Well hello everyone.  Than and I are reaching our
three week point now.  We have not yet left the Czech
Republic.  We spent from Sunday the 20th till Saturday
the 26th in Prague staying with Bill and his wife
Denisa.  Saturday we took a 3 hour train ride south
near the Austrian border to a small town Cesky
Krumlov.

Let me back up and summarize the week's events.  

I must confess that when we arrived in Prague my back
was hurting quite a bit.  It had started when we left
St. P.  So I really spent the first 3 days in recovery
mode.  I'm feeling much better now just being very
careful.  Than was my porter to the train here just to
be on the safe side.  

So we relaxed the first few days by reading and
chatting with our host Bill.  Than went out exploring
a little.  By Wednesday I was wandering around with
Than visiting Prague Castle, crossing the obligatory
Charles Bridge covered with hordes of tourists.  What
a beautiful city.  We had a number of great meals and
tasted some delicious beverages.  Note that the IBU is
50 cents per beer in Czech!  

Friday we woke up at 4:30AM and took sunrise pictures
of the Charles Bridge.  This is the ONLY time you can
photograph the bridge without swarms of people all
over it.  Even so, there were a number of drunks
stumbling home at 5am and a group of asian tourists up
before the crack of dawn!

We were staying about 10 minutes from Prague old town
so it was very convenient to walk to every place we
needed.  And Bill's wife Denisa was wonderful to show
us around the city.

Friday night we had a very nice dinner with Bill,
Denisa, and 3 of their friends near the castle.  We
ate on the patio and the weather was perfect.  After
eating and having some nice Czech wine we moved on to
a wine bar to drink a Czech drink called botchka or
something that sounds like that.  It is a young wine
which is still quite sweet and very cloudy.  Almost
white.  It was very good.  We drank deep within the
bowels of the wine bar.  It must have had 7 different
basement chambers that were quite amazing in their
architecture.  Brick rounded ceilings that look very
medieval.

Saturday we left to visit Cesky Krumlov.  It's small
town with a castle and perfectly preserved buildings
which transports you back in time except for the large
numbers of backpackers.  We met up with some
backpackers on the train and followed them to a hostel
and have been hanging out with some of them since.  We
of course visited the castle and have walked around
town.  It was very interesting to find that the castle
is not made of stone like so many other buildings we
have encountered.  Instead they use wood and plaster
and then PAINT the plaster to look like it is ornately
carved stone.  Kinda cheesy when you see it up close. 
It looks like it would make a great movie set ;-).

We tried a horid drink the first night called
Absinthe.  It is a blue liqueur that tasted like very
strong Sambuka.  But it is interesting because you wet
a spoonful of sugar in the Absinthe and then you light
the sugar on fire to dissolve before mixing it in the
shot.  The flame is bright blue and is very
interesting when you have a whole table of people
doing it.  Especially to see everyone's face
afterwards!  Only did that once.

Had to abort plans for rafting in the Vltava river
today due to rain.  We were planning on a 5-7 hour
float down the river.  Well we will have other
oportunities later.

Okay so we took a while but think we have a plan for
the next few weeks. 

Tomorrow we will move on to Grunau Austria near
Salzburg.  We heard Vienna is not very interesting so
we opted to go near the alps and this is where some
other backpackers had been and suggested.  From there
we will go on to Hungary to visit Budapest and one or
two other cities in Hungary.  Most likely near the
huge lake (Lake Balaton) in Hungary.  We may stay in
Hungary for about 5 days.  Afterwards we will spend a
couple days in Slovakia on our way BACK to Prague on
the 9th.  Our new friends Bill and Denisa are moving
to states and are having their going away blow out
weekend on the 9th and we can't miss that kind of
opportunity.  So we may hit a small town Olomouc on
the way back to Prague.  Denisa had suggested it. 
After the party weekend in Prague we will move on to
Krakow and Gdansk Poland for a week.  While in Krakow
we will visit Auschwitz.  That will certainly be an
intense experience.  From Gdansk we will move to
Western Europe heading to Berlin for a day or two and
then we may go to Munich or Switzerland.  We will try
to visit Munich on the 30th of September to meet up
with friends at Oktoberfest (Mmmmm.....Beeeeerrrrr).

Oh yeah, we developed 7 rolls of film in Prague and
the shots look great.  We plan on shipping those back
this week.  Hopefully some shots from that will turn
up on the web shortly afterwards.

Well, I suppose that's enough for now.  Hope all is
well with everyone.  

Na Shledanou,

Chris and Than