Quist World Tour

Morning at the Hostel ELF is much quieter than the nighttime. While the crowd is lively and people are in the halls late into the night, all the showers are open and the breakfast tables are mostly empty around 8 or 8:30 am. This made it easy for us to get a decent start without getting up at the crack of dawn. Today’s target: Prague Castle. Since it lies on the other side of the river, we get the distinct privilege of walking through the Old Town again. Yesterday’s golden sun was hiding behind grey clouds, and as we crossed the river, the sky started to spit a little rain. I’d actually gotten a bit of heat rash on my legs the day before, so the reprieve from the sun was okay with me. The complex was first begun in the late 800s, and much of the Castle was built in medieval times, and some of the structures display the remaining walls and foundations from that time. In addition to the castle itself, which honestly isn’t much to see inside when compared to other great castles,...

Sunday morning we gathered our belongings and took the quick subway ride back to the train station.   On the way, we stopped to take a look at one more church, St. Charles Church. Music is everywhere in Vienna, and concert opportunities abound. Outside every church there is someone selling concert tickets, so ticket sales are not unusual to see. St. Charles didn’t stop there, though. This church also offers some sort of virtual reality experience, which I’m guessing probably shows you how some things used to look, but it still seemed like something from an amusement park. On the other hand, maybe it would’ve helped, as half of the inside was unviewable due to a huge elevator added in the middle that offered access to a panoramic experience—a chance to see the painted ceiling up close. Which is nice if you are paying, but we weren’t. It’s a strange thing to have in the middle of a worship space. Sometimes cathedrals feel like such sacred spaces, and sometimes they seem like ...

If you have ever backpacked across Europe in the manner of ambitious young travelers--Lora is hitting 8 countries in 3 weeks--there are a few things you don't have as strong a need to pay for in the last third of the trip. For instance, paying a fee to climb up a tower, or enter a cathedral, or see another palace. These are all fantastic things, but after the 15th or 30th, they start to lose a little shine. So you could go to the summer palace, a place consistently rated as one of the top things to see in a Vienna. And then your middle-aged aunt, sprung free of all responsibilities, shows up and casually suggests a day trip tour to Salzburg, a town she informs you was in a movie you've seen twice, "The Sound of Music," but a movie which in olden days was apparently shown on television once a year and seems to have been a national event.  Your aunt may sound like she's making a casual suggestion, but when you look in her eyes you see a deep longing and p...

I think I'll leave Wednesday to spend a few days in Vienna and Prague. These are not words that I generally hear, much less say, in everyday life. Yet that's exactly what I did this past week. A week before, we'd heard that my niece's friend, who'd been traveling Europe with Lora for a couple of weeks, might have to go home early. Brian and I quickly decided that if Lora still wanted company for the last two legs of her trip, I was in a good place to do that.  As it turns out, the friend did go home, and I was able to get a last-minute ticket with airline miles, which sort of shocked me. So on Friday I booked a ticket to Munich for Wednesday, then reserved a seat on a train to Vienna, where she would meet me. The whole trip there was, as it always seems to be for me, a nail-biter. Two flights ended prematurely with mechanical issues, a third got me to Philadelphia just in time to board my flight to Munich, which was then delayed 3 1/2 hours, so I misse...