May 30th-June 3rd: Prague and Hunger Games

So I had about 40 pages left to go in Moby Dick.

Then I decided I’d take a break with a chapter out of the second Hunger Games novel: “Catching Fire”.

It is a little bit over 48 hours later and I have just finished the third Hunger Games novel: “Mockingjay”.

Holy fuck.

That was amazing.

I’m sitting in a train-cubicle-thingie with tear-stained eyes trying to figure out whether I finish Moby Dick or just read Hunger Games all over again.

It’s incredible.

The struggle between the individual as leader of mankind and the individual as individual.

The truths underneath fame’s inherit falseness.

Entertainment’s inhumanness yet capacity to incite humanity.

If We Burn You Burn With Us versus Can’t We All Just Get Along

I’m a mess.

I swear Prague was great. It’s just hard to focus on anything else right now.

Finishing a series is like the end of a summer romance. Things were going really well. You knew the end was near. You hope you’ll stay in touch. Maybe you’ll meet up again (like an 8^th Harry Potter book!) but you know you won’t (There’s not gonna be an 8^th Harry Potter Book…but maybe! No. Maybe!....NO. maybe).

It’s the same with TV shows...when I finished Six Feet Under I was a depressed wreck.

I don’t know. I’m just really down and I want a hug.

The other person in my cubicle is asleep though…

Sorry. Had to switch cubicles. I hugged the sleeping guy and he was not digging it. Once he finishes “Mockingjay” he’ll regret it.

Alright. I’ll stop talking about it. But please read the series.

Then Harry Potter, then His Dark Materials (Golden Compass), then Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

I just read the last two chapters again. Still crying.

AH!

SO Prague

Prague was phenomenal.

I met three mates within the first 5 minutes there and we stuck it through to the end.

I don’t mean mates like people I have slept with.

It would be rather remarkable if I ran into 3 people I’d slept with at the same hostel at the same time…in Prague, Czech Republic.

Though, if there are an infinite of universes out there (like in Golden Compass!?) then ‘somewhere’ that has indeed occurred.

I’m sure that that Gianmarco is pretty, pretty surprised

and probably trying to arrange a foursome.

In none of those infinite universes is it going well.

(logical impossibility-like an impenetrable shield meeting a sword that can penetrate anything. Or three impenetrable shields meeting an average-at-best sword.)

I’m sorry.

I’m really tired.

I mean mates like Aussies! Lots of Australians traveling. I have a pretty good rep with the Australian population except for the fact that I think everyone from Melbourne might know each other. There’s actually a lot of people living there and not everyone who has worked in a movie theater knows a girl named Kasey.

The first store I went to should have been called, “everything in this store is probably illegal in America”

Absinthe, brass knuckles, very scary ninja stars, cubans and bears, Oh my!

I got a Cuban.

This purchase led to that surefire sign that you are on a real, live Eurotrip:

The first time you throw up in Prague.

Unpleasant? Sure but I never had a bar mitzvah and I need to frame my coming up age around some kind of event. It was either this or the 10^th time I sing Piano Man at a foreign Karaoke bar. I chose the slightly more visceral experience. Just slightly.

There are a bazillion (10 * 10^a lot) things to do in Prague.

I went to the church made out of 40,000 dead people’s bones.

I went to a beer tasting.

I went to a beer festival.

I learned that beer is cheaper than water in Prague and that there is a company in Prague called Budweiser that our Budweiser (me and the shareholders) stole the name from

I saw Don Giovanni performed by marionettes (that’s fancy talk for puppets)

I went to the Sex Machine Museum

I went to the Museum of New Art (MoMA-esque), which was actually much more pornographic than the Sex Machine Museum

I went to my 3^rd Dali Exhibit!

I went on a pub-crawl

I went to a five-story night club that had an ice bar (you put on silver jackets and mismatched gloves and drink very watery vodka shots out of glasses-made-of-ice)

I went to the Absinthe Museum. It’s not technically a museum so much as an overpriced bar but everything sounds classier with the word museum. The Gianmarco Museum. Boom.

Absinthe is…

Things I did not do

Skydiving. I don’t know if can do it! I got scared at the top of the disappointingly small Leaning Tower of Wow That’s Not Such a Big Deal-za. I was considering it and then someone showed me a video of an old lady skydiving who fell out of her harness and held on for dear life. I don’t know…maybe in Amsterdam.

Shooting Range. It was hella expensive or I would have done it. The only ‘sport’ trophy I have is for above average aiming skills. I’m sorta like Katniss Everdeen in THE HUNGER GAMES! 

Buy Charlie. That’s not a red-haired male prostitute who can dance real good. That’s coke. There are so few illegal things in Prague I thought I’d do my best to maintain social order. It should be noted, however, that I have been offered drugs only 57 times in my life. 56 times at 4 AM in last night and once at Driver’s Ed in Maryland.

See the “Naked Midgets Dancing in a Cage! 200 crown. C’mon man!”

Jeff: “200! That’s too expensive!”

“It’s free to leave!”

When I was offered that I knew it was time to go to sleep.

I’m very tired. I’m in a train to Salzburg. I’m lonely. I want Hunger Games to not be over. Ups and downs ups and downs ups and downs. Life. Love. Hunger Games.

There’s hidden text between this line and the next. Don’t highlight unless you’ve read HG.

“I tell him, ‘Real’”

Thank you for reading,

Gianmarco