take your prague and shove itby michelle
First off, let me just say that we didn't really think things through when we planned the trip to Prague. We already had this five day trip to Venice planned. While we were in Venice, our friends C.J. and Mather were going to be in Vienna and we were going to completely miss them. So we thought, why not meet them in Prague at the end of their trip? We haven't been to Prague. We've heard great things about Prague. Let's do this. This gave us about a three day break between trips. Those three days included Christmas Eve and Christmas. I might also note that we had a terrible sleeper train ride back from Venice which pretty much rendered Christmas Eve a wash as I slept through most of the day. At some point, I might write a sidepost about this, but for right now, suffice it to say, I slept nary a wink on that train trip due to an unfortunate and unexpected downgrade in service.
So after the wasted Christmas Eve, the decent Christmas Day and maybe a day or two of recuperating in between, we headed off to Prague in the Czech Republic. The train to Prague is about three hours. Here are a couple things about Prague that are good to know. They don't use Euros. And they don't speak a language you can even hope to decipher. Well, maybe I am stereotyping you, but if you are anything like me (and that's decently awesome), then good luck with reading or eavesdropping Czech. When the young train ticket-taker came by, we asked him to teach us a few key words. I don't think I mentioned this before, but in my opinion the number one most important word to learn in any language is the word for "Excuse me/Sorry." In German, it is "Entschuldigung." In Italian, it is "Scusi." In French, it is "Pardon." And in Czech, as we learned, it is "Promiňte." Closely following that in importance are the words for "Thank you," "Please" and it's always nice to learn your "Hi's and Bye's." I can't remember those words. And in full disclosure, I had to look up "Promiňte" just to make sure I had the spelling right. Even fuller disclosure: I did not.
The train trip was uneventful. When we arrived to Prague, we managed to navigate to our hotels via public transportation relatively easily. Also, in a stroke of lucky coincidence, using Hotwire we managed to get booked at the same hotel that CJ and Mather were at. For those unawares, Hotwire is a travel site where you can search hotels (among other things) via location, star ratings, amenties, price, etc but you can't find out the name of the hotel until you actually make your purchase. I love it. And you usually get pretty good deals. They are not paying me, I swear. (But if you read this Hotwire, why don't you throw some more hotdollars my way.) Anyhow, our hotel was right on the river. And for whatever reason, we got a room upgrade. It was a round bed, mirror on the ceiling and white tiger short of being the master bedroom of a Czech drug kingpin pimp. We were ballin'.
Are you jealous of my frosted closet mirrors?
Later that night we ventured out with CJ and Mather into the city center. We went to supposedly one of the oldest pubs in Prague. You sit down, they come over with a tray full of Jagery type of shots and you take a few, then they come over with a tray full of beer and you take a few, then the shots again, then the beer, and so on and so on. It's like a Brazilian churrascaria but replace the meat swords with alcohol. I took a gander at the all-too-familiar menu and it was kind of the beginning of the end for me then. At that point, I came to my breaking point with the food of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. No offense, Hapsburg! Fighting the urge to storm out, I played it safe and ordered sausage and kartoffelpuffen. Alex thought he was playing it safe but he ended up with something that looked like a beef sundae.
Alex ordered this puzzling dish.
After dinner, as we were walking around the city, I was just exhausted. Prague really looks a lot like Vienna. The architecture is very similar with the differences being the tops of the buildings. And as aforementioned the food is the same Grandma's food I had been eating for three months. There were just more people. More tourists. It was basically just a dirtier version of Vienna. And I'd rather just be in Vienna. That was when I went on vacation strike.
The next day, CJ and Mather wanted to take the train to go see a bone church two hours outside of Prague. I woke up, opened one eye to look at Alex and said nope, then I turned over and went back to sleep. They were gone for the whole day. And I could care less. I lived it up! I used the free internet in the lobby! I had a decent Ceaser salad in the hotel restaurant! I took a bath! On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is gazing upon plague-infested bones and 10 is ballin' Czech drug kingpin style, my day ended up being a strong 9.5.
Alex contemplating becoming a serial killer. Look at the art he could make!
We left the next day. It was a short trip. Perhaps Prague really didn't get a fair shake. Or perhaps Prague didn't step it up enough. I don't know. I would like to blame the circumstances leading up to this trip for my poor impression. And I'd like to give Prague a second chance, but I don't know if that will happen. We might be forever starcrossed. And if you're some Prague person reading this, cut me some slack. You're telling me that you never went to the U.S. or something on a crosscountry tour and after seeing Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Chicago, you just weren't having Des Moines? And if you're some Des Moines person reading this... I don't know what to tell you, I can't imagine your city being anything other then a snoozefest. Good job on the gay marriage thing though! I don't know how to end this paragraph. I'll just end it right here.
flugzeuge, zuge und autosby michelle
I wasn't really banking on doing any stand-up whilst in Vienna. However, an opportunity presented itself to do a USO show in Stuttgart, Germany. That opportunity came by way of Bengt Washburn, a comedian I had never met, though who was vouched for by my esteemed comedy colleague Moshe Kasher. So I knew he wasn't an axe murder. Or, at least he wasn't a hacky axe murderer. Hacky as in bad comedian, not as in hacking with his murderin' axe. No pun intended. And, yes, I am saying I'd rather be axe murdered by somebody who has a good sense of humor or at least somebody that has a bad sense of humor who knows it and doesn't try. The last thing I want before I die is some arrogant boy murderer who feels the need to get overly physical with his technique while making references to things we all remember. Or maybe that's exactly what I want...
Me: Could you please just commence with your murdering? (Hold my hair up and turn my head to the side to expose my bare neck.)
Hacky Axe Murderer: Let me axe you something... (waves his axe around and then paces for about 10 seconds) You remember Nintendo?
Me: ...
Hacky Axe Murderer: You had to blow in those damn cartridges to get them to work. YOU HAD TO BLOW IN THEM! (He drops axe to mime blowing into a Nintendo cartridge.)
Me: (Zork-style: Pick up axe. Kill Hacky Axe Murderer with axe.)
But I digress, let's get back to our adventure. We got into Stuttgart the day of the show and the never-met-before wonderful Bengt Washburn picked us up at the airport and let us stay at his house for the night. He even took us on a bit of sightseeing in the picturesque German town of Tübingen. Proof below:
In Tübingen, Germany with young Ian, son of Bengt
So the USO show was at 7pm preceded by a lovely buffet dinner at 6pm. This should have been the red-flag warning for me. Young, comedy-loving, entertainment-starved servicepeople don't need to be lured in by buffets. Older people do. To them it isn't COMEDY SHOW in capital letters and buffet in teeny-tiny letters. It's BUFFET BUFFET BUFFET (oh, there's a comedy show too?). And do you know what older people do? They bring kids. Sure, that's a great idea. I mentioned something to one of the organizers who came back a bit later and told me she talked to all the parents and told them that this is not necessarily a show for kids and the comics will not be censoring themselves. Then I explained that my problem wasn't whether or not the parents were cool with it, but rather it wasn't my desire to tell any of my jokes with all their innuendo and colorful language in front of children. Also, it might actually make other people in the audience uncomfortable with the kids there too. That was all I could do though. I was introduced and brought on stage. And as I grab the mic, two kids both younger than 7 take seats in the front row. You have to be kidding me, Uncle Sam. I can't remember exactly what I said as I addressed those children but it was a thinly-veiled announcement to the parents that it was extremely inappropriate for their children to be in attendance and shit was gonna get uncomfortable. It worked. Those kids left after my first joke and the other kids left not long thereafter. Mission accomplished! The show ended up being great. The crowd was fantastic. I even got a fancy USO coin for doing the show. And, if you were wondering, it is not legal tender. I found that out the hard way.
Telling jokes to folks at the USO on the Panzer Kaserne Base in Stuttgart, Germany.
The next morning, superhost Bengt Washburn brought us to the train station. We were going to travel to Strasbourg, France. This was our first European train experience. How exciting! We even managed to find our correct track and get on the correct train in the correct car. Did I mention it was a speed train? It was awesome. Well, awesome except for the fact that there were no murders on the train. How am I suppose to solve any train murder mysteries if there are no murders? I thought that's what you did on trains. Next time I'll just have to get the ball rolling and do the murder myself. And a future you are welcome to you.
We had made reservations at a Best Western quaint little mom-and-pop bed and breakfast in the middle of town. We checked in and realized that we got a room with two twin beds instead of a queen. And the Best Western bed and breakfast was sold out for the weekend so we could not switch. Merde! So we get up to our room and we realize that the twin beds are pushed together in the middle of the room with night stands on either side making it essentially a queen bed with a scary dangerous chasm in the middle. This is exactly how the bedroom in our Vienna apartment is set up. It is maddening. It's like a 50s television bedroom up in Europe.
One huge thing we learned in France is... that we do not speak French. I think somehow our brains thought with all of our success learning basic German, we would be able to understand and speak any language. Oh, not true, mon ami. We were just so used to people speaking to us in other languages and then responding to them in German. We were not used to this Frenchspeak. We would listen so hard trying to understand what they said until we realized we didn't have any idea what they said. We would just get so flustered trying to respond which resulted in a string of words from all the languages we knew. "Dankethankyougraciasankyouthay!" And then we would run away. So embarrassing.
This post has gone on long enough. You get the idea. And as a special treat, here is a video of dogs playing in a Strasbourg street. Enjoy.
i know all there is to know about the crying gameby michelle
Alex and I had separate flights from Vienna to Hawaii. Mine was through DC. And that is where this story takes place. I arrived in my nation's capitol about 4pm. I had about an hour and a half to connect and it takes bloody forever to go through customs. You have to wait there in line with a million people in the same predicament as you. And there was this jackass of a guy who was trying to cut past everybody because he has a plane to catch. Really, a plane? Guess what? We ALL have a plane to catch, a-hole. I actually said that to him minus the a-hole part.
I finally got to my gate with a few minutes to spare. And....the flight was overbooked. (Thanks United!) So I just had to wait there for my name to be called. Tick tock. Tick tock. Finally, she sighed and said, I hate to do this. And then she said two names...one not my name and one MY NAME. Hallelujah. Let's roll. (Okay, maybe that's not the right thing to say when talking about an impending plane ride) So I get on the plane where I have been instructed to find an open seat. I spy one right away but the other girl was right there and her name was called first and I am nice so I did something that was going to become very regrettable... I offered her the seat. I did that assuming the other purported open seat was just going to be a few rows back...so I kept walking... and walking... until I found myself at the end of the plane part. Shit, no more seats. Dammit! Why was I so nice to that girl I didn't know? She was probably a jerkface too. Maybe I could just go unnoticed and let this plane take off with me standing here and I could do a choreographed dance between the aisles and the lavatories for the next five hours? I didn't get a chance. I got spotted. I wish I had worn my "inconspicuous part of the interior of an airplane" camouflage. Exit, stage left. Sigh. Cue plane take off. Now show me some despair. Oh, DESPAIRRRRR.
I was so very tired. And so very screwed. It was too late to get on any flights after that one. Alex was on his way to Los Angeles where he was expecting to meet me at my gate when we were then supposed to go to meet the good Jim Hamilton at baggage claim. I had no American cell phone. I had no American money. So I had to go exchange my 10 odd euros for cash and then use that cash to get change from a bartender. Then, I had to travel in a time machine back to 1998 and use a payphone. Oh, the humanity. And I'm jetlagged to the point of feeling drugged. Well, I guess, technically, I was jetlagged AND drugged. It's a PRESCRIPTION!
So then I had to go wait in line. It seems really unfair that they overbook your flight, they screw your plans and then they make you wait in an unreasonably long line. (Thanks United!) Not to mention an unreasonable long line with pissed-off, crazy people. Everybody wants you to join their Team Angry Consumer. I just wanted out of there. It took probably an hour and a half of line waiting before I got my turn. At this point, I was kind of glad to be getting a hotel and some cash. It was late and I had enough jetlag to work through already without adding on another three-hour time difference. There was another flight at 8am in the morning which would put me in Los Angeles 11amish which wasn't going to be so terrible. However, as the man helping me was ringing it up, he realized that that morning flight was sold out too and he wasn't going to have a specific seat available for me. He said that I was first on the list though and it shouldn't be a problem. (DANGER DANGER DANGER) I was too tired to protest though. (No, Michelle. Protest! You should protest!) Sure, fine, whatever. Where's the bed?
I got back to the airport the next morning with plenty of time to spare. I wanted to be the first person at the gate. The rep finally showed up about an hour after I got there and she barely looked up when she told me that the flight was overbooked (Thanks United!) and she couldn't promise that I would get a seat and THAT SHE WOULD CALL MY NAME WHEN SHE DID. She had to say that over and over to people. I didn't want to make her madder so I just sat nearby and waited patiently and hoped hoped hoped things were not going to turn into a shitstorm. Then, I heard her say to somebody that the next available flight after this one didn't leave until like 8pm. SHITSTORM! I started to panic. And I realized that drastic measures needed to be taken. There was only one choice. I had only one option. I went up to that counter and focused on the new less-angry-seeming lady that was now there... and I started, "I know that you have said this over and over and that you'll call my name when you can give me a seat but I just had to say something because I just have to get on that plane. I can't stay here in D.C. all day. I don't know anybody here. (Voice crack) I don't have a cell phone. I don't have any money. (Tears) I've been living in Vienna and my boyfriend is supposed to meet me in Los Angeles and we're going to Hawaii tomorrow and I can't stay here (Full-on crying with an audience)." I looked at her face and I saw that I broke her. She looked back at me with Mom eyes. Mission accomplished. She said to just be patient and listen for my name. I wasn't embarrassed that I cried in public. I wasn't embarrassed because all those people waiting for their names to be called were just jealous that they didn't do it first. And they couldn't do it now. That would be so transparent. Five minutes later, mine was the first name called. And when I went up to get my boarding pass, the first meaner gate lady held on to it, looked at me with these super "tsk, tsk" eyes and said, "Next time... don't cry."
Sorry, mean lady. It worked too good. My only regret is I didn't cry the night before.
pay no attention to the man behind the curtainby drplatt
There's some weird stuff that goes on in Minneapolis hotels. Here's a picture of our ordinary-seeming eighth-floor hotel room:
Ordinary, right?
But let's check out the view out the window.
Wait, a door? Up here?
Now that ain't right. What could possibly be out there?
Now that ain't right
A whole 'nuther room, attached to two hotel rooms, suspended over the lobby and ballrooms, comfortably appointed, and containing a mysterious door (locked) on the other side. Even worse was the trail of stains leading away from the window-door of the adjoining hotel room. Michelle thinks it's a rape hall. I'm convinced it's a Lovecraftian chamber of unspeakable weirdness allowing access for an ancient and unnameable cult of Vikings and cheese curds.
--AP
i’d rather be in eerie, indiana (rated r in some parts)by michelle
Remember that show? If I was motivated, I'd link to it now. I don't seem to be though. I bet you can Google it. I have confidence. Anyhow, I'm not in Eerie, Indiana. I'm not even sure that place really exists. You can Google that too. I'm in Erie, PA. Today was momentous for me. My first day in Indiana. My first day in Ohio. And my first day in Pennsylvania. I can't say that any of these places have left any lasting impressions on me besides lots of toll paying, that horse we saw in the parking lot in one of those states and and, oh, I guess there isn't a third thing. Sorry, rule of threes! I tried.
It was a toss-up between staying here or driving 45 minutes more to Buffalo, NY. We hit some traffic towards the last few miles of Ohio and decided that we were going to just call it a day when we hit Erie. Now, here we are at the Wingate by Wyndham off I-90. It's a pretty new hotel. We got it for $59/night on Hotwire an hour prior to arrival compared to the $95 awesome deal they were offering as their walk-in rate. The first room they gave us was a smoking room and it smelled like an ashtray what fucked the Marlboro Man. OR maybe this... The first room they gave us was a smoking room and it smelled like that exhaling-smoke-from-her-neck lady from Beeetlejuice. Moving on, so we asked for a second room and we were blessed with a handicapped room which is great because we love to roleplay! (Okay, I'm sorry. It was funny. I couldn't help it. And I have to leave it in because it makes me laugh everytime I read it.)
So, anyhow, we hit the road tomorrow morning and will have a long day driving to Boston (575 miles). The word is the continental breakfast here has a waffle bar so I think we'll have a good start to our day. Really, Alex is the one excited about the waffle bar. Personally, I was impressed by the cheese omelets that the Holiday Inn Express had in Chicago for their continental breakfast. I don't find anything special in pouring my own waffles. Doesn't seem so continental. Hand me a waffle, Wyndham! Don't be such a dick.
Now, I know we promised pictures. Alex has promised that he will do the inaugural camera-to-computer picture/video transferring immediately following my posting. You have things to look forward to. At the very least, you will get to see the fantastic view we had from our hotel window in downtown Minneapolis at the Radisson Plaza on Saturday night. You will be jealous.
Okay, that's enough now. I have to go run a bath so I can get my money's worth out of this place's fine Neutrogena toiletries.
And I would like to note that I just caught Dr. Alexander Platt SLEEPING. He has been reprimanded. I got your back. Stay tuned.
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