"Cuz everybody hates a tourist...

...Especially when they, think it's all such a laugh."

Just to stick it to the bettors, I make my last post for a little while at a confusing time. Right now it's 5:30 am and I'm in a Prague airport, waiting for my flight out. Pretty nice little place, free internet with a coffee, and I'm even using Firefox! I should be flying to London and then back to the U.S., but I'm not. I suppose I had some bad luck coming ever since my conquest of and retirement from the Paris poker scene.

In any event, after all the nice and safe family stays, I craved the infamous hostel experience, so glorified by everyone but my former partner in crime Carlos. 'Los isn't always 100% on the money, but this time I regret not listening to him. Essentially, someone associated with the hostel stole everything I came to Prague with except for my passport (hidden under the bed cleverly) and some emergency funds. The locks were unbroken and no damage was done anywhere else. It's a long story, but I should probably board the plane. Anyway, suffice it to say I'm not sure how I'll pay for the costs of changing the return flight. I suppose I could ditch seeing my grandmother at all, but I'm not ready to do that quite yet. After all, I have a French passport...oh wait I lost that too. What a worldly and prudent traveller I am.

Famed Euroblogger Belatedly Checks In

Howdy folks! Have you missed me?

Well, my time in Europe has certainly been less 'wired' than I so idealistically envisioned it. This is probably for the best. The last heavily "Wifi" area I saw was in the business district of Paris ("La Defense") with no seats and outdoors. I'll try to give an especially concise summary of the events since my last post, with the scene from Rules of Attraction in mind (you'd know if you'd seen it):

Amsterdam, lots of smoking never very affected, lots of drinking and dumb high Brits and Americans, one awesome club where everyone is semi-Goth but not offensively so and moshing to Du Hast and Gouge Away, for an example of the great selection. Truly great bar that you'd never see in the States. Netherlands architecture amazing from train. Literally four-hour speed tour of Brussels, in part due to oversleeping and in part due to a dutch suicide, "This is just like D.C." and "these waffles suck." First experience of famously bad tourist trap- french (belgian, really) service. Hilarious. Arrival in France, sleep a lot (pretty much defines our time in Paris sadly) I WIN 830 EUROS in a 30 EURO buy-in tournament. Splurge on incredible food with "Praveen II." Awesome Guiness bar with great alterna-cover band. We hang with french girls, I get a fake number. Carlos watches new Von Trier film with me, we fall asleep, but it's awesome. Carlos leaves, I get my passport stolen. Party with Spaniards who I can barely speak to coherently what with massive Sangria intake, hang out with more french girls, and lots of older Parisians, always a prolonged dinner with lots of wine and talking. Boy, France sucks.

Not concise enough, and not very detailed. Also a lot less drugs and hooking up than the scene of reference. Damn. It'll have to do for now, since I'm paying for my time here. I guess reading Down and Out in Paris and London hasn't made me more concise so much as happy to have avoided true poverty.

Worry not- I have been preparing an expanded Stanus-style (refer to Miami '01: The Journal), mostly filled by the days when Carlos was along for the ride. Soon, I will be able to transcribe these in full, gory detail onto here. For now, I give a quick update from yet another internet cafe, this time in Prague. Tonight I meet up with Maja, and tour this city, as tourism seems to be its entire raison d'etre these days.

NB: The hostel experience I've been looking forward to is pretty dismal, so far. Though I should consider myself lucky to have a room to myself, that's not really why I chose to be in a hostel. And yet the way overpriced one nearby was full up tonight. Go figure. Na shledanou!

London

Just got in to London, only to fall prey to only having slept 2 hours on the plane and no hours the night before. Still, even my sleeping habits are no competition to the exciting atmosphere of a new city, one of the greatest in the world--even if on the plane I read an essay in the new Harper's comparing current London to WWII-bombing London's courage and pride. Well, internet cafe time is running out, to paraphrase Muse, but don't worry--Blockbuster and T.G.I. Friday's are right across the street, so...never too far from home!