The Unbearable Coldness of Being (in Praha).

My poor frozen ear lobes.

Our bus ride from Amsterdam to Prague was 16 hours. For once Anouska let me sit by the window and I drifted in and out of sleep with my head hitting the glass as the bus rolled along through Germany. Some turks behind us played horrid Turkish pop music and the Germans complained about the seating arrangements. It was worse than the United Nations. When we arrived, it was the afternoon and I was as tired as I had been in a long time. Not just physically tired, but world weary. I was hungry as well and I felt, for the first time, like packing up my stuff and going home. When we got to "Hostel Elf" we had a long nap, which restored my energy and frame of mind. I suddenly realised I was in Prague, in the Czech Republic, home of Franz Kafka and a novel I am quite fond of, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". It is also a country where beer is so plentiful, that it is cheaper to buy beer then it is to purchase water. I have a child-like fascination when I arrive in a new place. I am excited like a dog being told WALK! After our nap, we hit the streets near the hostel and found a pub where we settled down for dinner and beer. One of remenants of communism in this country is that they state on menus the weight of the meal. This has to do with the now defunked rationing system. Displaying the weight of the meal on the menu is very deceiving. When we ordered a meal of 200 grams, we were not sure whether it was going to be enough. Should we order a side to accompany? What about an entree dish? These were questions we asked ourselves. Of course, that immediately changed when the dish was served. Instead of the menu stating "duck, potato pancakes and cabbage, 200 grams (which is what I had)", it should have said, "a fu&king big duck, served with a field of oil drenched potatos, with a large truck filled with cabbage. And this is a traditional Czech meal? How are they not the size of houses? How do their digestive systems survive against such a gluttoneous onslaught? I learnt after a few of these meals that the stomach is a miraclous thing. That after a while, you can get used to anything. By the end of our stay in Prague, Anouska and I could easy eat a meal like this, as well as downing several litres of beer with it. We were in the Czech Republic, where quality and quantity are not so different.

That aforementioned meal was just a small example of what is on offer in the Czech Republic. When I say small, I do not mean that there are a lot of different things to eat, but there are a few things that can be eaten a lot of different ways. Pork for example, can be served roasted, smoked, grilled, stuffed in dumplings, fried, beaten and wrapped in cheese and bacon, made into soup, crumbed and stuffed inside potato pancakes. Now I am starting to sound awfully like Forest Gump's friend Bubba. Lovely as their meat intensive diet may be, it was not long before we were crying out for vegetables. What I would have given for some beans, pees and carrots. I dreamt vividly of pumpkin, asparagus and brocilli flowing plentifully into my comically sized mouth. I would have even digested a large bowl of brussel sprouts and been thankful. One thing I would never tire of is the Czech potato pancakes. This food is a common side dish to traditional Czech meals. It is the most wonderful food imaginable. Words are terribly insufficent to describe the joy of eating this food.

The Czech people are blessed by God. They have the best beer in the world and it is also the cheapest, bar the odd Vietnamese draught beer. The Czech beer is exported throughout the world and is known for its quality. Despite having beer that is fit for Jesus to kick back with after a hard day at the office, they charge a pittance for it. The usual cost of a pint of beer is between 20 and 35 Crown, which works out to be 1.5 - 2.5 Au. That to an Australian is unbelievable. How are the Czech people not intoxicated all the time? Anouska and I found ourselves drinking much more than we usually do. Waitresses asked me if I wanted a beer with lunch and I found myself, more often than not, saying yes. A day wouldn't go past when I wouldn't consume at least 2 litres of it. Even if you are not a fan of beer, like Anouska was, you will find yourself falling in love with this heavenly elixar. I doubt very much that the exported product to Australia would taste as good, because the great thing about Czech beer is that most of it contains no preservatives. That's right! That means no feeling bloated and as long as you are hydrated, no hangover headaches.

The original Budweiser. Bohemian style.

The hostel we were staying at was, we learned too late, a party hostel, where scores of Eastern Europeans come to get very drunk and go to stripshows and prostitutes. Since it wasn't our scene and we spent our nights cooped up in our room. Of course, we were still privy to what was going on outside our room, because we could hear it very clearly. Like the nasally Australian girl, who was 4 foot 11 and wore novelty sized stillettos. As well as being a general loud mouth, she made breakfast very loudly at 3am after a night out. She also attempted to seduce every male there, despite having a 41 year old German boyfriend, 20 years her senior. Another colourful character was the French guy, Oliver, who looked like a neo-nazi, never left the hostel, drunk constantly and gave you filthy, murderous looks whenever you walked past him. I called him 'le asshole'. And who could forget those delightful, drunken Ukraines, who looked at pornography together on the public computer. Fun times, great people.

It snowed on the second day we were there. The city was dusted in icing sugar. It was the first time I had seen snow, but I think Anouska, who had, was more excited, as she open the window and grabbed handfuls of snow and said "LOOK SNOW!" as if I didn't have eyes to behold it myself. I have to admit though, that my child-like fascination did arise and it was not long before I joined her in moulding snow balls and throwing them. When we walked in to town that day, a few hours later, we were still amused by making snow balls and throwing them. Except, by this time, the snow has transmutated with dirt into a muddy mush. When I was a child, I remember watching cartoons where the snow looked so beautiful and light to the touch. No one told me that after a few hours of sunlight and exposure to dirt, it starts to look like runny dog shit from a very sick puppy. But when it stays cool enough after a snow fall, Prague looks magical. The picture depicted is of the town square. It is a poor indication of the je ne sais pas quality snow brings to the cobbled streets of Prague.

Icing sugar, not dog turd.

Prague is yet another example of a beautiful city marred by globalisation, turning our planet into a gigantic corporate cookie cutter. Praha, as it is also referred to, is known as the Paris of the east. It is gorgeous like Paris, but when you see McDonalds and Starbucks (I call it something else that sounds similar) every 100 metres, you start to question what makes a city unique in this ever-increasing capitalistic world. Surprisingly, the architecture, especially in the old part of town, is largely untouched by modern development. I spent half my time looking up at the wonderful buildings. The inner city is also very pedestrian friendly, which I admire. The streets are mostly too narrow for vehicles and they are cobbled. I am not sure why I love cobbled streets in a city so, but I think I am it might have to do with the old world romantic in me. I can envisage Franz Kafka walking along these streets on his way to the insurance firm where he worked thinking up the bizarre plots to his stories. That, in fact, is a sore point of mine. Franz Kafka memorabilia is every in Prague. I find it ironic they are making a lot of money out of someone they didn't give two hoots about in their lifetime, but now that he is a literary icon, they idolise him. They even have a museum. I didn't go, mainly because I didn't want to pay 10 euro to read biographical information on walls that I could in a book from the public library. How often do we hear the narrative of the unappreciated artist? Well here is one more to add to the long list. But I digress - back to the discussion on architecture. The town square, although littered with tourist traps like 8 dollar hot chocolates, is very impressive with its large expanse of cobbled stones and statues, with a very old astronomical clock on one side of it. For some reason tourists like to gather around the clock on the hour to see a very uninspiring clock performance. They like to film it and take photographs as well, just to capture that special moment when it went from one hour to the next. Out of the inner city, you notice the soviet influences a lot more because development in these areas took place after the Soviet occupation in 1968. I love Soviet buildings. It is not because I consider them aesthetically pleasing. Anyone with a sense of taste does not. They are, however, very good at stating themselves as functional and authoritive, which I suppose, is the whole point of communism. The Sovietesque state buildings are very intimating to look at, mainly because of their grandeur. Looking up at one of these buildings makes you feel rather small and insignificant. Again, this is the objective.

Nice town.

One magical, snowy day, Anouska and I decided to hike up to the Gothic-style Prague castle, situated on a hill by the Vtlava river. It was orginally built in the 9th century and rebuilt in the 12th. The "Guiness Book of Records" considers it to be one of the largest castles in the world at 570 meters in length and an average of about 130 meters wide. It was the seat of power for a score of different empires, including Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire. It is a glorious castle, with a history that is likewise. The photograph here shows the St Vitus cathedral, which is situated within the castle. Its beauty matches that of the Notre Dame. The trek up to it was not arduous as Anouska would have you believe. It took us half an hour from the town square, but the journey was worth it. From here, you have an amazing vantage point of the entire city and the title, "Paris of the east", starts to make a lot of sense.

Lovely.

Absinthe has a myth-like status attached to it in Australia because, extract of wormwood, is illegal. I have always been curious to know what it is and how it affects you when you consume it. We first saw it in shops and on menus in Amsterdam. It was quite amusing to see Van Gogh´s image on some of the bottles. I doubt very much whether a chemically imbalanced, ear hacking man who later committed suicide is the best spokesman for their product, but if I could paint like him after drinking that, well, that might be a good selling point. A few people who have travelled have related stories of reckless and strange behaviour induced by this liquor, so we were determined to be responsible with it. I even googled it. It has quite the history. After a bacterium wiped out half the vineyards in Europe, wine became painfully expensive and only the very rich could aquire it. The middle class was looking for an affordable substitute and Absinthe was it. It was a popular drink, especially amongst the bohemian crowd. Oscar Wilde and Ernest Hemingway were also very fond of it, as were a number of afluent painters. Now it was our time to try it. We purchased a small bottle from the corner store and smuggled it back into the hostel. In our room, we set up the scrabble board and begin to play. The internet informed me that it would make you intoxicated, while giving you a sense of clear headnesses. From scientific observation, this premise is incorrect. After five glasses I was just talking a bunch of crap. Anouska, who had less than me, was not amused. I made stupid jokes, laughed a lot and at one time started seeing colours move on the scrabble board. I even composed a poem, which was panned by my one and only critic, Anouska. I thought it was very good personally. It was about Absinthe, surprisingly, and I discussed my thesis through a number of ingenius metaphors such as pork legs that only speak Czech and missing ear lopes. It was rather inspired I thought, but then again, you can't please everyone.

Absinthe. Brought to you by Van Gogh's missing lobe.