a few crowns please

in prague there is a small replica of the eiffel tower atop a hill near the center of town. prague, it seems, likes to adorn the tops of hills with various large objects. there is the eiffel towerita, a metronome, two unidentified modern towers, a castle and a more modern missile.

after a long night drinking with some czechs who hated americans in an underground cellar, annie and i decided to take the funicular up to the eiffel tower. the surrounding gardens were supposedly beautiful and a nice way to walk off the burcak (young wine) from the night before.

while standing in the queue (too many brits) we realized that we were a few crowns short of the necessary toll. we had plenty of cash, but the machines at the funicular took only crowns. a nice dutch couple in front of us, whoe daughter had helped explain the situation to us, had plenty of coins and i asked if they would be nice enough to spare 4 crowns. this is the equivalent to a quarter, 25 cents. we weren't asking for much and the dutch man looked at his hand and at the 40 or so crowns he had in his hand, paused for a moment and slowly trinkled over 20 crowns into my hand.

as the crowns passed from holland to american hands annie and i received a little speech. this was, apparently, not solely a good will gesture on the part of the tank top wearing, balding and pot bellied father of 2 from amsterdam, but a political pay off. these crowns, he stated, were his small part to get rid of george bush.

i guess it was the least he could do, and i wish i had my wits about me and asked him for a much larger political donation. if a dollar was all it took, we would all be much more politically active.

fucking healthy

annie and i sat around a pub in budapest the other night with 4 hungarians. greg, a friend of gregs, a friend of a friend of gregs and a friend of a friend of a friend of gregs. it seemed that greg, the only hungarian we knew, wanted to make it clear that the other people were not his direct friends and therefore had not been vetted by him and did not represent his country.

aside from discussing communism and the tartar people, what continually entertained me the entire night was the frequent use of the word ´fucking.´ all of the matyars at our table spoke english quite well, but they preferred to punctuate many phrases with the above word. margaret island in budapest is fucking big, and the neighborhood annie and i unfortunately visited was fucking bad. and of course the baths in budapest, they are ´fucking healthy.´

my solitary bar exam post

DSC00635, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

i covered the walls of my, well annie's, apartment with every subject from the bar. it was an attempt to live with the madness, to soak in simply through existing and living with all the information. hopefully it will prove beneficial, but months will pass before the experiment will show its true value. the day after the exam i ripped every single sheet down and recycled them.

another view

DSC00659, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

taken on a sunny day... saturday... the 28th of july 2007.

don't forget the whale murals

DSC00660, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

here is a photo of the mitchell brother's whale mural. apparently it is $40 to get in nowadays. free condoms, however.