hello from Prague

The first thing that we noticed about Prague upon our arrival was the fact that it is cold here! The wind has been strong and biting since we got here. For the first time on our trip we have seen rain and also have had to pull out the toques and gloves when out wandering. Heck, about a half hour after the train crossed the border from Germany into the Czech Republic, it started to hail! So far we have had a nice time in Prague, but English is a rare commodity around here--we really feel like we are in a foreign county here, far more than any of the other places we have visited thus far. We have enjoyed some of the restaurant names ('Pizza Go Home!') and the fact that you can say 'Big Mac' at McDonalds (which is how it is written on the Czech menu) and all you will get is a blank stare. Fun times.

Berlin was a brilliant city, full of history and culture. We took a free tour of the city with the same company who did the free tour in Amsterdam and this one was even better. We saw the Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, the site of Hitler's bunker, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and the Holocaust Memorial, among other things. We visited the Pergamon Museum (which Caitlin loved, though Matt got tired of endless rooms of naked Greek man with their business hanging out) and the Holocaust Memorial Museum, which was completely amazing, but, of course, very depressing at the same time. Our hostel in Berlin was INCREDIBLE--you could honestly eat off the floor because it was so clean and the bathroom resembled that of a 5-star hotel. The staff were so wonderful and made the entire stay by far our best hostel experience of the trip so far.

We have Sunday in Prague and then we leave for Vienna on Monday morning, where we finally have a private room at our hostel for the first time in two weeks, which is very exciting when you are sharing a room with anywhere between four and six other people! We have both been saying how relieved we will be to be back in a German speaking nation because, compared to Czech, German is downright understandable to us both!

If there are any of you who are not on Facebook and would like like a link to some of our photos from the trip so far, drop us an e-mail and we'll do our best to get that to you ASAP! Until next time...