train

HA, back to front photo booth photo. We spent a lot of time on trains, i guess this is an important part of the trip as well. 

braiding the boredom away. 

my mum thinks i'm pretty

Praha 24-26/9

I didn't LOVE Prague. It was ok, I guess. A lot of that has to do with the fact that i spent most of the time sleeping. The other guys in our dorm had a running joke about how I was asleep all the time. Sometimes you just get tired man. I didn't pay them out about being mindless bogan drunks and thats because I understand that sometimes you just can't help who you are. Prague's reputation is that it is exceedingly pretty. while this may be true, what you don't hear is that it is a GIANT TOURIST TRAP. The old square was filled with beautiful buildings and crass tourist attractions. I also didn't like that Prague was filled with butloads of middle aged tourists. you know, the kind with beige pants and fanny packs. they walk really slow and stop without warning and often make whiney noises because really they would prefer to be in their middle american town so they knew where everything was. The other thing that made Prague utterly unbearable was the splitting headache i had from drinking terrible cheap vodka on the night of our arrival. Dear "FUN ROOM", you are not so fun the next day. 

Shamless attempt no. 1: trying to show off tattoo

LC looking sexy + our rome friend Jen

There were some pretty cool things though. 

Hungover much?

There was an AMAZING clock in the old square which, when it hit the hour, had a crazy little skeleton which started pulling a chain which made the bell toll. It was the best thing about the whole town. 

tourist trap 

worst idea ever

Dixieland band (was actually pretty good)

HAM

Shameless attempt no. 2: trying to show off euro-tan

Shameless attempt no. 3: again with the tattoo

These escalators were utterly terrifying. It went up like 7 storeys and was as fast as a rocket. 

Vienna 22-24/9

Vienna was a very beautiful city. It has an atmosphere about it- an effortless cool. Everybody was going about their daily lives with a sense of independence or happiness or something. Something very alluring. But there was no conceit, the people were just cool. effortlessly. 

I spent some time down at the museum quarter on the first day, went to see the collection at the MUMOK. It was a well curated collection of early modernist pieces stretching through to the 50's (i think). Most impressive was the large collection of sculptures which integrated into the collection in a way i haven't really seen before. I guess a lot of galleries focus on paintings (particularly with modern works, often there is a bit more going on in the PoMo area). A lot of the experimentation with form and representation of the human form in early modernism was through sculpture as well as painting. It was interesting to see the aesthetic correspond between the two mediums. 

The royal palace

The next day i went on a tour called "vienna underground". When i first read the title i was kind of hoping it was going to be a tour of the jewish ghetto punk scene or something "discover Vienna's degenerates". Instead it turned out to be a tour of the vast underground cellar network. because of the limited amount of space in the centre of vienna people started to build underneath their houses. Generally speaking every building has as many storeys under it as it does above ground. A lot of these cellars are connected and so there is a vast underground network of rooms under the city. Of course, since the war a lot of them have been filled with rubble and for security reasons many pathways have ben blocked up. back in the day it was sometimes easier to get around underground than it was to deal with traffic up on the road. Also, it was an excellent way for crims to get around! apparently some film was made about it. 

We also went into the crypt beneath St Michels church. In the crypt there were over 1000 bodies. At one point people had been burried in shallow, caskettless graves in the square between the church and the royal palace but when it rained their remains becan sticking out of the ground. the church decided to relocate the remains under the church at which point rich people decided that they too wanted to R.I.P. in the church that was so close to the palace and the royal family. The church built crypts for families accessible Indiana Jones style through stone covered trapdoors in the floor of the church. Later when the church was taken over by new dudes they decided to neaten things up downstairs. Now when you go down there there are several hundred caskets and the remaining bones that had been removed from the square have been stacked. A couple of people that were laid to rest near the air vents have become mummified naturally by the airflow and the church has left their caskets open so that the public can have a chance to see. Their idea for opening the crypt to the public is to make people more aware of death and to get them to think about it rather than putting it out of their minds. 

This isn't a mummy hand. But it is made of real human hand bones joined together with wire and covered in leather. The tour guide thought that someone made it for a prank  or halloween. 

I met up with LC and she took me to the open air markets. It was a wonderful market with heaps of fresh yummy food. We bought some yummy stuff and went down to a park to have a picnic feast. 

STAB

This is where my pickle obsession started, they fished it out of a HUGE barrel for me. MMM, pickle.

 Later we walked through the centre of Vienna and the Jewish quater and found a little bar to have a beer (its bigger than my head!).

Ghost church

We shared a wiener in wien. 

JUNGFRAU

BEST DAY EVER. I got so over-excited by the snow. I too SOOOO many photos and I was planning on load just about every one of them. Then I realised it was over the top. I think you can see by our faces that LC and I had an absolutely fantastic time. Touching snow for the first time, being above the clouds. We made a snow man and snow angels and snow balls. The top of Europe really was a highlight (HAHA).