Our 2012 Swan Song….. Prague to Washington, DC

Yes, another fabulous year of adventures and scavenges is sadly over.  It is with great depression that I report on our final few days.

Last day of the Europe leg was spent in Prague in the Czech Republic (another first time country for me).  Prague is built on a river and has an astounding variety of architecture:  from Baroque to Gothic to Cubist to Art Nouveau.  Our list of scavenges for Prague included gathering two different photo montages of examples of 10 different architectural genres as well as ornamentation on buildings and statues. So we spent most of the day with our heads turned up assessing the variety of building styles and looking for gargoyles and statues of saints or gods.  

Favorite Prague scavenges included:

(a) Eat a special type of Czech schnitzel: a smazeny syr. Schitnzel is a battered and fried food, not dissimilar to a chicken fried steak and can be made with chicken, veal etc.  What a surprise when I cut this one open to find: a fried slab of cheese… like a giant Cheese Stick but with no marinara sauce for dipping. It's a heart attack steak.  

(b) We had to find the city clock which has been keeping official time for the city since 1410….It’s an astronomical clock and very beautiful. 

(c) We crossed the Charles Bridge which is lined with statues and shrines. My favorite is the “Love Locks Shrine” where couples attach padlocks to an ornate shrine to essentially “lock-in” their love.  There are so many padlocks that the city had to cut them off each week or there would be no more space. 

(d) We visited the John Lennon wall - an oddity on a tree-line side-street:

When John Lennon was murdered in 1980, graffiti about his music and his life started appearing on this particular wall in Prague.  It was a thinly veiled protest against the Communist regime that still ruled Czechoslovakia: a regime that did not allow music from suspicious singers such as Lennon because his songs promoted peace and freedom. The wall is a constantly changing art piece as new graffiti is put on top of old on a regular basis. 

There is a mini Eiffel tower on a hillside in Prague (approximately 1/5^th the size of the real one). From the top there is a great view of Prague. Naturally we had to hoof it all the way to the top...  legs burning again.

We had to sing Cezch drinking songs in an authentic beer hall.  Since I have to eat the nasty food all over the world, Rainey gets to do the embarrassing perform-in-front-of-total-strangers-and-make-a-fool-out-of-yourself stuff...

And my favorite piece of architecture in Prague... the Dancing Building – a condo complex designed to visually depict the movement and fluidity of dance. Isn't it great?

Observations: Apparently if you are a totally healthy and able-bodied 19 year old, you find it appropriate in Prague to kneel down beside a dog and beg for money.  I wanted to give this kid a flea dip and send him to a labor pool. Get a job, buddy!!!

WASHINGTON, DC:  Our last leg was back to the US for a day in Washington, DC. We only had a few hours for scavenges so we rented bicycles to get as much done as possible. 

And we hit all of the expected sites: Washington Memorial

The Capitol  - with all of its glory

The brand new Martin Luther King memorial - which I liked a lot - except why couldn't they do the statue from an earlier and slimmer time in his life? It's like they picked the most unflattering depiction of him to carved into white marble for all of time. 

And then we found the names of potential ancestors at the Vietnam Memorial Wall.

David and Natasha at lunch...

THE END: And so ends our amazing trip.  We just finished the Awards Ceremony and the Farewell Party.  This year, Rainey and I came in third. "The Sidney Sisters" were in second place (a sister team from Australia - far right) and Andrew & Sasskia took first place (the couple in the middle from New Zealand).  Here’s the winner’s circle…..  

Home tomorrow and back to the real world.  I’m dreading it already. 

Europe Leg

What an amazing few days since I last was in contact… Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Czech Republic… and great adventures along the way.  Just arriving in Prague so I will have to write about this city later. 

We started on Monday in Rome. The city was already crowded with tourists and a real change from some of the remote places we’ve been in the last two weeks.  I prefer the country to big cities but it’s hard not to love Rome.  So full of beautiful architecture and sites. Of course, one of our first challenges was to visit the Coliseum because no trip to Rome is complete without a photo in front of there. 

Then we had to find some religion at the Vatican and St Peter’s Basilica…. 

And re-enact the Audrey Hepburn scene where she throws a coin into the Trevi Fountain  because legend is that this will ensure that you come back to Rome again one day.

 Apparently more than $5,000 of coins end up in the fountain every day !!!!  A lot of people must want to return to Rome in their lifetime.

Day 2 of the Europe leg we set off for Bologna because (a) there were a lot of scavenger point there; (b) I’d never been there and (c) It is May Day in Italy and a lot of tourist attractions and museums are closed for the holiday so going to Florence seemed a waste of time as most the scavenges there would have been shut. On the other hand Bolognas had a lot of stuff to do that was outdoors and we gambled that we’d pick up more points there. We were right.  As soon as we got into town we stored our luggage at the train station (remember – for this leg – we are traveling with all of our baggage which is a true pain in the butt) and rented bikes. The bikes gave us an extra 100 points and made navigating the town quicker and easier. 

It was nice to be outside, on a sunny day, speeding along And Bologna is a pretty town with lots of archways and piazza (open plazas). 

We had to climb this VERY TALL tower in the center of town. All the way to the top. It was a tough, hard climb - which left my legs burning - but the view at the top was awesome. You could see the entire town and all the surrounding countryside.  

We also had to find this church with creepy marble-inlays on the floor of skulls laughing at you. Odd,  odd, odd. 

The hardest scavenge was to visit a church on the top of this hill right outside town … but the walk there is steeply uphill (for a few MILES) on a beautiful arched walkway.  Having climbed the tower just an hour earlier, I was dying by the time I reached the top.. sweating, cussing, hating that I am not in better shape. 

On the way down, there was a hole in the wall where you could write down your spiritual wish and “post” it into the wall.  Obviously I’m not religious at all but - under the theory that you should always cover your bases – I faithfully posted my #1 wish.  

That afternoon, we hopped on another train and arrived in Venice by late afternoon.  We got extra points that night if we stayed in a hotel for less than 100 Euros (quite a feat in Venice, one of the most expensive cities in Europe).  We managed to find a hostel type place with a room for 90 Euros  and – expecting the worst – went to discard our luggage.  As expected, the room was modest with a hard mattress, no air conditioning and limited hot water... but this was the view out of the window.    

And it was onto a quiet canal without a lot of boats or noise, a great find since we had to sleep with the windows wide open to try and  get some breeze. There apparently is no awful lodging in Venice – it’s too beautiful a city. We had dinner and then walked around … over bridges and along canals.. and got hopelessly lost.

Day3 of Europe saw us up early in Venice – taking the first Traghetto (a non-fancy kind of gondola) across the Grand Canal to a market. 

We had to buy bread and meats and cheese for a train picnic later that day as we moved on from Venice. A quick feeding of the pigeons in San Marco square and it was time to say goodbye to Venezia. 

We made a short lay-over stop in Austria to get some mandatory food scavenges and headed on to Ljubljana, Slovenia.  I’d never been to Slovenia before and I presumed that it would be a somewhat plain town with boring Soviet-block architecture and very little charm. Boy was I wrong. Ljubljana is a lovely Austrian-type town in the mountains. It’s built along a river with lots of pretty bridges crossing the river every short distance. 

We got 100 bonus points if one of us did a street performance and asked for donations.  Rainey paid  the drummer of a 2-person accordion/drum group to let him handle the drum for ½ hour while we waited for our dinner. I went around with a hat.  It was slim pickings. The accordion guy was good. Rainey... not so much. 

We were able to have a leisurely dinner in Ljubljana – at a restaurant right next to the river – and grabbed a few hours of sleep before heading out for Prague (our check-in destination).  

We have to change trains 4 times to get to Prague from here and some of the connections are right with only a few minutes spare between when we arrive at one platform and have to leave on another one all the way across the station.  We are going to be running like mad people with our luggage. It’s going to be rough - and on only a few hours of sleep – YUCK !!!

Oman and Cyprus... then on to Italy

We are now in Cyprus, having just finished up a few days in Oman. We leave EARLY tomorrow morning (3 AM wake up call) for Italy to start the Europe leg - the last international rally of this year's trip (I'm so sad already).  

The Europe leg typically involves us getting dropped in one country  and we have to find our own way across 2-3 other countries (doing scavenges along the way) until we meet back the group after 4 or 5 days. It is nerve-wracking because you have to figure out all of the travel logistics AND do the scavenges. We will not know even in what direction we are supposed to travel until Bill opens the leg tomorrow afternoon.  This is a fun – but hard – leg as you have to travel with ALL of your luggage to every place / scavenge and it can be hell. But there’s nothing shabby about starting in Rome as I LOVE Italy.

Info on rankings of the teams:  As predicted, we we lost the Sri Lanka leg - badly.  Then we eeked out  a win in Oman which put us back into first place coming into Cyprus. But there are two other super-competitive teams (the sisters from Sydney Australia and a couple for New Zealand) that are very close on our heels and we did not have a great leg in Cyprus.  I’m projecting that we'll  be  in 2^nd or 3^rd place starting off the Europe leg. The Europe leg  a Par 5 rank – which means that there are a LOT OF POINTS at stake over the next few days. It's going to crazy to the end. 

Anyway, here's my stories  from the last two countries. When Bill said that we were going to Oman I was less than excited. Boy was I wrong. It’s still too early to really call it… but ... so far… Oman is my second favorite country this year. Mainly because of the people. They are so nice. They go out of their way to help you.  We asked a woman for directions as she was walking to her mosque for prayers with her sister.  She sent the sister inside, got into her car and drove 11 minutes with us following her to show us the exact turn-off we ended (as her English was not great enough to verbally explain the route).  I' not sure I'm even that nice to strangers. 

And the country is far more beautiful that you can imagine.  Oman is a wealthy country (oil) – east of Saudi and South of Iran.  It’s on the ocean and it has only 1.5 million citizens with another 1.5 million of migrant workers (mainly from South East Asia). In fact, 2/3rds of our plane from Sri Lanka were migrant workers – gardeners, maids, construction workers, waiters. All manual labor jobs is done by migrant workers who come in on 6 month to 1 year work visas. The Sultan of Oman has done an excellent job using the oil money to build an impressive infrastructure of great roads and a very high standard of living. He is truly beloved by his people.

OMAN:  Just a few of our favorite scavenges for Oman: 

 (a) Get henna. I decided on a leg henna decoration. Emily got some beautiful designs on her hands but I have a big Daubert hearing right as I get back to the US and I thought the federal judge might be a little put off with intricate designs all over my hands and forearms. Might be a little “out there” for him; 

 (b)  Smoke from a Hubbly-Bubbly pipe in this trendy Shisha or Hooka bar.  It made me cough - a lot.  

 (c) We saw dawn break while at  a fort in the harbor of Muscat - a nice town built right onto a harbor. 

(d) Had to take in a  fish auction at the fish market in Barka – a town about 30 minutes from Muscat. The man to the left is the auctioneer. When he hits the broomstick on the tile, the auction is over and that lot of fish has been sold to the highest bidder. 

(e) There are A LOT of forts in Oman. And they all look basically the same … like a sandcastle that you’d build on the beach – all boxy and with multiple turrets.  We had to visit a half-dozen of them - all over the country.  They do have beautiful views and feet-thick walls. 

(e) We had to take a swim in the hot springs of  an oasis town. It's not just in fairy tales and bible stories. There really are towns in the middle of dry, arid land where hot water bubbles up from the ground. In some places, the hot water forms jacuzzi-like pools  where you can swim and lounge around .  Weird, huh?  

(f) We had to hike in a dried-out river bed called Wadi Ghul. The river bed is rocky and uneven and the cliffs rise hundreds of feet above you.

  

(g) We saw the Grand Canyon of the Middle East – a place called Jabel Shams. It is really beautiful and an amazing gorge. You can hike in and around it for weeks... wish we'd had time!!!

(h) We also drove down to Sur.. a sleepy little seaside village with a great sunset and had drinks and delicious Shwarma (basically a meal … chicken, salad, French fries, sauce… all diced up and loaded into a pita bread).  

Observations:

1     (1) Very unfairly, the men get to wear light gown-like clothes in WHITE.. with decorated tea-cozies as hats. The women are relegated to heavy BLACK gowns with full head scarves.  In a country with such hot weather, the women definitely got the short end of that straw.  

     

 (2) We stopped at a roadside restaurant for some food.  I entered the main door. I was immediately ushered out and shown the side door that leads into a back room (called the “family room”) where women are allowed to eat.  Women are not permitted in the main restaurant.  And while the rest room for the men is inside the main building, the toilet for women is outside, around back and in a shed.  Sort of brought home - in a real way - how women are really viewed in a Muslim country. 

3  (3)  And just in case you were not sure exactly how you were supposed to dress here...   the ladies’ rest room sign visually depicts  the proper attire for women. 

  (4)      Fruit at the market – especially when cut open to show their great color – attract a HUGE AMOUNT OF FLIES..  It is stunningly gross and makes you never want to eat watermelon again- EVER.  And yes, every one of those black dots is a fly!!!

   (5) At the market in Nizwa, you can buy a live goat at auction OR - even more enticing - a fully skinned goat ready for cooking. 

CYPRUS:  Then we headed to Cyprus... another new place for me.  We only ended up with one full day here and we really needed more. Cyprus is an island in the Mediterranean – east of Turkey and Northwest of Israel.  It is an independent country (since 1960) but – in 1974 – Turkey invaded the island and now occupies the top 1/3^rd.  Turkey has 40,000 troops here to guard that part of the island (called the Occupied Territory) and Turkey’s presence  is very controversial. There is tons of history here and lots of great stuff to do  but we did not have time to even attempt many of them.

We started off on the Cyprus / Greek side of the city of Nicosia and then crossed over the border into the Turkish occupied territory – through the no man’s land of the un-official border. There are Burning Man-like protests in the "Green Line" or that area between the two countries. 

 On the Turkish side we  ate Turkish delight - a gelatin type candy with very fine powdered sugar on top.

We then caught a bus to the North to visit  a Turkish harbor city called Kyrenia.  

Ant that's when we  decided to be bad and play hookey.  Although it was not a scavenge (and thus we got NO POINTS for doing it), we rented a boat for a few hours and sailed down the coast and swam in the Mediterranean. The water is so clear that you can see the bottom of the ocean from 35 feet up. It was awesome to be off the "run everywhere, hurry to finish scavenges" rat wheel for a few hours. We felt so naughty and decadent doing it. 

 That afternoon Bill really put us to  work. We had two - back-to-back -  LONG, DIFFICULT, EXHAUSTING hikes up full mountains to see castles built in the time of the crusades. The views were stunning and actually worth the treks up (although I do admit that I cussed and cussed all the way to the top).  And yes, we had to hike to the very top of each mountain to get the points. I’m going to be sore for days.  

This is the Queen’s window where she sat and probably did some type of needlework as she looked out over her country. Real neat feeling to sit right there -  exactly where you know she sat hundreds of years ago - and literally be in her space. 

I’ll try and get on the internet during some part of the Europe leg and -at least - let you all know where we are – and where we are heading.  I may not be able to fully  blog because this leg  typically involves long hard days and very little sleep (a lot like the rest of this adventure). So stay tuned…and keep leaving comments… they really help boost morale.