Prague so far

What's frustating for me is the fact that I haven't been able to find any place to connect my laptop to the internet. I've been writing, but none of it has made it's way to my website as of yet. I guess when I do find that holy grail that is free WIFI, I'll have to upload them all at once.

Right now, I'm sitting on a balcony in a nice, out of the way hostel (Sir Toby's) in Prague. The people are pretty chilled; it's definately not a party hostel. I'm enjoying myself though, it's been almost five years since I last backpacked, and the easy, no preconception mentality of backpacking is something that I've missed. Where else can you walk up to a group of strangers and go on a drinking adventure then at a hostel. What it really comes down to is that when you put a bunch of people together from a variety of countries, there's no barriers to forming single serving friendships.

I'm looking forward to exploring Prague, if not for it's culture and history, then for it's extrordinarily cheap drink prices. When a pint of beer costs you one canadian dollar, and you're a fanatical beer drinker like me, you know you've found your mecca. Well, to be honest, I think that Romania will be my own personal mecca, but this is definately going to be a good introduction to the eastern european culture.

It's quarter to four. I arrived this morning at 8 am on a night train from frankfurt. I, of course, got no sleep on the train, so I slept from 11am to 6pm. I'm a bit worried that I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight, so I'm going to take a sleeping pill to help things along. If I don't wake up, then I probably should have heeded the warning about taking sleeping pills and drinking.

***** Addendum *****

I have since found a free WIFI place (above Roxy's nightclub at Dlouha 33), which I will most definately be coming to in the future. Yay for free internet. I had to put up 3 posts at once, so check them out, along with the photos!

All on my own

Well, for the first time in my life, I'm not surrounded by friends or family. I just left Wally and company at the train station; they are returning to Amsterdam and I am off to Prague. I whole heartedly enjoyed my time in A'dam It is a city with so much history and heritage that myself, coming from a babe of a country, can only gape and marvel at it's extensive heritage. The last two days have been very relaxing for me, as we stayed with Wally's sister's boyfriend's (Moses) parents. We were thrown into a traditional Samoan party the minute we arrived; we were treated to traditional Samoan songs and dancing. Samoan dancing seems to be comprised of getting drunk, hoping around, hooting and slapping your chest while trying to put out a fire with your body. Strange traditions for a very friendly people.

The one thing that I will miss about this place was the food. It may have just Moses' parents, but the absolute delicious nature of the food I was fed left me constantly moaning with delight. It seemed that his mother was always in the kitchen cooking up something new and delicious to munch on. While my stomach protested in the end, it was worth it to sample the delights of German cooking.

I am nervous about this chapter of my journey. For one, backpacking with a laptop is fairly nerve wracking, as you must constantly be protective. It's a tempting target for thieves, and generally speaking, associating with people who are usually skinned for money can lead to some upsetting results. I know that last time I was travelling, I lost my wallet in a hostel (which had $600 AUS!) while I was in the shower. I don't expect this to happen again, but once bitten, twice shy.

So from this moment on, it's time to begin my book. I'm nervous about this as well because lately I haven't been too enthusiastic about my writing style. For some reason, I can't get into the style in which I started this blog. I don't know if it's because the focus seems to be, well, lacking focus, or if it's because I'm not abusing the substances that I was when I started writing. Whatever the case, the words don't seem to flow from my fingers as they did in the past. I can only hope that more writing will iron these fears out over time.

I have five and a half hours to kill until my train to Prague. I've just purchased a portable MP3 player, which is actually doing quite a number on my laptop. Who would have thought that this little trinket could hold so much power - it's one of those USB powered ones, with 512 megs. I'm loading it up with some music purloined from Wally, as well as an interesting ebook by Daniel Robinson - great ideas of philosophy. If I'm to believe that I'm some kind of philosopher, then I should probably bone up on the history.

High Speed Trains and Samoan Parties

It seems ironic that I travelled to Europe to write, and yet so far my writing has been less then forthcoming. Perhaps it's only a matter of getting away from the Internet, because when I'm connected it's as if all those possibilities prevent me from focusing on just one thing. So it's only when I'm on my computer and not on the Internet that I find the time to actually sit down and write.

Right now I'm on the ICE, a high speed train from Amsterdam to Frankfurt. For the last month, I've been hanging with Wally Glutton and his wife, where we spent many nights in deep discussion. It's times like this that I wish I had recorded our conversations, as the breadth of conversation topics that we covered is hard to summarize. For the last year or so, Wally's been travelling around Europe so our month together really recharged me. He's even been giving me writing assignments, over at the quixotic writing bootcamp. I guess a lot of the time we been hashing over ideas for my book, which will probably end up becoming our book. It seems to me that the contraints of dead trees are too limiting for the scope, so it will probably only be available for viewing online. However, that's far in the future; right now I have to deal with the nitty gritty of actually writing.

I will be spending a weekend in Frankfurt, or actually just outside it in Bad Nauheim, Germany. I will be attending a Samoan party, as Wally's sister's boyfriend is Samoan and we'll be spending the weekend with his parents. After this, Wally and his wife will be heading back to Amsterdam, and I will be continuing on my journey. The current plan is a week in Prague, and then onto Timisoara in Romania. It is here that I will be focusing on writing. It's going to be tough, and I might have to give up the video games or even the Internet in order to stay focused. I can literally spend 12 hours on my computer and get nothing accomplished. At the same time, the Internet is just getting more and more useful. Right now, if I have a decent connection, I can call anyone at home for about .02 euro's / minute, thanks to skype. I bought a 10 Euro 'card', and have spent hours talking to friends back home without really making a dent in it. When I was travelling before (in 2000), I think that all in all I spent maybe 2 hours talking to friends and family over a 16 month period. The Internet changes everything.

So after a little more then a month abroad, I don't really have too much to say about my experiences. It's really hard to summarize what I think so far. I guess the best way to put it would be that it's about how I expected it to be. So far, the people have been friendly, the architecture gorgeous, the stimulants cheap and enjoyable. I fear I could easily turn into an alcoholic because of the price. The 'Albert Hein', the big grocery store in Amsterdam, stocks a 500ml can of beer called simply 'Beer', which costs .37 euros each. This Canadian guy I met who had been travelling around the world for 7 months reckons that this is in fact the cheapest beer he has ever come across. It's the cheapest I've ever seen. Many Beers died to give you this information.

I have taken many photos, and they should be viewable at my flickr account. Some of the highlights were Sail 2005, the Circus and of course the gay pride boat parade. I took some photos of Jurassic 5 however they didn't turn out very well. I might put up the bootleg video I took of the mass tribulation that they took the crowd to, but it's pretty big. No guarantees. Anyways, I'll sign off for now.

The Flotilla of Faggots

Ordinarilly, I would view the word 'Faggot' as offensive and prejudiced. However, this phrase is the only thing that can properly describe the Gay Pride Day in Amsterdam that I witnessed today. I've been here for one week and one day, and there's a lot to talk about, but I also find it hard to convey what I'm doing here in a manner that makes sense. Right now, I'm just chilling with Wally and his wife, enjoying the sights and sounds of a very strange city. I think I might leave more verbose descriptions for another day.