Prague Trinkets

There are a ton of stands arond Prague full of paintings, photographs, trinkets and touristy things to purchase. This is a watercolor picture of Prague that I bought for my house. I really liked all of the colors.









Here is the watercolor picture that Marianne bought for herself. Posing next to the picture is "ugly baby." Ugly Baby is a doll that Marianne and her uncle give back and forth to each other in comical ways. She received him right before she left for Europe and so we took pictures of him all around Europe at different monuments and locations. It was always good for a few laughs. You should've seen some of the looks she got from people who caught a glimpse of this doll hanging out of the back of her backpack. Good times.


We also both bought copper pendents with our astrological signs on them. They are hand made and pretty cool looking. We thought this was appropriate because Prague is the location of the Astrological Clock tower.
This is probably not our best picture together but I wanted to show everyone our exciting purchases.

The Hostel From Hell

Our first night in Prague we found ourselves in a hostel on the wrong side of the tracks. I'm fairly certain there were some people selling crack on the corner. We were not impressed but couldn't find another place for the evening. The next morning we promptly packed up our stuff, ate the complimentary breakfast of watered down coffee, stale bread and dodgy looking yogurt (okay may be not the yogurt) and spent the morning tracking down a new place to stay. Here is a picture of Marianne calling around to hostels to see if we could get in somewhere. The other picture is taken of the luggage storage room. As Marianne put it, "They should be ashamed of themselves" it was disgusting to say the very least.

OUR SAFE HAVEN

We found a new place to stay that was full of it's own quirks but at least it was clean and in a nice part of town. Here is a picture of our private room. I'm not sure if you can tell but the ceilings were a smidgen low. In fact, we couldn't both stand up straight at the same time in the room but again, let me point out how CLEAN everything looks...

Prague (1st Evening)

Anyone who has eaten ribs at my parent's house should have heard the story from one of my parents about me scarfing down a multitude of ribs one evening when I was in highschool. I took this picture to prove to my parents that I can actually leave some uneaten ribs on my plate. Marianne was nice enough to finish them off for me. They were quite tasty.



Our journey to Prague was disgustingly hot and stuffy. I just wanted to show a picture of how grumpy we were about sitting in a smelly, stuffy, 100 degree train for the couple hours it took for us to get there. Ughh...

Viennese Pez

Pez. My mom told me that I should make sure and get a trinket or some kind of memory from each place we visited. These are some pez that I bought in a grocery store in Vienna. For those of you who don't know, some pez is only sold in the states while others are sold only in Europe. I found this out with my brother Jason at the Pez-cific Coast Convention in LA a few years ago. That's right, I'm not ashamed to admit the fact that I am a HUGE nerd.

Wien (Vienna), Austria

Here is Marianne with an elephant statue. The sign said that it was there for the children. I kept trying to get her to actually get on top of the thing but the rain made it too slippery.










Hedge Jumping

Here Neil was trying to demonstrate the fine art of hedge jumping, a game where people pick small hedges and bushes along the way to vault themselves over.










Neil and Dave were singing "I Feel Pretty" in front of the National Library. They were inspired by the flower behind Dave's ear.










The National Library of Vienna.













Sorry for the crooked picture again but I had to show Marianne sipping wine out of her collapsible cup. This girl was prepared for everything. We were taking it easy one evening. It rained the entire time we were in Vienna so we took it easy most every night we were there.

Sziget Festival - Franz Ferdinand Concert

High-Five Tennis: This is a game that was played by the guys as we walked out of the festival toward the train. Essentially, you have to get random people to high-five you in order to score points. The point system is mirrored off how tennis is scored. It was pretty funny.










Apparently I started a pinching fight. This is me losing that battle.











We were so close to the front for the Franz Ferdinand concert. Everyone got packed in like sardines and you moved with the sway of the crowd. It was a hot, sweaty, loud, beer filled, mesh of people. SO MUCH FUN!
It also helped to be next to two rugby players who kept the crowd from squishing Marianne and myself.






I was enjoying a nice frosty beverage after the concert. I think by the end of the night we all had more beer on our clothes from other people in the show than we had actually ingested.











This was the view from where I was in the crowd. We were dead center (I was kind of pushed up against a metal barrier) and about 20 ft from the front.








Marianne lost in an arm wrestling fight with Big Dave after the concert and she had to do a shot of Unicum. I'm still not sure why she agreed to those stakes although Neil did try to help her win.

Sziget Festival - Budapest

The Sziget festival was held in Budapest and is a music concert that runs for 7 days. It is the largest in Europe and we happened to be there while it was happening. People camp out for the entire time so you can imagine the nastiness of some of the people, bathrooms, bars, etc. It was fantastic.



This is Marianne with our two English friends that we met at the hostel, Dave and Neil. They were both students on break before their last year of school. I took this picture right when we got there.









We were walking around the festival watching some of the other bands on the smaller stages when we came across the cardboard cut outs. This is Neil, Marianne, and myself.










Prior to Franz Ferdinand, the band we were waiting to see, we had shots of a Hungarian liquor call Unicum. The guys had tried it a few nights prior and insisted that we taste it as well. I don't know what bet we lost but it can only be described as a foul shot of Jager with a minty aftertaste that just won't quit. I only did one.







Dave spilled his shot of Unicum and house rules indicated that he had to lick it off the table. This was the fifth day of the concert mind you, and I don't think they scrub down those wooden tables everyday or ever...










Marianne, Neil and Big Dave. Please note that almost every picture I have of Big Dave he is winking

Budapest Touristy Day

This is a view from one of the bridges of the Danube River and the Pest side. One thing we learned after arriving was that Budapest is actually divided by the Danube into Buda and Pest.









We went to the underground labrynth that runs underneath the castle and part of the city. It has apparently been there for ages and was later used for military reasons. They said that it was built to be able to hold thousands of people in case of an attack. It was very dark. I took some pictures just so that we could see on my camera what we were supposed to be looking at in the labrynth. It would have made my mom extremely clausterphobic.




This is the chain bridge. It is a pedestrian walkway that has vendors and artists down the entire length of it.











This is the Budapest Parliament building. It was really amazing to look at in the evening when it was all lit up.