Mmmm... Budvar

Dublin, Ireland

Boy, time is slipping away fast. At this time tomorrow we'll be on a flight home. So let me get you caught up to the moment. The pictures won't be available until next week, but it'll give you a sense of suspense. From Venice, Italy we traveled by train north to Vienna, Austria. Coming from the absolute madness of India, and the relative crazyness of Turkey, Greece, and Italy, finding ourselves in the organized and sterile world of Vienna was quite a shock. The trains and busses were on time, the subway was on time, it was like stepping into a robotic dreamworld. It's a place where rules are taken very seriously. On our way to find our hostel, we were about to cross the street, when we caught numerous dirty looks from our fellow pedestrians. There were no cars coming, but there was still a neon red hand flashing. It was clear that jaywalking would not be tolerated, and there were several people ready to place us under citizens arrest if this law were breeched. Despite having to get used to the fact that laws were expected to be followed, it was refreshing to be in a place where everything ran as it was supposed to, for once. Vienna is full of cultural things to do, museums, beautiful cathedrals, operas, we didn't go to any of them. Everytime we would try to do something cultural our eyes would cross, our legs would go weak, and a voice would come from nowhere telling us to go directly to the gift shop and buy the coffee mug sculpted to look like the Hofburg Palace, or the tea towel signed by the Vienna boys choir. We steered clear of these places. Instead we took walks and maintained our tradition of taking picnic lunches somewhere scenic.

From Vienna we moved north to the Czech Republic. We first went to a little town named Cesky Krumlov. It's a small medival town in the south, dominated by a large castle and a couple of beautiful churches with tall steeples over looking the town. It was all very picturesque. The whole town is protected as a historical lanmark by UNESCO, as a result very few of the buildings there have changed structurally for hundreds of years. The tourist season had not yet come to this part of the Czech Republic, and as a result we had a hostel to ourselves. We had a double room that was adjacent to the empty dorm room in which there was a kitchen, and a bathroom that had a very exciting feature: a bathtub!!!. It was like having our own house. We spent a week in Krumlov, waiting for Daysha's atm card to be sent to us. As I was about out of money we had to eat and drink cheaply. So we mostly cooked meals ourselves, and drank the cheapest things in town. It just so happened that the cheapest thing in town to drink, cheaper than water, cheaper than coke, at thiry cents a bottle, was the beer. Not nasty American beer either, really good beer. It's really harsh sometimes having to conserve money, but we perservered. When Daysha got her card, we tore ourselves away from Krumlov and moved north to Prague. I was excited, because throughout my travels I've always heard how cool Prague was, a place only discovered by hard-core travellers who sat in dimly lit bars and held significant discussions while listening to hip, jazzy music. We were too late. Bus load after bus load of tourists descended on the city. There were more American accents than Czech. The architecture was very beautiful, but under each building was some guy from California playing the guitar and singing Bob Dylan. It was way too cool for me.

After Prague, we had to get ourselves to London to meet Daysha's friend Maria. So we took a train through Germany to Belgium and took a flight to London. We stayed with Daysha's uncle, who very generously gave us a room to stay in for a couple days. We went out one night with Maria, and took a couple of days to explore the city. We then flew on to Ireland. We only had 10 days to see Ireland, and by now we had finally given in to the fact that we had transformed in to what we had despised for so long. We were tourists. We stayed at quaint bed and breakfasts, went to the tourist sights, ate "traditional" Irish food, and listened to "traditional" Irish music. We enjoyed ourselves. We are now in Dublin and fly home tomorrow. I hope that everyone has enjoyed and have not become too bored with my emails. I've enjoyed sending them, and they have served as sort of a diary for me. I will only be home for 4 days before going back to working on the boat, but if you email me or call me in that time, I would love to hear from you. In about a week or so all the pictures will be up at www.flickr.com/photos/moemntm/and you can take a look. I will send one more message that will follow this one, but it's just a fun little one, nothing too long. Okeydokey, I'll see y'all when I see you. Moe