first noticed how unbelievably different the architecture is in comparison to Italy. We like castles and it made us very happy. Then our bodies were exhausted from all the effort that they were expending in trying to keep us warm...so we took a brief pause in the castle café where we tried two delicious warm drinks (hot mulled wineishk in Katie's case, a local specialty, and hot chocolate with amaretto, which made Ari's taste buds do a little dance). Afterwards, the cold much less noticeable, we saw a little basilica and then the massive St. Vitus Cathedral. Its dark Gothic spires are a shocking contrast to the tame church facades that we have previously seen and instead of frescoes on the walls, there were rows of enormous stained glass windows that cast a beautiful, multi-colored glow on the interior of the church. Katie was mildly distracted from the holiness of the situation by the abundance of beautiful, multi-lingual men casting their "glow" on the interior of the church. Then we walked over to the Golden Lane, a row of adorable little colored houses where the castle alchemists used to live. Now, there are towers with exhibits of medieval armor and weapons, as well as cool little stores with typical Czech products, like wooden toys, black glass jewelry, goblets, and marionetteishks. Katie bought some pretty woolen mittens for her icy fingers (despite Ari's best attempts to generously supply the necessary body heat). After exiting the compound, we tried to visit St. Nicholas' (closed) church, and ended up crossing the river on the famous Charles Bridge, which is beautiful and gothic and covered in creepy dark statues. Prague was really interesting decoration-wise, because there is a real mix of simple colorful French buildings, and dark, heavily-ornamented, often-creepy architecture. We were reminded of the Beast's castle (of Disney's Beauty and the Beast) in the ending fight scene. Anyone? That is what it is like, down to the gargoyleishks.

Then we had a FEAST. Literally, it was called "Old Bohemian Feast for two" on the menu. It consisted of beer from the brewery in the basement of the restaurant, three different types of dumplings, potato pancakes, two types of stewed cabbage (who would have thought we would love it, it's delicious), roast duck, smoked pork shank, braised pork neck (also delicious), and chocolate/nut crepes (another local specialty, made differently from the crepes that we are used to). It was... obscenely inexpensive and unbelievably satisfying to our meat-starved Italian diets.

Then...a funny thing happened. We were saddened by our inability to visit Amsterdam, and in light of all the talk from the Australians at the hostel, felt that we were being fundamentally deprived of an important European experience: Absinth.
So when we passed a local grocery store with a large display of said spirit, we decided to supplement our previously made plan of relaxing at the hostel with a little bit of...spirit. Along with beer, Czech absinth is much-loved and very traditional to the area, and we firmly believe in trying out all of the local customs when we travel, as well as supporting local producers. Sticking it to the man, if you will. So we purchased two, tiny (we swear) bottles of this enticing green liquid with mysterious bits of herbs and twig bits floating around in it, and went back to our hostel. After purchasing what we hoped would be an adequate chaser to counteract the legendary horrific taste of the drink, we closed ourselves up in our room, fashioned two cups out of an empty waterbottle, and figured out how to set Ari's camera to "automatic timer" to document the experience. Fun fact: it tastes like gasoline, rubbing alcohol, herbs, and licorice. We set the camera, took the shot, and while trying our very best to swallow said shot... the camera went off. The picture... is perfect. Katie looks like she is about to burst into tears and Ari looks like she is going to lose every bit of dumpling she had consumed. Priceless. Then... we repeated the process and downed the entire bottle of orange juice (affectionately referred to as "Cappy") in a futile attempt to wash away the taste. We chilled on the bed and listened to music for a bit, until we started to feel the most undeniable urge to giggle uncontrollably. The effects are interesting: nonstop laughter, relaxed body, and a feeling of utter stupidity. As we put it in the unfortunate video that Katie had the presence of mind to take... "Katie's got a fuzzy wooly blanket on her." "No Ari, it's on my brain." Translation: it was hard to think? We were stupid? We could not form sentences well? All of the above. Suffice to say... we had our experience (thankfully, in a closed, controlled environment). Disclaimerishk: we would never have done this if it weren't for the fact that we were safely ensconced in our hostel room, had full stomachs, and no other substances. For any of you who may be interested in doing the Absinth thing, do not drink any alcohol first. It would be dumb and you would suffer.

Saturday, we gave in to our most shameful urges, and had our first Starbucks of the trip. For Katie, a grande gingerbread latté (because regular coffee sucks in Prague, especially after Italian coffee), for Ari, a grande no-water vanilla chai, and muffins for both of us. We retreated happily into the familiar atmosphere and gave ourselves over to the wave of nostalgia that promptly set in. It was surprisingly difficult to head back into the cold, but we walked a short block to St. Nicolas' church, where we spent several hours in awe at this intense example of the Baroque style. Every inch of the pink and cream stone inside is ornamented and every flat surface housed a life-size statue with tasteful gold filigree. We were surprised to discover that instead of coming off as gaudy, the church felt alive and filled with movement. This is probably because the colors were warm and all of the figures were captured in motion, so that nothing about the interior felt stationary. It was so completely different from any church we have seen, and it officially makes both of our top three favorite European churches thus far. We walked over the Charles Bridge for the second time (this time lined by artists and street vendors) and purchased some fun artsy earrings. Then, after some wandering, we found the center of Old Town, which is an interesting take on the true Prague image. Big buildings with colorful French facades, a creepy green-bronze statue in the middle, and at points, big dark gothic spires rising above the cheerful facades. There we stopped for what can only be called the best hot-dog experience of our lives. Sausages are a specialty in the Czech Republic, so we figured it was only right to sample them for lunch, while admiring our surroundings and the beginning snowstorm (after our second trip to Starbucks for a large hot tea to go...we know, we are shameless). We saw another church shortly after, which was so poorly lit and ominous that we left very quickly, convinced that it was haunted. Then... we shopped! We stopped in an amazing wooden toy store, with sweet marionettes and really fun wooden puzzles and gadgets. Ari bought herself a beautiful wooden spinning top that looks like a Czech peasant girl and Katie bought herself a flying wooden pig that flaps its wings in fits of glee when you tug on it. Naturally.

Then we saw the ugliest church of all time. It was kind of... unexpected and shocking because it is right off of the main square. Just a little taste: it looks like somebody built a pretty church frame, and then a giant costume jewelry store vomited al over it. There were badly done paintings of holy figures lit up by blue fluorescent lights, conveniently placed so that the actually quality artwork was blocked from view. Like other Baroque churches, there was a lot of gilding, only this looked like the "grill" of an unfortunately blinged-out hip-hop artist. It really is a shame, because the discerning eye can see that the architecture underneath all of this gaudy and unnecessary decoration is quite beautifully constructed, but it is totally overwhelmed. Sad for astronomer Tycho Brahe, who is interred in this shameful "holy place". After we exited, we were excited to find that the snow storm (our first snow of the year) was in full swing and we took many giddy photographs. Then, since we had time to kill (and it was FREEZING), when we passed a giant sign advertising the Sex Museum... we couldn't help ourselves. It was quite populated and really, really interesting. We laughed at some, we gasped in horror at a lot, and groaned in unhappy disgust at some. It is amazing how much people's tastes have changed throughout history. Consider us a little more educated. Turns out... if you charge your entrance ticket on your credit card... your Bacon parents will see said charge... and they will be curious as to why their daughter is spending money on such things. But it was educational! And popular! And famous! And... love us anyway! Moving on.

We ate more goulash and dumplings before going back to the hostel to prettify and store up some energy for our first real European nightclubbing experience. There is a famous club called.. something something Lazne ishk near the Charles Bridge, so after a game of pool, we rounded up our Australian buddies and headed over at around midnight. This place was AWESOME. Picture: five stories, each with a different music and decoration theme. There was a floor of techno/house, reggaeton, hiphop, oldies, and a chillax floor (a hang out, or chill out floor, for those of you not with the lingo of the times, or if you're over age 30. Tyler... you might not be cool enough to understand this one either). We quickly discovered that Europeans can not dance. Seriously. At all. So it was amusing to discover that when we busted out our sweet moves, we attracted some spectators, in the form of a ring of sketchy men...wherever we were. We spent most of our time on the fourth floor (hip hop), boogyin downishk. But the overeager male spectators quickly got on our nerves, so we enlisted the help of two of our Australian friends, who pretended to be our boyfriends for the evening and actually intervened when necessary. For example, when "Lucas" from Brazil and his unnamed but skeezy friend wouldn't leave us alone, attempting to put the moves on us, we used the hand signal (the mashed potato) to bring Jimmy #1 and Jimmy #2 (actually their names) to pull us away. Lucas spent the rest of the night standing nearby giving Jimmy #1 the death glare in the hopes that he would back off. Thankfully, Jimmy #1 was a brave soul of strong Australian stock and he did not give in. When we sat to take a break and looked at the time... it was 4:30 AM. Since our flight was not terribly far away... we decided to stay until closing. At 6 AM. Then we happily wandered along the snowy streets until we found a tram. By the time we were back in the hostel neighborhood, we were so hungry that we were reduced to a game of "Rock, Paper Scissors" to decide which of us to eat. Katie lost. Luckily for Katie, there was a hotel opening for breafast at 6, so we stood like puppies in the window until they let us in for sausages and toast. Then... we bid farewell to our friends, packed, brushed off the nightclub residue, and checked out. We were in an exhausted stupor for the entire, complicated and full of public transportation, journey home.

When we got back at 1 PM, Ari took a five hour nap, then got up for dinner and movies, before going back to sleep around 2 until 10 in the morning. Katie resisted the urge to sleep, watched a movie and loaded pictures, then went to bed at 7... and didn't change positions until her alarm went off at 10 AM... fifteen hours later. Her Italian family had been sending her concerned messages all night, not realizing that she was upstairs and simply too dead asleep to hear her phone. All in all, it was a FABULOUS weekend and we had a wonderful time. Prague is beautifulishk.

A couple of interesting observations: Although the city of Prague itself is beautiful, its people are, unfortunately, the opposite. We did not realize how uncannily attractive the great majority of Italians are, so we were shocked by the intense contrast drawn in this eastern european population. We are absolutely positive that we saw the dumpling-like, red-faced figure of Augustus Gloop all grown up and devouring a shank of wild boar in one of our restaurants. We almost broke into the "Oompa Loompa" song, but then stopped ourselves when we realized it might be considered rude. Also worth noting, we decided that every time that we had spotted the "ugliest couple in history," we were forced to rescind said decision shortly thereafter, when another would make their presence known. Ari maintains that the worst one was on the tram: the male tall, emaciatedly thin and sporting greasy mullet over his pimple-ridden visage, and his teeth that could only be described as "capable of eating an apple through a tennis racket". The girl on the other hand, had little to fault except that she was nearly unidentifiable as a female, and clearly found her boyfriend sexually irresistible. Katie maintains that the worst one was in a car passing by: the guy was very similar except for the addition of a nose that would shame Mt. Everest in size, and a girl that was very similar except four times the size and with a colorful mullet-ishk haircut. This might come across as mean... but... come on. Mullets are a personal choice. So is your mate. And your hygiene. We are merely relating more of the local "flavor." Possibly directly related to this attractiveness factor, but the Czechs were also rather surly, in comparison to the almost infallible jolliness of the Italian population. We were momentarily surprised to note that the most cheerful people we encountered were the Starbucks employees (both times we went).

In other news, school going unexpectedly well for us! As it turns out, we are officially brilliant, and getting good grades. We got our music history midterms back today, both of us with A-'s! So, even though our classes are pass-fail...at least we can brag now. We are going to Paris in several days, which should be wonderful, as we are staying with a friend and word on the street is that the city is just lovely. We hope that everybody is happy and well and preparing for their respective thanksgiving dinners. :( We will miss this American tradition, but hopefully make up for it in Paris.

We love you all very much and will see you all in a couple weeks! Molti baci!!

~le ragazze