And…I’m back. The short, short version? German beer kicks ass, the Augustiner beer hall is the one thing I recommend most to visit in Salzburg (see pics for more detail), Vienna had the best pastries (get thee to an Anker for some delicious jelly doughnuts) and blutenwurst (blood sausage with sauerkraut, roasted potatoes, and spices), and Prague was stunning and magnificent, though not necessarily cheap. Also, beer is cheaper than Coca Cola, pornography and naked women are much more accepted in public society (if the topless women advertised on our tourist map were any indication), and nobody, and I mean nobody, jaywalks in Dusseldorf. Nary a car would be in sight at a crosswalk and still nobody would cross the street until after the sign indicated “walk,” waiting patiently in complete stillness and silence.
What else (I guess it’s not so short after all)? The Mozart museums were odd, odd spectacles, replicated buildings filled with replicated “artifacts,” a creepy young/old Mozart baby swaddled in a crib and bathed in an eerie neon blue light, and a mechanical wooden barking dog perched atop a playing piano, relentlessly yapping until a mechanical wooden Mozart pulled out a gun and shot it dead. The gay-friendly hotel we stayed at in Vienna had a men-only sauna on the premises (strangers welcome; women, not so much) and a bowlful of prunes at the breakfast buffet every morning. When you walk into a bar, beer is not a suggestion, it’s an assumption; bartenders and servers keep bringing you more until you actively tell them to stop. Nobody cards anyone, anywhere; at the Prague airport, whiskey samples were given out freely in the duty-free shop.
Also? I now have an irrational obsession with the bottomless tostada chips and salsa served at none other than Chili’s. This came about due to Mr. Dangerous and I arriving obscenely early at the airport for our departing flight out of Minneapolis, which resulted in the two of us parking ourselves at the Chili’s Too bar for the next several hours over ridiculously priced beers and the lightest, thinnest, saltiest, hottest tostada chips ever to be eaten. It was like tortilla chip nirvana. I became so enamored, that I actually dragged Mr. Dangerous to a Mexican restaurant in Prague just so I could get my fix off of bagged tortilla chips straight from the nearest Tesco (Prague’s version of Walmart). It wasn’t worth it, and since I’ve been back, I’ve realized that nothing offered anywhere else compares to the crispy, salty goodness that Chili’s offers in bottomless abundance.
Now? Just getting ready to turn the corner on the decade and hoping to find myself a cushy Craftmatic bed and a year’s subscription to Reader’s Digest on the other side. We’re having a larger-than-originally-thought festa to mark the occasion, and I’m looking forward to kicking down the door to my 30s with the best of them.
