We came in to Italy via beautiful olive and wine country with the snowy Alps walling off the horizon. The golds and greens with red tiled roofs were all so perfect, nothing in the distance looked real. We got off the train and took a vaporetto (taxi boat) into Venice. The nicest thing about Venice [...]

Coming into Hungary someone tried to steal our bags again. Its just routine in eastern Europe. Someone walks into your train car while you’re asleep and scans your stuff. Our stuff was all secured to us, so it wasn’t really an issue. You notice them and they leave. One guy lamely asked for a light [...]

There’s this ossuary in the town of Kutna Hora, an hour outside of Praha. Someone sprinkled some earth from Galalie over the ground of this cemetery, so every moneyed person from all over Bohemia started planting themselves there when they died. The cemetery eroded and overflowed so they moved the bones to this new ossuary. [...]

Coming into Prague was a roller-coaster of good and bad impressions for us. We came into the Czech Republic via train passing through some nice mountainous territory and seriously run down villages. The train station on the north side of Prague was still a communist era affair, very unmaintained. Mandy followed signs to the ladies [...]

Berlin was not all that special. Maybe my impression was colored by being woken up on the train into Deutchland by a kick to the head by a German police officer while he shined a flashlight in my eyes. He may have muttered something like “sorry” as he moved on to the next compartment. But [...]