Notes from the Czech Republic

Notes from the Czech Republic

The following are scraps from the contents of my Czech Republic notebook: anecdotes, short stories, thoughts, jokes, and other incidences of travel from the eastern swath of Europe.

-“Anarchy forever,” spoke Tomas the anarchist archaeologist as he thrust his fist into the air. He was speaking to me as we sat huddled in front of the campfire. “I look at my priorities, and I see me first, Anarchy second, and everything else third.” Tomas is going to Norway to spread the good words of Prince Peter.

-“I have always wanted an older brother,” Shishuka spoke, “and I always imagined him to be like you” [meaning me].

-Nine years of travel has lead me to believe that all cultures are the same and all people are different.

“I am riding my bicycle to Turkey,” I told the old Czech winemaker.

“Yes, it is on the road,” came his simply reply.

-A posh and pompous female mayor in Moravia once decided to make a great monument to commemorate her reign. So she build a giant, extravagant, and costly public fountain.

Now it is full of bathing Gypsies.

-The mayor of Prague sometimes dresses up as a tourist and takes taxi cabs from the airport to find out if the drivers try to cheat him. If they do so, he rips off his disguise and berates them personally.

I should probably be careful who I hold up in dark alleys these days.

-The Czech word for roller blades sounds remarkably similar to “BruceLee.” My friends were talking of fruit-booting when I thought we were going kungfu fighting.

-Miroslav Horni (pronounced Horny) went to England to see what he could see. Need I say anything more?

-The old Czech soldier once bet his drinking buddies that he could catch a 90kg carp. They did not believe him. So the next night poor Carp was carried into the bar by his old soldier friend.

-Around a camp fire I was trying to get a recording of traditional Czech folk songs. After listening to many beautiful songs of old sung by defacto choirs I was asked to sing the American national anthem. “It is not such a good song,” I protested. I sang it anyway.

And this promptly put a quick end to the cultural exchange of song.

The Czechs clearly did not want to be subjected to an encore.

-If Santoka did not travel and write his haiku of beauty and of woe then he would not have inspired me. He traveled and passed through loneliness, hard-Roads, sorrows, and joys so that I can read of it now. I must say that the world is a little brighter a place because Santoka’s journeys and the words that he left behind. The world still needs traveling beggar poets.

-Leaves, I like leaves, I say as I drink my morning tea and smoke my morning pipe of tobacco. Leaves, I like leaves, I like drinking them, eating them, and smoking them.

-Could the dream of the traveler be slightly fallow? Naw.

-If you ask for a beer for 250 CZK you will get marijuana in the Czech Republic.

-“I would like to live in France but I think I would miss some kind of humor that is not present there,” thus spake Nicola from Olomouc.

-Got sarcastically told, “Are you writing a book? Because if you are I am waiting for it,” by a raging bitch.

-“It is interesting to note the very noticeable stench of confidence emitting from a girl who just got rammed,” I thought to myself as I watch a girl who just got rammed.

-In Prague
Sitting in Frantz Kafka Square
Drinking wild-berry tea and Smoking a pipe
I realize that Women are beautiful

-It is far easier to convince yourself that you do not want something than it is to go and get it.

-“So you take notes on how much money you spend?” I asked Tyler from AbroadandBeyond.org.

“Yes, that is how I can stay away for so long.”

-“I was raise by a man as a boy. I have balls.” -Kaitie from New Hampshire

-I miss the days when people believed in the power of things like the run-on sentence. -Wade on Kerouac

-I suppose that a woman’s visual senses of sexual attraction must, in fact, really be more subdued than that of men. For how else could women have sex with us hideous apes?

-Man in bar comes up to me and offers me something in Czech. I do not understand the Czech language but I gather that he is offering to buy me a beer. I nod my head yes and say thank you. He starts to leave the bar and nods for me to follow. I look at him puzzled. He reiterates his offer with his hand wrapped as if around an imaginary sausage bobbing back and forth in front of his mouth. This man was not offering me a beer.

-I foresee a day when immigrants in the USA emigrate back to their own countries for opportunities and dreams of a better tomorrow.

-The response from the tourist center in Olomouc about why there were so many people dressed up as 18th century soldiers in the streets.

*Note- my informant was blond and spoke English with a near perfect valley girl accent. The origins of how she came upon this way of speaking remained in mystery.

“It is like uh anniversary for like uh some battle that happened like uh 250 years ago or something like that. So for the next few days there will be like uh people walking around here in like uh costumes and stuff like that.”

–“Why are you leaving?” I asked a girl on her outward passage from Olomouc

“Because there are still a lot of places that we want to go,” she curtly replied.

“Yes, you are right,” I continued, “I suppose going to places is necessary for traveling.”

-“We are traveling; you are just living,” a girl once said to me in the Czech Republic.

-I told an old Japanese woman what I do for a living and my age. She replied, “Oh, 27, you are young. You can still have a future.”

My deficient temporal prospects was thus acknowledged.

-Writing has nothing to do with writing. Writing has to with living.

-Tips for traveling in Europe:

1.Never spend over $2 to see anything

2. Never spend over $5 in a bar

3. Drink wine out of jugs in fields

4. Smoke a pipe not cigarettes

5. Ride a bike

6. Work

7. Make Hobohideout.com pages as a trade for accommodation

-“Being tattooed is kind of like having a child poking you over and over and over again.”-Emma, an English girl in a hostel in Olomouc

-Sound of strangers laughing brings a sad, bitter joy to the traveler.

-It is amazing how innocent most of the world is, I pondered as I sat in a salt cave with a troop of grown-up Czech girl scouts.