Leaving Prague soon

Leaving Prague in a couple of hours, I'm now hanging out in the hostel cafe with Meghan, a Canadian traveller whom Baska and I met yesterday. She's writing her postcards and I'm writing my blog.

Prague has been breathtakingly beautiful to the untrained eye, and I'm sure it would be so much more meaningful if my eyes had been trained somewhat, in gothic architecture and Czech history and the works of Franz Kafka. I think I'll come back. In fact, I think it's quite mandatory that I do, because I touched a certain statue, which is rumoured to bring the toucher back to Prague. Seems like a curse of some sort. And I really don't mind. I've actually been thinking thoughts like "the next time I'm back in Prague I'll have to go for a classical music concert" or "the next time I'm here I'll totally buy a beautiful painting like that".

I've been walking a lot. I've been making unhealthy food choices. (In fact I'm having a humongous bowl of fries right this moment.) I've been enamoured by street musicians. I've been staring at token Asians in the tourist crowd. I've been drinking beer like nobody's business and having no hangovers at all. I've been getting lost in little alleyways that lead into courtyards where ancient markets must have been held hundreds of years ago, on the same cobblestones that horses must have trotted on. It has been good, in a surreal way.

Anyway - Vienna up next. My bus leaves at 5pm and arrives at 9:15pm, and it's a country that uses Euros (I arrived in Prague with not a koruna cent on me, completely korunaless - it was rather interesting, as nobody spoke English and I didn't have any money to take the subway. Worked out in the end, like how things usually do.) and speaks German, which pronunciations makes sense at least even if the content doesn't, so everything's good. I have a CSer host there waiting for me so it will be great.

Moaning in Praha

So far Prague has been awesome. I've met really nice people - two Brazilian girls who got lost with me on the way to the hostel, and this fantastic Mexican guy that I really have to tell you about.

So yesterday after dinner with the Brazilian girls and an American guy I was rather tired and went to bed early with noone in the room, but before I could really sleep this Mexican guy Marko comes into the room and we started talking. And he was so. incredibly. funny. I swear we could've collected money for the impromptu comedy that both of us were making - he shares the exact same sense of humour that I have, and for about an hour or two we were just snorting and giggling uncontrollably - him on the bottom bunk and me on the top bunk, convulsing in hysterical guffaws, cracking jokes about the seven pairs of sunglasses that he had managed to collect during his Europe trip (cue pitch dark eye-rolling here), my inability to recognize faces and the couple who were having sex in the next room the day before I arrived.

Apparently there was an epic 10-second moan, which I tried very hard to coax out of Marko for the best part of the night, and at some point we were building a business empire out of The Best Moan in The World, complete with its moaning merchandise, its moaning cult and a moaning campaign at the Vatican City. And we would make movies of course, about moaning, but foreseeably that would probably spark off our porn enterprise. We were on fire. (So would the Vatican City be, once our moaning cult takes off.) We were moan buddies, and he promised that he would think of me every time he moaned. And I promised him that I would sense it, no matter which part of the world I am.

It is so rare that you find someone that you click with, at the rate that we did, so it was rather sad this morning that we didn't really say a proper goodbye as he moved on. He did leave a note (with a sentimental "Keep on moaning" hastily scribbled), so I'll add him on Facebook later.

And then Baska arrived, and we had a great day walking around the city, with a free tour which was very good. Anyway, I need to go now, Baska's sorta waiting for me, we're gonna have dinner and see the sunset of Praha from a hill. Awesome stuff.