Prague Prague Prague. Lovin it.

My favorite cities: Prague, Madrid, Vienna, Paris
Memorable meals: gazpacho with bacon and eggs, oxtail stew, beer (Cordoba); "salad sandwich" in the park (Nice); pecan pie desert with coffee on Thalys to Paris
Books read: Underworld - Delillo, History of the Templars - ?, The Third Twin - Ken Follett, Samurai William - ?, Passion for DNA - Watson, Matisse - The Sensuality of Color, "fetal" Robbins
Memorable reading moments: Nice beach, Cannes beach, In front of Notre Dame Paris, Nice park (with salad sandwich), by Zurich river
People met: people working at european parliament in Brussels; Mooccan on overnight train to Madrid; Ms Lopez at Hostal Lopez in Madrid; Scandinavian medical student in Barcelona hostel; "Scott"(?) on overnight train to Nice, then again in Rome several days later; Molecular biologist and English dude at Nice hostel; couple from Indiana at Interlaken hostel, then in Zurich, then in Vienna; Austrian born American at Vienna Opera
Best events: Bullfight in Madrid, Opera in Vienna
Museums: Louvre (Paris), Musee D'Orsay (Paris), Musee Picasso (Paris), Pompidou Museum (Paris), Museo Prado (Madrid), Musee Picasso (Barcelona), Musee Matisse (Nice), Vatican Museum (Rome), Uffizi (Florence), Rousseau Museum (Geneva), Albertina Museum (Vienna), Freud Museum (Vienna)

Alright, well since my last entry in Rome, I've been to Florence, Geneva, Interlaken, Zurich, Vienna and Budapest. All that in 6 days. I told you I was going to pick up the pace of my trip. In Florence I actually ran into a girl whom I had known in college only very briefly. She was more of a friend of a friend but surprisingly she recognized me and even remembered my name. Turns out she is in the exact same situation, having just finished med school and now travelling in Europe with a friend before residency starts. In Florence, I went to the Uffizi after waiting 2 hours on line. I can't say it was worth it. I also walked up the cupola in the Duomo early in the morning before it was crowded and had a nice view of Florence. By the afternoon I didn't know what else to do before my night train to Geneva, so I took the one hour trip to Pisa, which was surprisingly nice. It had become sunny so I sat out on the grass for at least an hour in the shadow of the leaning tower. Geneva was pretty much a dump, like Brussels. Dirty and disorganized. Somehow I had thought these international cities with organization headquarters of the UN, Red Cross, European Union, etc., would be very clean cosmopolitan places but actually they're quite dirty with lots of traffic. It was also ridiculously expensive in Geneva. I spent 30 dollars on a lunch at a Thai restaurant which wasn't even that nice. I also rented a bike and rode around the old city. I went to Rousseau's old home as well which had a nice little exhibit about his life. I have to remind myself to read Emile, and Reflections of a Solitary Walker, when I get back. After Geneva, I had planned on going directly to Vienna on the night train, but there were no seats or beds available so I stayed in Interlaken. At Interlaken I paid 120 dollars to take the train up to the top of snow-capped Jungfrau mountain. It was quite amazing to be that high up and very beautiful. It was worth the money. After Interlaken, I went to Zurich and spent the day walking around waiting for the night train. In Zurich I walked through the old town, went to the Zoology museum, and bought a pair of shorts. For most of my meals in Switzerland I ate sandwiches from the grocery to save money but I did have one great fish sandwich from a place called Nordsee near the train station. In Zurich I also (YAHOO, I JUST GOT CONFIRMATION FOR PRAGUE) ran into 2 people from the hostel in Interlaken. They were planning on stopping in Zurich overnight but couldn't find a room so they decided to take the overnight train with me to Vienna. I also ran into them at the hostel in Vienna. At the Zurich station they had converted a part of it into a movie theater and were showing Jet Li's Hero and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It was sold out though. In Vienna, I had probably the best day I have had so far. In the morning I went to the Albertina which had a neat exhibit on Edward Munch and another on photographs and drawings of Freud's old apartment. Then I went to Freud's apartment itself. In the afternoon I walked around a bit more and then I saw an opera for only 2 Euro. I had to stand in the balcony but I could hear the music and see most of the stage. It was fantastic and 5 hours long. I also met a woman who had been born in Austria but grew up in the states. She was standing next to me and went to the opera for 2 Euro all the time. She was dressed up in a strapless dress and wearing pearls, while I was wearing a sweaty tshirt and dirty jeans. After the opera I took a little walk around the cathedral and ate a chicken rolled in pita bread. Then I went back to the hostel. Today I am in Budapest for the day and will return to Vienna tonight. So far I have spent all my time in Budapest in this internet cafe but I am now leaving since I got confirmation for Prague. BYE!!!!!!!

Alright then, so I'm in the frenzied process of securing my accomodations in Prague and frankly it's looking a little grim. Every single hostel I called (at least 5) were fully booked out, and every cheap hotel/pension was booked up as well. Every place I called seemed incredulous that I was asking for a reservatoin for tomorrow as if reservations needed to be made weeks in advance. So ultimately in the end I had to use a travel service to book a regular hotel for about 60Euro per night. Except the only thing is that I'm still waiting for email confirmation from the travel service. If it turns out that the service can't find me a room either I may be screwed. That would suck because I'm supposed to be meeting 2 of my friends in Prague on Thursday. It's all very frustrating because I'm not sure whether I've committed to this travel service or whether I can still continue to look on my own. If I don't receive an email by the time this internet account runs out in 30 minutes I will start looking on my own and then if I don't find anything I will just show up at the hotel in the morning as if I had received confirmation.

Today was my second day in Rome and I went to the Vatican, St. Peter Basilica and the Vatican Museum, which took up pretty much the entire day. At the Museum I ran into two of the people who were staying in the same dorm room as me. And just a few minutes ago I ran into someone I had met on the overnight train from Barcelona to Nice. I guess the tourist world is a pretty small place. There are only a few places in each city where a tourist is likely to go, and with railpass travellers who have only 1 or 2 days in each city, there is a good chance that many of them will be there on the same day. Anyway, I'm starting to feel a little better about this trip even though it's not turning out the way I had expected. I am seeing quite a lot of Europe with relatively little trouble. Walking around instead of taking taxis or mass transit is saving me a lot of money and I get to see more of the city than I would otherwise. Thank god I bought these hiking boots before I left the UK. They were probably the single best purchase I have made in the last few years and they are serving me very well. Except for the blister I developed on the first day while walking through Paris, I have had no problems with my feet at all. In fact, I frequently think to myself how comfortable my footwear is in comparison to the brown shoes I was using to walk around the UK. The other things I purchased in the UK in preparation for this trip such as the blue shirt and the blue sweatpants have been pretty much useless. I dumped the sweatpants in Paris, literally, right into a garbage can and I am thinking about dumping the blue shirt since it is too large so unless I tuck it in I rarely wear it. The nike bag I bought has been useful in the sense that I have been using it every day, but in the same sense, it has not been useful because if I was going to use it every day I might as well have brought my regular shoulder bag which is more comfortable and handy. The whole reasoning behind the nike bag was that it was just a knapsack so I could fold it up and put it in my main backpack but I rarely do that since there is always a place to leave my main backpack, whether at the hostel or in the station locker. So today, I also sent out 2 postcards from the Vatican which has a more reliable postal system than Italy. One was to the Medicolegal center in Sheffield thanking them for the elective and the other was to D and A in Ireland. Actually I had written them both postcards from Spain but never sent them off. And I didn't think to bring them with me to the Vatican so instead I bought 2 new postcards and wrote new messages. I guess I will have to throw the old ones away since I pretty much said the same things over. It's too bad because I really liked the postcards I had bought from Cordoba. Tomorrow I am going to Florence to see the Uffizi. I have decided that I have to be more efficient with my travelling so I am going to spend only 1 or 2 days in each city from now on, taking as many night trains as possible. If I can see the Uffizi during the daytime, I will take a night train from Florence to Switzerland or maybe even Vienna or Budapest. Depending on how much of a supplement I have to pay it will probably be more expensive to stay on the train than in a hostel but I will be able to see more. I have pretty much seen all of the major cities that I really wanted to see, Paris, Rome, Madrid, so there is really no point in staying longer than 2 days in one place. Maybe Amsterdam will be the last place I go where I will stay longer.

I don't know why I'm writing these entries in reverse chronological order, but I want to fill in the gaps so let me just write briefly about my 1.5 days in Barcelona. Barcelona was dirty, and felt kind of strange, a little evil and decadent. The streets were narrow and plastered with dog shit. The main strip, Las Ramblas, was crowded and had more tourists than locals. The first night, I walked up and down Las Ramblas and didnt do much else. As I was going back to the hostel, I heard 3 or 4 successive explosions around the hostel and on the last explosion, a policeman on a moped dropped his vehicle and set off running into an alley. There were more sirens and police on mopeds circling around the area for the next 30 minutes, I guess they were chasing and looking for the people who set off the explosions. I got the sense that there was some kind of political upheaval going on I didn't know about. At the hostel, a guy from Australia told me he had his watch stolen off his wrist the first night he was in Barcelona. The next morning I went to the Picasso museum which was great and actually made the trip to Barcelona worth it. It was mostly works from his earlier period but it was nice to see that Picasso really was talented as a traditional artist. After the Picasso museum I went to the Sagrada Familia which is some bugged out Cathedral still under construction designed by this guy Guida who used a lot of esoteric symbolism to design the cathedral. His other works in Barcelona actually are quite nice in a normal, non-satanic way, but the Sagrada Familia was just a little bit weird for a church to have bizarre, esoteric symbols everywhere seemed to invite accusations of satanism. That was never mentioned though, and generally all the pamphlets I saw seemed to indicate that the Sagrada Familia is a beautiful, loved work in progress of a very devoted and faithful genius. After the Sagrada I went to the station and waited for the overnight train Nice. I took a regular train to France and then an overnight train from a little town. There was a guy from Texas who I met at the station who was kinda doing what I was doing, travelling alone with a railpass (and actually I think I saw him today at the Colosseum), and a couple from Australia. I seem to be meeting a lot of people from Canada and Australia, but very few from America.

The past 2 days I was staying at Nice, which was quite comfortable, although not as comfortable as Madrid and not as exciting as Paris. In the mornings I would take little trips along the coast, first day to Cannes and second day to Monaco, and in the late afternoon I would end up reading at the beach. The beach at Cannes was really nice and I spent a good day beach hopping. Didn't see any stars or really have anything to do with the film festival, but I didn't really expect to either. Monaco was also pretty cool because they were setting up for the Grand Prix in 2 weeks. I walked up to the Palais where the Prince stays and also went to the Musee Oceanographique, which is just a really nice aquarium once directed by Jacques Cousteau. On the last day in Nice I walked up to the Musee Matisse which was free and actually ran into two of the guys staying at the hotel who I had chatted with the day earlier. One was from Canada and the other from UK. I ran into them on my way out though so I spent the day on my own and I was leaving for Italy that afternoon anyway. So after the Matisse Museum I bought a great sandwich that was basically a tuna egg salad sandwich with onions, olives, lettuce, tomatos, tuna, and hardboiled egg all chopped up into little pieces and soaked with olive oil and vinegar. The bread was large and had a thick hard crust so the outside stayed dry but the inside was soaked with the salad dressing which made like a little pocket to keep the salad and the sandwich together. It was probably the best sandwich I had. I ate it in the park, drank 2 cans of ice cold coca-cola and finished the last 300 pages of the book I was reading, the Third Twin. I didn't realize it but I was sitting in the park for almost five hours in the same place. So that was my stay in Nice.

Arrived in Rome this morning on the overnight train from Nice. Managed to get a few hours of sleep even though I didn't have a couchette. I shared a seating cabin with a husband and wife from Thailand who were nice enough, but the husband's feet stank up the entire cabin, and he kept shutting the window after I opened it. The first place I visited was the Basilica of St. John Latera which was right next to the Roma Termini. It was 7:30 AM and there was hardly anyone out, but pretty soon people in suits on their work started coming in to pray before going to work. I found a dorm bed in a place near the station as well, although the manager made me come back 2 times because he was unsure of the bed situation. But he let me leave my bags in the lobby so I spent the morning walking around Rome, which overall I have to say is pretty disappointing. I went to the Colosseum which cost 8€ even though there really isn't much to see or do. The lady at the counter was also turning people away because they didn't have change for large bills. I only had a 20 bill but she must have felt sorry for me because she gave me the right change even though she turned away the people in front of me. Then I walked around the Roman Forums and visited the Palatine. Then I had lunch at a pizzeria near the Forum. I wolfed down the pizza in 10 minutes because I felt awkward eating alone. After that, I walked all the way back to the hotel, passing the Spagna stairwell thing and the Tervi fountain thingy, both of which I found tacky and crowded. At the hotel, they told me I had a bed so I took a shower and a 10 minute nap after which I felt much better. Then I went out to the Villa Borghese hoping to see the museum but it was closed on Mondays, so I just sat in the park and read for about half an hour. Then I walked back down past the Spagna and just kept walking for at least an hour until I got to the Vatican. By now it was around 8PM and starting to get dark, so I sat for 5 minutes and started walking back, but more directed. It only took 30 minutes to get back because I chose a path that was not necessarily the shortest but that would require the fewest street crossings, which are a total nightmare and a large part of the reason why I don't like Roma. It is definitely not a walkable city. A funny thing happened on the way back. As I was crossing the street where the Via Sistina turns into the Quattro Fortina an old man in a suit asks me for directions, which I somehow am able to tell him because it was the same way I was going. Then he starts chatting with me as we wait to cross the street and asks me where I'm from and whatnot. It all seems friendly enough, but then he asks me if I want to have a drink with him. He says he is a business man from Montreal who had just finished some business here in Rome and was now going for a drink at a bar someone told him about. The bar happens to be down a street right at the junction of Sistina and Quattro Fortina but its a dark, dirty street and there isn't a bar in sight. I tell him I don't drink but he says I can just have a Coke. Anyway, I'm not in the habit of having drinks with strangers who I meet at crosswalks so I was a little brash and just said I was going to go back to the hotel and so I started walking away. Maybe it was rude, but it was also a little strange, and the more I think about it the more strange it seems. Our conversation was totally initiated and continued by him and the invitation was completely unexpected. Then as I was walking up Fortina rather fast a cute girl who looked partly but not entirely Asian was handing out flyers and gave me one with a smile. I took it and smiled back and as I was walking away she said something to me in Italian I think but I just kept walking. I probably could have handled that situation better. Anyway, that was my day in Rome, nothing too fantastic to write about, and probably why I am writing at all, because I am back at the hotel early enough.

OK, so I was a little depressed this morning, but the inspiration to write something was nice to have again, something I haven´t had in a while. This entry will be more practical. Since coming to Madrid I have been to Cordoba, where I saw an incredible mosque-converted-cathedral, slept on a grass field for an hour, and had a great Spanish lunch consisting of tomato gazpacho with bacon and eggs and oxtail stew, fresh baked bread and a chilled cerveza. That evening I saw X-Men 2 at the theater by myself. I was surrounded by Americans who were quite annoying with their incessant chatting and laughing. One of them, or maybe they were Australians sat next to me, and noticed that I was alone which I think shocked her a bit, then I think she felt a little pity for me, which I think is what inspired that whole self-pity episode I had this morning. Overall, it was a great movie though, much better than X-Men 1. This morning I went to the Prado museum and say some nice Goyas, including many which I had studied during the Introduction to Art class at Columbia. For lunch I ducked into a cafeteria-bar for a not-so-great lunch of fried eggs, fried chorizos and french fries. It was combo menu so when the waiter asked me if I wanted a salad I thought it was included and said yes. The salad consisted of wet lettuce brown on the edges, tomatos and a few chunks of tuna thrown on top. The salad ended up costing as much as the rest of the meal, so I was a little peeved at that and didn´t leave a tip. It was clearly a tactic he used, because I saw him do the same thing to another couple of tourists behind me. After lunch, I went to an internet cafe (this internet cafe) and checked on the housing situation in Barcelona but was unable to get anything definite. My plan is to take the overnight train from Barcelona to Milan if I can´t get housing. After that I went back to the hotel room, had a smoke, and then headed out to the Bullfight at Ventas Arena. Definitely very cool and the highlight of my trip so far. I sat next to a Mexican doctor who was a true aficionado and explained all the general rules and some of the fine details to me. I will write about the bullfight at a later time because there are a bunch of annoying loud people next to me and I kind of want to leave. Anyway, that´s about it for now, except for the bullfight. Still no progress in meeting people and I don´t see much of anything happening while I´m in Spain since I´ll be staying primarily in hotels.

Madrid, Day 2, I wish I could say there is more to my unhappiness than a childish fear of being hurt. I wish I could say that my reluctance to engage in a meaningful life is rooted in a sense of artistic integrity or monastic ascetism - even simple spìte would more palatable than the ever more apparent realization that my life has been wasted because of an inability to grow up, a failure to learn as all children passing into adulthood learn, that an essential part of one´s existence lies in being a member of a community, be it work, school, family or friends. Somehow I failed to learn, failed to accept, or was not taught how to integrate into my communities, how to make acquaintances through small talk, a friendly smile, a fleeting moment of eye contact that signals to another an openness to friendship. I never learned how to contact those acquaintances to invite them to dinner or to see a movie or walk through the park on a Sunday afternoon. I never learned how to reveal little secrets about myself to build intimacy, to express my emotions through physical contact, to make myself vulnerable and open. And now a fully grown undeniable adult at the age of 27 I still find myself wondering why life isn´t the way I had imagined it would be, when the answer is so clearly staring me in the face. Part of the problem, though, is that to face the problem would be against my nature. That is, to face the problem, would mean to open myself to rejection, failure, self-contempt, pity, guilt, shame, all of which I know too well in the tiny increments I allow myself to endure at times. And for what? For romantic notions of love and friendship and family? None of which I know of, have never experienced, and have often doubted the sincerity of accounts. I could chalk it up to a cultural gap. I do find that describing myself as an Asian male in a western society is probably the best approximation of my predicament. I often find other Asian males like myself walking through the streets of a strange city completely alone, head bowed, eyes on the sidewalk, walking with apparent purpose but no direction. Loneliness seems to be the natural Asian male condition, unwanted, unadmired, crude, dirty, . Unwanted even by the women of his own race. The antithesis of the suave Italian gigolo, the French intellectual, the industrious German, the refined Englishman, the China man sits alone on a wooden stool outside a store shop window, legs crossed effeminitely at the thighs, sucking long curls of thick cheap cigarette smoke into smallish lungs hidden beneath an unmasculine chest, silent, unresponsive, essentially invisible to frequent passerbys and abhorrent to first passerbys. But the walking Asian male forces his existence upon the world. Look at me, he says, I am going somewhere. I have places to go, things to do, people to see. In that sense, my incessant walking is a form of protest, and yet it is also a form of submission, because in fact, I have no where to go, I am just walking, walking as I used to walk the hallways of my highschool every lunch hour because I had no friends to sit with in the lunch room, pretending that I was going from one floor to another, alternating and zigzagging my path so that my silly ruse would not be discovered by passing people repeated times. Such walking is not a protest at all, but an expression of lack of self-esteem. When I walk now, I walk with the purpose of seeing and being seen, I am in fact sight-seeing, even though I as yet have no direction or destination. And so that is what I do, I walk as a form of protest and as a way of seeing. I do not walk for fear of staying still. Although I have to admit that walking on a sidewalk renders one more invisible that simply standing there. So in the end, what does it mean?

Paris, Day 4, waiting for overnight train to Madrid at 7PM. I am sitting inside a cybercafe in front of the Pompidou Museum sipping an ice cold Coca Cola, the first soft-drink I've had in 4 days. I've been subsisting on a steady diet of evian water and various sandwiches bought at local supermarkets, partly as a measure of fiscal austerity and partly due to the fact that I don't have the guts to sit down at a restaurant for a meal by myself. I've been staying at a hotel called the Hotel Arona in a great location right by the Opera house. Its a tiny little room with a balcony overlooking some Japanese mall. Seems like I've been in Paris for a month, I've spent most of my days walking around. I developed a blister on my right little toe, but fortunately it didn't pop, and I placed a premptive bandaid on the bugger which has staved off the pain. Anyway, I don't really feel like writing much right now, it's a little embarrassing to be honest, sitting in a cyber cafe in Paris, writing a journal entry on a computer screen that other people can see. I'll just be brief and say that I left for Ireland on Saturday and was met by A and D at the ferry terminal. I've always felt I underappreciated the value of my friendships, especially the few that I now have, but after spending several days with A and D I have come back into touch with the importance of friendships. They were so kind and D even took a day off from work to spend a day with me in Cork, a day which I would otherwise have had to spend alone. Anyway, we explored the coast of West Cork, went to a bar/nightclub in Skibbereen where a techno band was playing. It was actually pretty good, great in fact. Euro techno even in a tiny little Irish town beats anything from New York. On Thursday or so, I flew from Cork to Brussels, Belgium and they saw me off. It was a little like saying bye to family. I arrived in Brussels after dark, around 10 PM and had to walk through some scary neighborhoods to get to the hostel. At the hostel, I met 3 people all of whom worked for the European parliament, which I had never heard of. One guy from Slovakia had just started his job and gave me a brochure about the Parliament. An expat American worked for the parliament for several years and said it was a big bureaucratic mess, moving its entire operations between 3 cities every few weeks. He also had some pretty severe criticisms of US policy under Bush. So that was all I saw of Brussels, and the next day I was off to Paris. In Paris, I first tried to go to the youth hostel, but the one in town was full, or closed, and I had to go to one on the outskirts of Paris, near the last stop on one of the lines. The neighborhood was ok, but the hostel looked like some kind of building in Somalia with windows wide open, music blaring, people leaning out windows throwing trash out. I actually made a reservation and paid because I thought that was my only option, but later I spoke to someone at the tourist office who booked me a room at the Hotel Arona, and so that's where I stayed the last 3 nights. Overall, I'd have to rate my experience in Paris as a 5/10. The highlight was probably sitting in the square outside Notre Dame at dusk. Tonight it's off to Madrid!!!