Organiser Girl

Caught a late afternoon train into Prague and grabbed some food with some others. Czech food is hard on a vegetarian. It seems to be a lot of meat and the only vegetables are salads. Things looked up once I’d found the bagel bar!

Went to one of the English language bookshops and bought Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I bought it because I was hoping that it would take me a long time to read…I did a lot of reading in Prague. Also managed to see Prague Castle, which was NOT a castle.

Just another bunch of buildings on a hill surrounded by a wall. Wrote a lot of postcards whilst I was in Prague, it was pretty cheap postage!

On Monday I went on a day trip with a couple of Aussies that I’d met (both engineers and married to each other!). Went out to this place called Kutna Hora. There was an Ossuary in Kutna Hora. Some guy had used the bones of some 40,000 people to decorate the interior of a church. There were chandeliers and all sorts of things made from bones. I bought a postcard and took a photo…really weird. But kinda morbidly fascinating.

Monday sees me on a train again, but this time it’s a NICE clean Austrian train, yay! Cruising along through some nice Austrian countryside. Cross the border into the Czech Republic and get a new stamp in my passport, cool!
Cesky Krumlov (pronounced Chesky) is a small town that I think is on the UNESCO world heritage list. It’s kinda similar to the medieval style towns that were in Romania.

I stayed in a really small hostel called the Snail Hostel. U Sneka I think it was in Czech. There was one night when I was the ONLY person in the hostel and it was so nice. I took a day off and did some domestic stuff like getting my clothes washed. I kinda needed it, especially as I’d been wearing my long pants for four weeks, every day. UGH! The place had pretty cheap Internet access and also had a kitchen. I chilled out for a while and read books and wrote email…made me feel at home for a bit :-)

Had another lazy day on Wednesday, had breakfast in bed and did a lot of reading. Walked up to the castle and out to the castle gardens. Did some more reading. Eventually caught the last castle tour of the day. I found the castle a little disappointing; it was more like a palace/mansion on a hill. It looked cool from the outside, but the inside was a bit of a let
down. There were however, live bears in the moat! Wow!

When my train pulled into the station, I jumped off and looked for a train to Vienna and lo and behold there was one. Wahoo! Central Europe here we come ;)

When I was on the train from Budapest to Vienna I saw a field full of red poppies. It was beautiful. I’ve seen them before on postcards and in painting, but never have I seen a field full of red poppies in real life. They really do exist!

Checked into this hostel called Wombats in Vienna… they had the BEST showers. It was SOO good to feel clean!

I kinda decided that Turkey, although it’s an amazing place, didn’t feel right to travel around at this point in time. I think, especially if you are female that you need to have a really dependable travelling partner with you, someone that you know well, and trust (which I didn’t have) So I decided to jump on a train that was going from Istanbul to Budapest. The
train left at 8pm on Friday night and arrived in Budapest at about 10 on Sunday morning.

Ouch.

Arrived into Istanbul at about say 11am Wednesday morning. I have to say, that Istanbul is, although its still on the continent of Europe, it most certainly is NOT a European city. I have to say that this is one of the most intense cities that I ever remember being in. There are about 12 million people that live in Istanbul, maybe more. It’s SO polluted. The air looks yellow. I think you see about half of the cities population on the first day that you are there. The air smells different. Most of the men, unless they are trying to sell you something, look like terrorists. I mean it!

On Wednesday I accidentally managed to buy myself a Turkish rug. It’s about 3.2 metres by 1.96. I talked them down to a third of the original price that they were asking, but I wonder if I could have got it for less. I wonder what it is actually worth. Then I had to pay to have it shipped home…and it weighed 16 kgs. Yikes! But, it made it! And what’s more it’s the rug that I paid for too!

Cats are sacred in Turkey, I think they are supposed to be good luck. I saw loads and loads of cats in Istanbul.

The currency is pretty confusing as well. It’s called the Lira, and one Australian dollar is worth about 646,699.86 TL. How confusing! Accomodation is about 7 - 10 million lira a night, which is about $10.85ish and I still have 4 250 000 turkish
lira on me. I don’t think anyone will accept it..I can always try I guess.

Caught the overnight train from Bucharest to Istanbul. The train took
absolutely FOREVER to get through Bulgaria and then we had people checking
passports and tickets all the time…and then we had to get off the train
just after we had crossed the border into Turkey to buy some visas and get
them stamped. What a hassle! The train trip took about 21 hours. OMG!