Pigeons and Tourists

So, I'm in Venice and have been for a few days. Venice is an amazingly gorgeous city and it's very picturesque. I'm sure I've taken a billion pictures here.

Venice is composed of hundreds of small islands interconnected with canals and bridges. It's a walker's paradise, there are no cars and you have to reisgn yourself to the fact that every time you go somewhere, you'll get lost along the way. They say that even Venetians can't find their way through the city.

I've spent my time wandering through the city and tomorrow I'll go out to one of the outlying islands.

My trip to Europe is winding to a close, and on Sunday I'm off to N. America to visit friends and family beforing heading back to Korea for another year of school. Once I get to my mom's, I'll have time to post more pictures, so if anyone actually checks this blog(no comments, ever), you can see what I've been up to.

Love,
jc

Wien

Vienna was fantastic! While I was here I did a lot of sight seeing. I went to three awsome modern/comtemporary art museums that offered quite an array of interesting work. It was really nice to be able to see some great art.

I also did a lot of tourism-type walking around the city. Like the other cities I've visited, Vienna has its share of churches, cathedrals, palaces and the like.

Now I'm off to Venice, then North America is just around the corner.

Love,
jason

ps. This is short because I'm timing it against the time I have left in the internet cafe.

Praha

Prague was fantastic! As I mentioned before, it's one of the most picturesque places I've ever seen in the world. It's a typical conception of classic Europe. The time I spent in Prague was full of castles, churches and cobblestone.

The trip to the countryside was amazing, we went bicycling to 2 different castles and took in the pastoral landscapes. I'll try to get pictures online as soon as I can.

One of the more interesting things we did involved another daytrip. We took a train to a small town called Kutna Hora an hour outside of Prague. In KH there's a church that decorated entirely with human bones. It was, not suprisingly, interesting and creepy. There are piles of bones, a bone chandelier, a crest of the local patron and skulls everywhere. More interesting than the bones, though, was the sheer numbers of gawkers that make the trip just to see the spectacle. Edgar Allen Poe once said that mankind is preverse by nature, and now I really understand what he meant. We make trips to see rivers, mountains, cathedrals and museums, but we can't resist the macabre peepshows along the way. The ossuary in Kutna Hora is no exception, neither are things like the high school that was the headquarters of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the demonstrations of tiger traps in the Cu Chi Tunnels in Vietnam or the Civil War reenactments in the US for that matter. What's next, the site of the Rawandan massacres?

It's a strange world we live in, but I'm determined to see as much of it as possible.

Love,
jc