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I spent the last week of September visiting my friend Brian Murray, an American who has decided to head behind the iron curtain to attend medical school. We spent the first few days touring the city, and we were able to see Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge, and other historic sites around the city. He also took me out on the town so I could experience some of the Prague night life. When beers are only 50 cents, you have a tendency to drink a few too many, and we definitely fell victim to this scam. A word of caution: if you are ever drunk and hungry in Prague, don't buy a fried cheese and chicken sandwich(aka. smazeny syr). It may be the last thing you ever do.

We saw some of the Prague countryside, courtesy of Brian's friend Dr. Jana. She took us to some town whose name ends with the letters "-ski," and we toured a church full of bones, had lunch, toured another emormous church, and saw an abandoned silver mine.

Next we hit the road in the Skoda, Czech for "piece of shit car." Our first destination was Vienna, where we spent the afternoon walking around in our powdered wigs and velvet robes. We saw a street performer ate some bread and cheese, and saw some interesting buildings. Later we set off towards Salzburg.

After driving for several hours and listening to Brian snore, I started to get a little tired myself. We pulled off and found a hotel so we could get charged up for the next day. We woke up early and headed out to Salzburg, which has to be one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. We hiked up to the castle and got an amazing view of the surrounding country side. I forgot my camera so you are going to have to trust me on this one.

I have felt the need to visit Neuschwanstein castle in Bavaria ever since I was a wee lad, so we set out in the direction of Munich. We arrived at the castle around 5 pm, and luckily they were open until 630. We got a castle tour, and were able to walk around the grounds. This picture of me and Brian was taken from the bridge behind the castle. We are standing about 200 feet over a natural spring waterfall which was one of the favorite sites of King Ludwig, the builder of the castle. This was definitely worth the trip.

We headed towards Munich around 7 pm in an attempt to catch some of the fun at Oktoberfest. We had a few beers in the tents, and then we were booted out around 11 pm. With little else to do, we headed back to the car, reclined the seats, and tried to sleep. Five minutes later we saw some drunk guy taking a leak on the tree in front of our car, so we started honking at him. He came up and started talking with us, and convinced us to go to some bars in another part of town. His name was Rolfie, and he kept trying to be American by using the word "super" every three seconds. He also had a habit of rubbing his crotch on Brian's leg but I am not going to go into that here. Needless to say, we ended up ditching him and heading back to the Skoda hotel.

On the drive back to Prague we stopped off at Karlstein castle where I took this photo. We were all castled out, so we spent some time looking for Russian fur hats to no avail. We also ate lunch at this miserable restaurant near the castle. The food was awful, but I would have eaten my shoe at that point so I didn't mind so much. Brian, on the other hand, was not so tolerant. He has severe buyer's remorse when it comes to food, and will point out restaurants that we should have eaten at for at least two hours after every meal.

We spent a few more days in Prague, and I will post those pictures up soon. I had a great time over there thanks to my friend Brian and all his friends. Just remember, the secret to speaking czech is just adding "-ski" to the end of english words.