It was very cold and snowed all weekend.

The roads that connect sleepy Czech villages were empty.

Except for this red car.

But that was it.

Be very very quiet: the village is sleeping.

After an hour of driving, we came upon this castle: Křivoklát.

No one was home, except maybe some ghosts.

And a feline tour guide.

Friend to all animals

And snowmen

But not swans; this swan was mean. He hissed at me. I hide behind a fence and defended myself with snow. Which in retrospect seems cruel, but I was under attack by a magical creature and I have little recourse against such magic.

The swan was clearly enraged.

Possibly because we ate his friend, the duck. Which was delicious.
And I ate two pheasants. Which might have also have been friends to the angry swan; I’m not sure.

And then there was Točník on the hill, nearby the ruins at Žebrák.

How do we get up there?

This road looks pretty, but trust me: it sucks.

Hmmm, maybe I should have turned right at the fork.

I’m getting nervous.

Marcela: Unfazed.

This is a road? Perhaps we should turn back before the ogre finishes his lunch of Yankee stew and returns to guarding his hunting grounds.

This is better.

Hey look! The monastery at Kladruby.

We stopped in Horšovský Týn to buy some pastel house paint…

…and see the castle…

…which was closed for the Winter.

Plzeň, the birthplace of lager-style beer, home to Pilsner Urquell.

I feel so…civilized.

And insignificant.

Some time later we arrived at Švihov, a castle on a pond

Wait? What? Locked?! This can’t be…Let me in! You bozos! I’ll eat yer guts!

You know what, though? That’s fine. We don’t need your pond castle.

There are a hundred castles within fifty miles of here.

And we just found…

a really big lake!

That somebody put next to this super majestic castle at Orlik.

And…the castle is closed for the Winter.

You know I’m tired all of a sudden and I just realized that it’s cold out here.

Czech castles may be shut and locked for the Winter, but once you get inside they lose their charm. That is probably how it has always felt for outsiders.

From the gates, a castle is captivating and evokes the adventures of knights. Inside the walls, a castle feels like a opulent cocoon that protects thieves from the oppressed.

Take, for example, this relic that we discovered at Křivoklát.

This is where our weekend adventure ends. It is time to make the drive back home to Prague. Thanks for coming along. We’ll leave you today at this lone dilapidated shack at the forest’s edge. You should be able to take refuge from the weather there with the bats and mice until you can make some travel arrangements.

The streets of Vienna were awash with footsteps and cosmopolitan echos. We entered a wine store – make that a wine bar. Hoighty-Toighty. Blazers and ascots. Connoisseurs in their realm.

Blair handed me a bottle of red for five euro off the shelf. I approached the counter.

“Can you open this?” I handed the bottle to the clerk.

“Yes. Will you be drinking it here?”

Hmmm. That sounds more expensive.

“No, we will drink it outside.”

“At the tables in front?”

“Um, no…At the park.”

“Very well, sir.”

Obviously we are out of our element here. Look just open the fucking wine, okay? After all, this IS Europe. We are civilized, not European, but entirely Europesque.

Each footstep, every glance, each revealing frames like sonnets. The garden of Austria. The garden of the civilized.

I saw Schiele and Klimt, and Christian Schad with volume and vibrant clashing hues and the feast continued…and before that (I can still recall) sitting on the plaza with espresso doppio, and babies breast-feeding and the tranquility of pages turning. I sipped on this scene while reclined upon a fucshia lima-bean bench like a feline contented upon a window ledge. Nearby, an old woman was made young under the sun and the soft light of contentment.

Look there! There, my friends! There is a marketplace! Between the boulevards. Under this brilliant sky, drenched in this rich air. There is a marketplace for you to find everything fresh that you seek. The freshness of life itself. Or have you forgotten? Like I once did. Go to the market for the bounty of fruit, the regal spread of olives, hot falafel, nuts, wine, dreams and silks will surely rehabilitate your soul.

Carry your bounty in a satchel, over your shoulder or under your arm, to the place where the pavement ends. Feast, for you are alive, and breath in the air, and drink deeply from your bottle and pass it to your companion. And say to him “my friend, today were are alive”. He will surely grin and slap you on the back and throw his head back to laugh heartily toward the stars.

Then I carefully added items to my suitcase, a small plaid number with rollers and a compass in the handle that I purchased at the flea market for fifteen dollars from a Vietnamese peddler in a Tommy Hilfiger shirt.

I packed my linen pants – I have always wanted a pair of off-white linen pants for the summer months. When the cool breeze graces my unmentionables in sweltering July, I am deeply satisfied with this purchase. Someday I may even compose an article about the virtues of linen. It occurred to me that what I now desire is a linen skirt. Though I am likely not bold enough to don such feminine attire: I don’t have the physique. I am not barrel-chested and hairy like the burly Scots that recently descended upon Prague for a football match: drunken, shirtless, raging tattooed lunatics running a muck in knee-high plaid, most certainly regimental under the heavy folds of navy and emerald wool.

Dreams and digressions aside, I also neatly folded the jeans I bought from Zara last May. I hate to shop for jeans – pulling them on and off, dirty socks on the changing room floor, trying pair after pair in vain- it is a tedious process. But alas my old pair of jeans became too big, or I became too thin. I had to scinch them to my waist with my leather belt, which just ended up looking ridiculous from most any angle. Although I view myself in the mirror more frequently than others, it took me a surprising long time to notice.

One constant through my years of travel is that I bring shirts that never get worn. I feel like an abundance of shirts gives me options in the morning on how I choose to look that day, and options are proven to be beneficial – in moderation. I think you and I can agree, that when compared to washing socks, laundering shirts in a hotel sink is a hassle.

Tomorrow morning when I awake, I will cook an English breakfast (eggs, bacon, beans, stewed tomatoes), take the rubbish downstairs to the rubbish heap, walk to the train station, and board a southbound train.

A sketch that I rendered at the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Berlin. The museum of her work is perhaps the most marvelous institution in a city of marvels.

Mechanical Pencil on Moleskin paper

Venice appears to float atop an impossibly vast lagoon, drenched in salty air and gelato. The city is a maze of cobblestone corridors and foot bridges, utterly unnavigable in the late evening after the crowds have returned to their hotel rooms and the storefronts are secured with heavy metal shutters.

On the banks of the canal Rio dei Mendicanti, opposite the Scuola Grande di San Marco (today the city’s hospital), English and Spanish speakers sit on the dark steps of the canal crossing beneath a public telephone sign. The voice of an American jazz singer from my Grandmother’s youth lifts above the soft chatter and into the warm night air. Golden light from the wine bar spills from an open doorway where the barmaid pours house red into deciliter glasses for a half Euro.

Venice does not really exist. Not as a city; not the kind of city that I have lived in or visited in former travels. Venice is a romantic memory of the past preserved in brick and brown stucco: a flotilla of opulence that emerged in layers from the salty backwash of the Adriatic Sea as ancient Italians sought refuge from marauding hordes. Centuries passed before she would rule the waters from Croatia to Crete, lining temples in marble and the pillaged relics of the orient, enriched through conquest and control of the lucrative trade route to India.

Time and Empire have an acrimonious relationship, and eventually the city fell – again and again – finally to Napoleon’s army, ever so keen to violently spread the ideals of the French Revolution, they banished the Doges from their palace above Piazza San Marco.

Modern travelers to Venice find a museum without markers. A city without industry. Unlike Europe’s other treasures, Venice was spared from the bombs of the Second War due to functional irrelevance. As I pass through the mass of sunburnt spectators and marvel at the exquisite work of Renaissance artists and Baroque architects, I try and brush aside the nagging sensation that I am in a sort of Disneyland for refined adults. The facade of Venice is preserved (after the last devastating flood by a gift from the United Nations) but the soul of the city departed with the last Doge.

Though most of old Vienna is free from graffiti, the city apparently allows urban artists free reign on the walls flanking the canal.

Below are some examples.

Compared to the bustle of Old Prague, the maze of dusty trails that wind through the woods is a welcome retreat. Gurgling streams descend the canyons as they make their connection to the river bed in the valley below. The leaved canopy echos the hullabaloo of a thousand birds. The sunlight plays in golden patches along the ground and illuminates the path ahead.

Occasionally one may chance upon a cabin tucked away behind the brush. A man is chopping wood in his garden while nearby a group of friends sit at a table enjoying a midday conversation over a bottle of wine. Those who venture into the woods forget that they are on a hillside above a capital city and come to believe that they have entered the pages of a fable.

Of course your storybook walk might seem all the more outlandish when a twenty-foot-tall giant iron sheep is gazing at you from a clearing. You have interrupted his meal and iron sheep are know to be fairly territorial. A word of advice: proceed slowly with caution, trying not to make eye contact.

Eventually the beast will return to grazing and forget all about your presence.

The hills above Prague have as much mystique to offer as the city itself. The fact that the forrest is so accessible and also lightly traveled, makes it the hidden gem of the city – an escape from tour groups and trinket peddlers. I will have to make sure that this secluded garden remains a local secret.