Prague

I'm almost done traveling--less than a week and I'll be arriving in Bamberg and beginning a new chapter of my life. Looking back on the past three months, I feel like I've done and seen so much, that its easy to forget things--to let them blur into the background, become part of an endless stream of colors and shapes. Travel is beautiful and disorienting, uncomfortable in the best sense. Uploading the pictures from my camera today of Hamburg, I realized that I'd completely forgotten to mention my short stay in Prague. 

Since I already visited there a few years ago and did the "big stuff"--the castle, the cathedral, a boat cruise down the Vlatava-- this time around I wanted to try and visit some of the more out-of-the-way corners; to see things I might've missed the first time around. I also wanted my pace to be a little slower, to give myself time to relax and stretch out instead of rushing to try and see and do as much as possible in the little time I had. What I found was wonderful.

I met quite a lot of fascinating people there--both in my hostel and the one night I went "out on the town" including quite a few Australians, a Canadian Air Force pilot, an international Narcotics agent from Holland, and quite a few locals. I love the opportunity that traveling alone provides to make friends. Because you aren't with a comfortable group of friends, you are forced to go out and talk to people, to connect in ways you might not have if given the chance to sit back inside your comfort zone. 

On the one full day I had there to see the city, I went to the John Lennon wall which is this beautiful, ever expanding, graffiti mural dedicated to Lennon and the Beatles, which began when he was killed. While wandering around the back streets of Prague trying to find it, I happened across a fence, looking out over the Vlatava, covered in padlocks. I might've mentioned the tradition before that lovers, when they come upon a particularly lucky or romantic spot, lock a padlock around an iron fence to make their love stay. Anyways, there's not a lot more I can say that pictures couldn't say better, so...

My few days in Prague reminded me that what I really love about traveling is not being able to see the big flashy stuff-- the Eiffel Tower, the Berlin Wall-- but rather finding places and people and moments where I connect despite cultural and language barriers. It is so easy see the "sights" without really seeing; I am as much a culprit as anyone else. Yet sometimes I find something at it reminds me that there is an essential difference between vacationing and traveling. One vacations to sit on a beach or at a bar or in a hotel world and make the world's comforts come to you; one travels to step out beyond the easy or the known and find something real.