It was now fall which meant the weather was getting depressing, but I was getting ready for my 3rd vacation of 2006, my 3rd trip to Europe with my mom. She loves Europe and since my dad hates to travel long term, I end up being her traveling buddy, which is totally cool with me because I am all about visiting other countries and experiencing their life styles. However, I have to tell you that I was broke and tripped out and not going on this trip would have been a good financial relief for me, but I made a commitment earlier in the year to this so I had to stick with it. This time we were off to Austria, Czech Republic, and Hungary. It was almost a two week trip which is just enough, because then I start to miss the American lifestyle and freely speaking English.
It’s Saturday so I am little lazy about giving detailed information for my global endeavors so I am going to keep this one nice and short and just give you some highlights. We flew through JFK which is a crazy airport and landed in Czech Republic. In both airports we saw several soldiers just walking around with nice AK47’s on their arms. I did not get harassed at the airport because of the clean shaven face, my flawless English and presentation skills when dealing with airport security. The welcoming to Prague was very warm-hearted. I had lots of opportunities to speak Russian in Prague because many people understood it, so it felt like the really old days. We took several day tours of the city, did a lot of sight seeing, walking around, hanging out in cafés and restaurants, going to museums, visiting famous city locations, shopping and checking out the fancy souvenirs. We pretty did this in most of the cities Czech Republic is infamous for their glass so they had an unbelievable selection and of various extravagant of glass works all over the city.
We had a tour bus which took us around the city and from country to country. Our next country was Austria. Our feeling of Austria was that it was a little less warm welcoming than Czech Republic. Same type of activities took place. The architecture of the city was very bold and with aggressive classical sculptures and monuments. We got to visit Mozart’s home and went to a classical concert at the hall where he used to perform. I bought a little souvenir violin with his autograph which plays some of his works, it was a unique souvenir so I had to have it.
The next country was Hungary. Budapest at night was one of the best things about this part of the trip. We took a boat ride on river Danube which splits the city in two parts (common in some major cities in Europe – old ways of building cities) and the scenery was just breathtaking, with the whole city being lit up. Budapest was our tour guide’s hometown so he was all nationalistic about every little thing and poked a little fun on the Americans about finding a McDonald’s to eat. I let him slide on that comment because Europeans are clueless about America other than the negative propaganda they see on TV thanks to the fucking asshole president George W. Bush.
Another awesome part of the trip was driving through the Alps when we were going to another country. We stopped for a couple of hours to enjoy nature’s magic creation. This one part we drove by had a huge lake and mountains on all of its sides with people lodging and being outdoors on the lake. I can’t even put it in words how relaxing it was just to hang out by the lake and breathe in the pure fresh air.
Anyway, I had many trip pictures posted on the web back in the fall which will give you a better idea of how things went. I did not do any crazy partying because it was early wakeup every morning and the day being filled with numerous activities, when night came I was so beat and just crashed. Overall, it was very thought provoking and pleasant experience and I got to spend quality time with my mom, even though we bickered back and forth at times because I can be a spoiled brat who missed his US luxuries. So after that trip my official list of countries in Europe is now
France
Spain
Portugal
Hungary
Czech Republic
Austria
I thinking my next visit will be to Italy, but that’s nowhere in the workings yet….
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