To Whom It May Concern:

I'm gonna have to say 'whoa whoa whoa' again. Yesterday was so amazing! I got up pretty early, because I was planning to walk to the Prague Castle. The city was really nice in the morning, there weren't a lot of people yet and the temperature was quite nice. I had no idea how to actually get to the castle, so I just figured I'd get to the other side of the river, and walk up the hill until I got somewhere interesting. Before I got there, though, I got distracted by a really big wall with a tiny little passage in it, so naturally I decided to go in there to see what it was. It turned out to be the Senate Garden, which was open to public. It was really beautiful and calm, with hedges and fountains and trees and statues. When I sat down on a bench to watch the Senate Building (really nice too!) some albino peacocks came out and started walking around and begging for food. There was also a big artificial stone wall, which was made to look like a natural stalactite wall, with but with all kinds of creatures carved out in the stone. They even had a big aviary with owls, it was pretty amazing.

After that, I went on my way to find the castle, which was a pretty far climb uphill, but once I got there, I had the most amazing view of the city. There were also a LOT of tourists already, so when I walked over the plaza I kept having to duck and move around because of all the people taking pictures. The whole thing was a pretty amazing sight, so I can't really blame them! I did want to see the St. Vitus Cathedral, which is located at the centre of the castle building. There was a really long line to get in already, and after a bit of waiting to get in, it turned out I needed a ticket to view the actual interior, and without it I could only stay in the beginning of the church hall. I decided I didn't feel like going outside, getting a ticket, and standing in line again, so I got as many good looks at the interior as possible, left a donation in the donation  box, and went out again. I sat on a bench in the shade in front of the church and the central plaza for a while before heading back out of the castle buildings.

I took another route down the hill and went back over the river, to visit the Jewish Quarter of the city. It was really impressive. There was one building which had all the names of the Czech victims of the Holocaust written on the walls, which made me quite emotional. I was lucky I wasn't the only person wiping away some tears, because otherwise I might've felt a bit silly!
I then moved on to the Jewish Cemetary, which had a LOT of gravestones all falling over each other, with inscriptions in Hebrew I could sadly not read. According to a Jewish tradition, people put tiny pebbles on the graves instead of flowers. After that I got into a tiny little museum showing all kinds of paintings and objects depicting Jewish life. There was another museum in what used to be a synagogue, with again a lot of objects and information about Jewish life, I think I really learned a lot from reading all that! Lastly, there was the Old-New synagogue, where according to legend Rabbi Loew's Golem is still lying underground.

After I finished my tour of the Jewish Quarters, I went back to the main streets of the tourist districts, and decided to visit the Sex Machine Museum. There were some interesting objects on display, but it was mostly a large collection of dildos. There was also a showing of vintage porn, but it wasn't that interesting, according to all the old people in the room looking really bored. The whole experience was kind of fun, but not something I'd regret skipping next time. The saddest thing was that they didn't even have a souvenir shop!

When I finally came back to the hostel and had checked the internet for a bit, I decided that even after a day of walking around, I wasn't really that tired, and I wanted to do something fun and social. I thought I'd go to the hostel bar, but when my roomie asked me to go on a pub crawl (which are apparently organised every night) I decided I'd just do that. We first went to get some dirt cheap but good pizza (my hawaii slice had sauerkraut on it? Weird but tasty) and some cash before taking the tram downtown. In the tram we met a Brazilian dude who asked us for directions to the Old Town, and since we were going that way anyway, my roomie told him he could just come with us. I think it's lucky I was with her, because I would've just pointed in some general direction or said 'I dunno, maybe ask someone else?'. But the guy turned out to be really cool and ended up going with us to the pub crawl. We went to the meeting place on Old Town Square, and couldn't find the pub crawl group we had intended to join, but instead found another organisation. The people took us for a ride on a multi-seated, round bike (which was pretty scary!) and told us about their pub crawl, which was, according to them, a lot more fun than the one we intended to join. We decided to join this one instead and got a discount coupon too. After we bought our tickets and got a free t-shirt, we were let in to the home bar, where we could drink all the booze we wanted. We first got some cranberry vodka shots, and the pints of beer were literally shoved in our face when we were standing at the bar. I also tried an absinth shot. It's good, but crazy strong. My roomie and I both had smoke coming out of our ears! We met a lot of people from a lot of places all over the world and were having a really good time (although I was getting kind of dizzy from the alcohol, but that went away once we got outside). We went to three pubs and got a free shot at every one. Most of the pubs had a dance floor of some sort, so I ended up having dances with a lot of strangers, and it was incredibly fun. The last stop was a club, which is apparently the biggest of central Europe, with five floors and different music on every floor. My roomie was a bit anxious about it, because a few nights back she'd been to a club with the hostel, which turned out to be a really sleazy place with everyone doing drugs and having sex. Luckily this club did turn out to be fun.

I had so much fun dancing, it was amazing. The dance floors weren't very large, but there were a lot of cool people. Our Brazilian friend told me to dance on the platform with all the pretty girls, and it turned out it doesn't matter if you're not a really hot girl wearing a nice club outfit, all that matters is if you're having fun and being enthusiastic about it. I guess the secret to succesful clubbing is showing you're having a great time, and people will come up to you and start conversations or dances and you can just have a lot of fun without worrying about whether people will like you or what they'll think of you. I mostly realised this when a guy came up to me and wanted to give me a hug because he really liked the fact that I was obviously having so much fun and smiling so broadly, and that made me even happier. It's kind of hard to express what I was feeling then, but I was so amazed that even a shut-in like me could have so much fun socialising and dancing in a club with music I normally hardly ever listen to. It was like an epiphany.

We met even more people from everywhere, and we also decided to check out the other floors. We danced at some, but the first floor really turned out to be the most fun, so we went back there after a while and had some really fun conversations with some dudes from Austria and Spain. We decided to leave because we were all getting tired, and we got lost on the way back, too. I think we took a massive detour through the city before finding the right way to the tram stop where we could luckily take a night tram. I was kind of sad because we had to leave the Brazilian dude we'd been hanging out with all evening and really became a new friend, without getting his e-mail adress, because we only remembered right before the tram stop my roomie and me had to get off, and we just couldn't memorise it on the spot. It was a real shame, because I really would've liked to exchange the pictures we had all taken that evening, and of course generally keep in touch with someone we had so much fun with. But other than that, the evening was just so amazing.

I've been typing for hours now, think it's time to get some breakfast. I'll probably be visiting the Mucha museum today.

To Whom It May Concern:

Whoa whoa whoa. Prague is nice! The train journey wasn't that nice, though. Well, the view was nice. The border area between Germany and the Czech Republic is beautiful, with mountains and pretty houses and castles and forests. But it turns out it's impossible to get some sleep on those uncomfy seats (who'd have thought?). I think I slept about an hour, in total. I remember waking up a few times. But I was really glad when we finally arrived. It took me quite some time to reach the hostel, not because it was hard to find or far away, but because I needed to find an ATM to be able to buy a tram ticket. So naturally, I only realised this after I got out of the park in front of the station. I figured I'd go back to the station, and indeed did I find an ATM there. When I got back out of the park, I noticed a sign for an ATM only a few metres away from the tram station. I didn't feel very smart. But after I got a ticket, it was pretty easy to get to the hostel. It's not a very long walk from the train station, too.

There was a bed left for me at the hostel, luckily. I couldn't make a booking because I don't have a creditcard, but I was lucky it wasn't fully booked. I couldn't get into my dorm yet, though, because it was still being cleaned, and I had to come back at about 15.00. So I went off to the train station again, because I wanted to sit down for a bit and the park seemed like a good spot. But as soon as I sat down, a lady came up to me, sitting down next to me, pretending to cry and asking for food or money. Since my bag was really heavy and I had some fruit juice in it, I decided to give her that (I don't usually like giving beggars anything, but I reckon some fruit juice wouldn't be that bad, and I wanted to get rid of it anyway). She then had the nerve to say she'd rather have ' Coca-cola' (beggars can't be choosers, lady!), but I told her it was good and healthy, so she accepted it anyway, drank it, and went merrily on her way. Some more homeless people came up to me, but I kept reading and writing in my travel diary, so they all went away pretty quickly. After a while I decided I wanted to ride around town for a bit, because I did get a 24-hour ticket. I took some trams in random directions, and saw quite some nice sites. I then took a tram I knew would take me to the hostel, but got out a few stops after where I should've gotten out, and walked back (I was trying to make it take a little more time, because it was only about 13.30). Around 13.45 I arrived at the hostel, luckily the room was cleaned already, so I could get in immediately. It's a pretty nice room, with ten beds. I decided to stay in the rest of the day, because I was really tired and had a huge headache. I tried to sleep for a bit, but couldn't, because I was thirsty. I then drank some tap water.

That was a big mistake.

I didn't really notice anything at first, besides the soapy tasty, but I thought that was caused by the bar of soap lying next to the tap. I drank quite a bit, before going downstairs to use the computer (free internet! Whoo!) for a bit to tell everyone I arrived safely. My cell phone has no reception at all here, so it's pretty useless. I bought a bottle of cold water at the reception, because I figured maybe the tap water wasn't such a good idea? I had some of that before trying to sleep again, but I couldn't sleep for a very long time because of the headache. After a few hours my roomies left to go to some kind of bar, with the hostel staff. I finally fell asleep, but woke up again because my roomies came back in and some of them made quite a bit of noise. It then took me quite some time to fall asleep again. I woke up at about six, feeling horribly sick. I made it to the bathroom in time, splashed some water in my face, tried to get back to sleep, and repeated this procedure quite some time. At about nine, I decided to take a shower and go downstairs to get the breakfast I had a reservation for. It was quite disappointing, the 'many kinds of flavoured and natural yoghurt and all kinds of fruit juice' turned out to be one kind of flavoured yoghurt and some orange-coloured sugar-flavoured kind of water. I took some cornflakes, but I had to stop halfway of eating because I had to hurry to the bathroom because I was getting sick again. I finished the rest anyway, because I was really hungry. I went back to the hostel with the intention of staying in bed all day. I talked to the roomies left (quite a lot had left in the morning) but after they all left, I realised I was really bored and I couldn't really sleep anymore. I decided to go outside and walk around town for a bit, because I figured that would be infinetely better than staying there and feeling sorry for myself all day. And guess what, it was!

I walked back to the train station again, and took a road that, as I figured, would take me to the river, which I wanted to see. I came past a lot of sight-seeing spots, lovely squares, small roads and all kinds of nice places. I also noticed there was a Sex Machine Museum (definetely going there later!) and I walked to the Old Jewish Quarter, because my Prague tourist guide mentioned a nice walk through there. I found it pretty quickly, but it turned out there was an admission price for the entire place, and I didn't have enough cash left to pay for it. So I decided to go back there later, and walked on to the Charles Bridge, which has all kinds of statues of saints and kings. It was really nice to walk there and get a nice view of the city. There are a lot of merchants and artists there, but they didn't bother anyone, like the ones in Paris or London. They actually kind of ignored everyone, except the people making purchases or requesting a portrait. It was quite a new experience!

I walked around on the other side of the river for a bit, but as I was getting hungry, I didn't walk very far. I tried to find a cheap place to get some food and a drink. I even contemplated McDonalds, but decided not to. I got a Chicken Pita and a cola at some pizza place with a lot of customers (always a good sign) and ate it on the way back over the bridge. The food definetely helped me feel bettter too. I visited the Bridge Tower too, there was a room with a nice view over the bridge, so I sat there for a really long time writing in my travel diary and reading the information boards (which really had a LOT of information about Charles IV, who was a really important person back in the days). The guerds (who were actually dressed as medieval guards) were looking at me as if they thought it was weird someone would actually read all the information there (the fact that I was there for over an hour might also have played a role in that). But when I was finally done reading and writing, I decided to head back to the hostel. It was quite a long walk back, and I managed to take a wrong turn and get lost, too. I didn't really mind, because I could pretty much see where I had to go, but I was getting pretty tired and my feet hurt, so I did want to get back. I did find the right way eventually and got back to the hostel. I still have some bread left from the train trip, so I'll have that for dinner, and tomorrow I'll get some cash and probably some proper breakfast before heading to the city castle.

Whoa, too much text!