The main Prague railway station is a huge beautiful building with three intimidating globe shaped clock spires at the intersection of a massive number of railroads in the center of a bustling city surrounded on all sides by fast paced highways. It also happens to be a block away from our friend Megan’s beautiful apartment we have been staying at and the street I walked down on my morning commute to preschool gave a grand overview of the whole thing. The only problem is that because it’s surrounded by highways and railroads, it’s practically impossible to get there on foot! And since Chris and I are prone to risk taking and danger our method of choice was walking down the incline from the vantage point on the side of the highway with cars wizzing by about 2 feet from our shoulders. 

  
To be honest, it’s probably safer than the first way we attempted which was underground, took us in circles and was full of hobos and sketchy drug deals. But once you enter this grand building, it’s eerily quiet. The vaulted ceilings are painted with beautiful frescos but there seems to be no one there. When you go out onto the train platform the scene is still just as deserted but more derelict. Ceiling tiles missing here and there, broken doorways leading to rotted stairwells or no stairwell at all. After feeling like we’re in some sort of weird communist dream sequence we finally find an escalator down to the basement. Where we discover a bustling metropolis of commerce. It’s like a gorgeous shopping mall down here and it’s FULL of people. And there are three levels of underground surprises down here!

So, after peeking my head into Sephora, as an excuse to get change for the 2,000 dollar bill the ATM gave us, we got lost for about an hour before finally making our way to the car rental place! We thought our lost days were over until the friendly clerk handed us a tiny map and said we should go outside, turn left, then right, then take an elevator to the -2 floor and then just use our car keys to click around until we see the headlights blink. This was just as confusing as it sounds. But somehow we made it out and got our car and just used our keys to buzz it out of the lot. Without any other human being actually seeing us leave.

But, We’re on our way!! 

  First stop: The Sedlac Ossuary. A small church about an hour from Prague that houses the bones of thousands of plague victims & victims of the Hessian wars that a blind 17th century priest placed meticulously into pyramids and also created adornments for the church out of. Including this giant chandelier which is comprised of at least one of every bone in the human body. 

   
    
 After visiting the Ossuary and getting photos for my first annual Madlaw Halloween Card, we went to eat at a Czech restaurant straight out of the middle ages. Complete with strict meats/goulash/dumpling menu, big wooden benches and old wall paintings. I got a beer sampler (one of my favourite things!) And we had one of the best meals of our entire trip! Chris had the foresight to also order a side of grilled veggies. Probably the only veggies we’ve had since arriving in Prague.

   
 
Then, it was on to Croatia! We stayed the first night in this teeny tiny town on the border of Austria. Vineyards on all sides as far as the eye can see. The place we booked on priceline was this little hotel run by a woman and her daughter who happily drove to greet us as we arrived late at night. The young daughter was in her 20s with dreadlocks and when she forgot how to say something in English she just shrugged and pantomimed and said “I mean, you get it.” The mom just smiled in the background, was probably in her early 50s and had adorable braces. The next morning we went down to have breakfast and had more delightful but confusing interactions because the daughter wasn’t there but the mom was leading us around and just pleasantly speaking to us in Czech even though she knew we didn’t understand anything. At one point she turned to me and said something which, I realized was basically “So, you don’t speak ANY Czech? None at all?” I felt proud as I looked at her and said “ne.” haha At least Max the 6 year old had successfully taught me Yes & No in Czech. And that’s about it. 

   
The next day, we headed through Austria. On the way to Vienna, we got stuck in the wooooorst traffic that stopped and started abruptly. After years if driving down roads in Colorado with one way construction and pilot cars, I assumed they were doing some kind of serious construction. After an hour and a half of being in this stopstopstopgogogo traffic, I had successfully painted my nails, complete with complex nail art, all while being the one in the drivers sear, but we still weren’t getting anywhere. I decided not to complain, though, when I looked to the right and saw a beautiful castle on a distant green hill with fields and vineyards in the foreground. 

   

  

 Especially when remembering LA traffic, I realize, there are much worse places to be stuck.  But when after 2 hours of being stuck we realize that the entire debacle is just due to a single traffic light in a small town the highway passes through, I decided that maybe I do miss the foresight of a sometimes overly efficiency focused country. But my nails did look pretty bomb.

  
That night, we spent an uneventful night in Zagreb other than trying to get food at an allnight joint called American Donut which was out of burgers, fries & donuts. False Advertising! 

  But we had a weird ham, chicken & cheese burger with Croatian Beer and hit the hay. The next day, our eyes were locked upon Chris’ grandfather’s hometown Punat! On the Isle of Krk in Croatia, Punat is a quaint seaside fisherman’s village turned tourist hot spot in the last 20 years. 

 We had another amazingly lucky Priceline experience when we booked a little apartment near the marina. When we arrived the lady came out to greet us so warmly and when we told her Chris’ grandfather grew up here in Punat before moving to Chicago during WWII, she told us, “OOh! Punat?! Really? Look! I have bumps! (pointing to her arm) Maybe we are long lost cousins?!”.

The little apartment was attached to her home. As she left to go on an errand she told me “This terrace is yours! But the cat is mine.” I thought we were having a translation issue until I peeked around the corner to see a lazy orange tomcat sleeping in the wrought iron patio furniture in the garden in front of our apartment.

We changed clothes and headed straight for the beach. The city is long and skinny and made up of small one way streets heading sharply up the hill from the coast. At the end of the coastline is a little swimming area where Chris and I felt our first rush of cold water from the Adriatic Sea. I balanced my iphone rather precariously to get this shot of us watching the storm clouds roll in overhead. 

  We brought our cat-shaped umbrella but didn’t end up needing it. A little pebble beach was beautiful overlooking a larger part of the sea betwen Croatia and Italy.

 

 
That night we went to a special type of Croatian Restaurant called a Konoba which are basically adorable little cave restaurants. We had been warned about booking ahead of time in the busy season but on this tuesday night, we were the only ones in the restaurant. I got the Surlice with goulash, a very special pasta dish specific to the town of Punat. And Chris had one big Octopus tentacle that I found especially creepy and he found especially delicious. 

   

  

 That night we talked on the phone for a while to Chris’ mom and found out some really interesting facts about his family including that his grandfather’s family had fled during WWII and his brother had died from Fascist gunfire in the town. His great-grandfather went to the US to get a place for them to move but didn’t send for them in time and Chris’ grandfather and great-grandmother were forced to flee over the mountains into Italy and spent a year in a refugee camp in Italy before being able to immigrate to the USA. Especially in light of the current refugee crisis happening just miles from where we are now, this was especially poignant. We went to visit his grandfather’s old house and a plaque on the wall above the address reads “Trg Zrtava Fasistikog Terora” because the Square in front of the house is now dedicated to the Victims of Fascist Terror. And on the other side of the little square is a beautiful tiny chapel.

   
   
When we went to go check out of our apartment, our host didn’t want us to leave! She invited us to sit on her balcony and told us about the town and about her life and her daughter she missed so much living in Canada. And she told me, with a tone of admonishment how to make Surlice! “Your husband is Croatian, you must make this Punat dish.”

We left feeling blissfully connected and excited and drove around the island trying to get the perfect souvenir. Driving in and out of small and confusing one way roads, we ended up at the mouth of this teeeeny tiny road heading up the hill. In my giddy excitement, I said, let’s go! And Chris was skeptical. “I don’t think this is a good idea. It’s really narrow.” With my typical disregard for any kind of naysay, I just said “Dooo it Do it Do it! It’s going to be awesome! I’ll film!”

I saw tire marks along the road and a couple of different little parking spaces every once in a while along the side. It only makes sense that this street is just deceptively small and must be appropriately sized just enough to allow a car through. Well, folks, I’m here to say, I was wrong. So wrong. This lane got smaller and smaller like the hallway from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Alice & Wonderland. Staring with a foot on either side and then progressively getting to where we had to pull in the side mirrors and finally squeezing to the point at which both sides of our rental car were wedged into the historical houses bordering the lane on either side. Did I also mention that we were on an incline and our car was a standard transmission?

  
As if this nightmare situation couldn’t get any worse, an old Croatian woman emerged from her house and started yelling at us. Literally wedged into rocks and hard places, we just looked really pathetic and sad at her until she came down and tried to help us with big hand gestures and speaking intensely in Croatian. And lots of shoulder shrugging. By some kind of miracle, she managed to help guide us into a little opening she had in her Olive/Grape grove and we did about a thousand point turn to turn around and go back the way we came. But we emerged feeling still terrified and defeated with big yellow and tan scratches along the sides of our car as battle scars.

Alright Punat, you win this one! But Croatia hasn’t heard the last of this little purple/brown station wagon! On to Dubrovnik!

So when I last left you, I was explaining the crazy story of how we ended up living permanently in Prague! Woo! Well, I’m now here to tell you that that dream has now unfortunately been extinguished. Boo! …Buuut it’s ok!

So for two beautiful short weeks, Chris and I were living it up drinking unbelievably cheap beer and subsisting on a diet of mostly sausages and fried cheese.

   

 
  
 We were also living in the corner of the living room of our friend Megan’s apartment in a gorgeous part of Prague just up the street from the main railway station. I was working at the world’s cutest preschool with The Czech Republics cutest children. Said children LOVED me and I wore them as giant kid boots, kid scarves, kid hats, and pretty much anywhere else a 4-6 year old can drape themselves across an adult human.

   
 Working at the preschool was a TOTAL TRIP. I was the only one there that didn’t speak Czech and this confused the children to no end. Even though they loved me and wanted to be draped across my body at all times, they had such adorable frustrations communicating with me through their limited English. And the girl that spoke English the best would do her best to translate what the other kids were trying to say which was mostly “She doesn’t speak English good enough” or “You really don’t speak ANY Czech? NONE? Don’t you know we’re IN the Czech Republic?”

But all of that was forgiven as soon as another girl pointed at my eyes on the 3rd day and said something excited to her in Czech and she translated with excitement, “She says you have eyes like ELSA! You do! Purple & Black lines.” Eyeshadow choice at 7 am that morning – on point.

  
Another funny but adorable thing was reconciling fights/emotional things with kids who had a limited English vocabulary with which to express themselves. The two girls that got most attached to me were best friends, but the other teachers aptly called frenemies because they would get into at least 2-3 fights every day where they would sit across the room in a huff or angrily pull their hand away from their hand holding and give the other the classic cold stare/arms crossed look. The problem is that I would witness all of these but they were speaking in Czech so I had no idea what the argument was about! But they would inevitably turn to me to be the mediator. Aside from how frustrated they were with having to explain things to me, I actually think this was great practice for them with their English skills and social skills. They had to decide whether the dispute was important enough to go through the hassle of explaining to me what they were mad about. I quickly found out that the old model still holds true even in a completely different country and culture. “Did she hurt your feelings?” *pitiful nod* “I don’t think you meant to be mean, but you hurt her feelings. I think you should say you’re sorry.” *something in Czech that body language tells me is an apology* followed by “Ok, can we be friends again?… let’s give eachother a hug.” (I only had to use the ‘like you mean it!” line a couple of times. Still worked like a charm). It’s amazing what can be solved by a hug. I pretty much solved 90% of disputes between the kids this way.

  
Although the commute was a force to be reckoned with (2 metros and a very weirdly scheduled bus) and left me frustrated and confused most days, (it somehow took me 2 hours to get to school on the first day) 

 
   and it took me hours and hours to figure out my metro ID card

– the school itself instantly felt like home. They did a great a job of fostering a really comfortable environment for learning and playing. And, amazingly, all of the kids are given the same thing to eat each day – 2 snacks & lunch, and lunch is always has a soup course and a main course and is classic Czech foods. And no one is a picky eater! That might’ve been the most striking difference between my experiences here and the American kids I’ve worked with. Sure some days the kids said they didn’t like the food, but they would still eat it even if they didn’t like it. I’ve never seen such easy going kids at lunch.

Also, they have a trampoline!

   It definitely brought me back to my childhood when the trampoline in our backyard was my favorite thing in the world and a big part of my daily routine. On my last day, the kids insisted on taking turns jumping with me, which will be one of my favourite memories from my time here. Jumping on a trampoline as a kid is so amazing, it’s just pure excited bliss. And the preschool itself overlooks a beautiful huge mountainside.

  
After waking up most days before 7 am, and running around with the kids all day, I was too physically and emotionally drained to see much of Prague. But Chris spent day after day while we were there diligently searching for a place for us to stay. Megan and her roommates were amazingly generous to let us be stowaways in the corner of their living room for 10 days, but it felt horrible to be in such a state of flux and uncertainty and, even for someone who grew up with 7 other people in the house, I missed having a semblance of privacy. But the Prague rental market (maybe just in September?) is INSANE. We contacted over 50 different people and places, most of which never responded (I’m still receiving email rejections!). We even went to see a place available and in our budget that ended up being the sketchiest place I’ve ever been into. And I’ve been in a lot of sketchy places. 

  And then just when I thought our luck in Prague couldn’t get any worse, we hear from our visa agent that (even though I informed him of this) that he didn’t realize our tourist visas were going to expire so soon (in 2 weeks!) and there was no way we would be able to get our visa applications in on time.

After venting my frustrations quite literally over the side of the Charles Bridge and imbibing a few giant beers (and some delicious absinthe!) Chris and I came up with our new course of action – DO EVERYTHING. Since we only had two weeks left in the EU, we have to try to go to the places we were planning on seeing in the next year of living in Prague and then go to see Ireland (conveniently located outside of the dreaded Schengen Area) and just hang out there and make music for a month or so until our savings run out and we have to return to Texas (or go on to other adventures?).

So, I had a very sad next day resigning from my job and trying not to get teary eyed in front of all the little babes I’d already become so attached to. But we got on Priceline and booked a car rental and plotted our course to the wonders of Eastern Europe and, most importantly, a pilgrimage to the hometown of Chris’ Grandpa Zic in Croatia.

  
 And now… we’re here! Day 2 of the roadtrip and we just pulled into Punat! I’m going to post another update on the roadtrip itself tomorrow. So much to share!

Hey Blog! I’ve missed you!

I know you probably all think, as this blog might suggest, that we’re still wasting the time away watching The Disney Channel in Trijntje’s apartment. As much as I wish that were true, we’ve actually been up to a ridiculous amount of stuff! Firstly, I got a job! in Prague! Depressingly far away from the Dutch kinfolk we’ve come to love, but still in the general vicinity, and more importantly with a work visa on the horizon which will enable us to stay in Europe and not be kicked out in 3 weeks time. Plus, it’s the home of Chris’ good friend Megan who has been super amazing with helping me find a job and so generous in letting us live temporarily in the living room of her gorgeous apartment while we look for our own place.

I’m planning to make a post all about all of the different places we’ve stayed on this trip, so I’ll save the details for that post.

So, after an epic Keizerstraat house party and some tearful goodbyes to our Dutch loves (and some delicious seafood and rousing conversation about Zwarte Piet on the Scheveningen harbor),

 we bid farewell to our bicycle propelled existence in Holland. But we had one issue, our place to stay in The Netherlands was up, but Megan wouldn’t be back to receive us in Prague for another week, soooo… what else to do but spend the week in Paris!

So, we hopped on a surprisingly pleasant 7 hour bus from the Hague to Paris. The company, called FlixBus, was a LOT like Megabus (even down to the much-promised but actually non-existant wifi) and Chris and I snagged seats on the upper deck overlooking the huge windshield and had a front seat view of the Dutch, Belgian & French countryside as we rode by.

 I should also mention that it was cheapAF. It was less than 20 Euros each to go from The Hague to Paris! Which was 8 times cheaper than the cheapest train. And cheaper than our taxi fare from the bus station to our AirBnb in Monmartre, Paris.

So, we did Paris! The weather was completely unpredictable, ranging from 90 degrees one day, and us sweltering in our teeny tiny apartment to 55 and rainy when we went to visit the famous cemetery and see the friendship bracelet laden grave of Jim Morrison only to be kicked out by a very serious guard blowing a whistle to clear out the graveyard at closing time.

 That day was great because the bad weather forced us to be creative with finding things to do and we ended up at the most amazing and bizarre bar/cafe/I don’t even know what that was accessible only by a weird slightly precarious tiny stairway into a loft area covered in astroturf, bean bag chairs and strange art and a DJ playing ethereal African music in front of giant David Lynch-ian projections. We played a gigantic connect 4 at which I strictly dominated Chris and ate some weird/delicious salmon things and a chocolate tart.

  
 We also visited the Eiffel Tower and found a secret spot away from the hoards of guys trying to sell you light up trinkets and sketchy beers in a bucket of water.

  We listened to a podcast from the delightfully nerdy Rick Steves about the origin of the Eiffel Tower and then had our whiskey confiscated in the 3rd of three different purse searches before hiking up the tower. We also found a secret room where they were showing a huge three wall projection of some cool Eiffel Tower history. We just happened into the room near the restrooms, there were no signs telling people to come and watch and the only other people to join us were a pair of tiny kids that has evidently alluded their parents and also discovered this amazing hidden room, and a few staff members who would casually walk in and walk straight through a hidden door in the center of the projection to what I assumed was some kind of strangely placed staff break room. The view from the tower was absolutely stunning and even more so under the light of a beautiful full moon. In a possibly whiskey induced emotional state I cried at how beautiful the moon and the tower looked and a huge tour walking by pointed and “aww’d” at me. I also lost the heel to my shoe halfway up the tower! We walked up an ungodly amount of stairs during our week in Paris. We stayed in the world’s tiniest AirBnB studio just half a block from the Sacre Coeur which is the highest point in Paris. It was romantic and beautiful, but also painful on the thighs.

One night, we walked nearly 5 miles down to the catacombs and back to Monmartre on the hill. We were keeping ourselves on a super tight budget so we survived mostly on 2 Euro Croque Monsieurs from our favourite bakery down the street,

 baguettes, beer and stinky cheese (only one of which was too stinky to handle and we had to throw away instantly although I’m pretty sure the stench lingered with us for a good half hour). We drank absinthe in a tiny indie bar on a side street near the Moulin Rouge and discovered a hidden room in the back with a couch fashioned out of an old bathtub

 . We hung out with the skeletons of 6 million Parisians in the epically creepy but strangely calm and comforting Catacombs.

 We got our photo taken by a tiny French girl on a daddy/daughter date with her dad in an adorable hold in the wall restaurant called The Little Windmill. She told us and her dad translated, that she likes to take photos of people enjoying their time together because being together is fun (He said he and her mom had split up and she now always wanted to document everything).

 And most nights we had movie screenings in our little fold out couch bed with popcorn and beers and watched all the Paris movies we could think of. First the original Moulin Rouge about Toulouse-Lautrec’s life, then The Doors, La Vie En Rose & Amelie. On our final night we watched the moon rise over the Sacre Coeur Cathedral.

 Desperately attempting to avoid the obnoxious street musician standing in the middle of the crowd on the stairs playing a variety of 90s hits, we hopped a fence and sat on the lawn of the hill so sloped that it took a core muscle workout to keep from sliding down it. While we mostly managed to avoid the vibe-harshing music of the street musician, we were still inundated by guys trying to sell us overpriced, lukewarm Heinekens, but the view was spectacular!

The next morning we went and had our first and only meal out in Paris at the Two Windmills of Amelie fame. The breakfast was decadent and delicious!

  I even found myself enjoying Steak Tartare, which I find revolting in general (especially when I accidentally ordered it on our first night out in The Hague! – Who would’ve thought that ‘Filet American’ at a late night street food place would mean Steak Tartare on a bun??). Then we came home to pack, which is when pretty much everything went downhill for a horrrrrrible 24 hours. We were late leaving our airbnb because I got confused about the time our flight left from the 24 hour clock they use here. So we stuffed everything quickly into our bags and were ready to go 2 hours before our flight. 40 minutes to the airport and our Uber was there. Home free, right? Weeeeelllll, halfway to the airport, I’m bickering with Chris because we were both stressed after having to leave so quickly and I suddenly realize, WE FORGOT OUR PASSPORTS AT THE AIRBNB! Uggghhhhhhh, it takes us about 3 blocks to finally translate to the driver that we have to go back, I don’t know how we’re going to pay for the ride because Uber’s system doesn’t really allow for alterations in the route, and oh, side note, WE NO LONGER HAVE KEYS to get in. YIKES. And I don’t have internet or cell on my phone. And our air bnb host is out of the country! This is not good. And I’m really, really regretting having the bright idea of hiding our passports while we were in Paris.

So we spent a good hour going back, trying to track down our host’s sister, waiting for her to arrive, getting our passports back and speeding back to the airport. Halfway back to the airport, we’re set to arrive only 40 minutes before our flight, our driver gets a call, speaks frantically in French and finally turns to us and in broken English says “You did not TAKE key, no?” And we’re like huh? Only to realize that when his sister arrived and handed Chris the key to run up to the 3rd floor to grab the passports, Chris accidentally stuck the keys in his pocket in his hurry to get back in the cab! At this point Chris and I just both simultaneously released epic sighs of frustration and our uber driver said “We have French saying that says ‘some days it is better to have stayed in the bed. yes, this we say here in France.” Thanks, dude. Message received. After a very awkward stop at an ATM and shelling out 60 extra euros for his extra time and him taking the keys back to our airbnb host, we run run run to the gate 40 minutes before our flight only to be rejected by a snooty frenchman at the counter that just shrugged and said “no. too late.”

I think the most frustrating thing about sitting in a weird airport cafe with all of our luggage, sobbing and desperately researching other trains/planes/automobiles to take us to Prague was realizing that we ate super meagerly and penny pinched through our entire week in Paris only to lose over 500 euros by simply forgetting to pack our passports. The only options we ended up with were taking a 20 hour bus with two different bus changes in France and Germany, or waiting 24 hours and getting on the exact same flight but the next day. So, we opted for the latter and went to priceline to figure out where the hell we’d be staying that night. We could’ve stayed in a sketchy 2 star for 50 euro or a swanky 4 star with a pool for 100. So I decided, look, I’m miserable, I’m going to splurge on this nice hotel and at least have something to look forward to in the next 24 hours of purgatory. This ended up being a mistake. The hotel was horrible! Our room had a stunning view of the wall of the building next door. When I called to see if there was maybe another room with a better view (the hotel was definitely mostly empty) the woman on the other end just yelled “THERE IS NO BETTER VIEW MADAME.” Cue more tears. Chris decided that, hey, maybe the fact that we haven’t eaten in about 10 hours is contributing to Libby’s constant leaking face, let’s order a pizza! Genius, right? Until we couldn’t find a way at all to order from the myriad pizza places in the area without speaking french and spent about 2 hours talking on the phone trying desperately to google translate our way into some pizza and failing miserably. Not to mention the complication that we had no cash as we had to give it all to the cab driver. Cue perfectly timed call from my mom and dad. They facetimed me just to say hi and see if we had made it to Prague only to find a red eyed bawling mess on the other end. They finally talked me down from my hunger fueled madness and my mom adorably paypal’d me money so we could afford to order room service. My parents are the BESSSTT. After some scary french phone interactions with the cranky hotel staff, we finally had full bellies and went down to get a beer and breath a sign of relief by the pool before being kicked out by the frantic confused bar tender.

  
  
But the important thing is, we MADE IT TO PRAGUE! We’re HERE! And I’ve spent a week at my new job! I think I finally have a handle on all of the many Czech names and complicated diminutives! More to come soon. I’ll get back into the habit of updating this more often so I don’t have such long epic posts. Let me know if you guys enjoy reading these or if they’re just pointless. Although even if it’s the latter, I’ll probably keep doing them anyway. I’ll probably find this amusing in the future, right?

Missing Texas desperately,

Libby