well, it won't hurt to think of you as if you're waiting for this letter to arrive because I'll be here quite a while

I just found out that FIVE postcards I mailed out yesterday will almost definitely not arrive because of insufficient postage. I asked the guy selling me stamps for 5 "to America", and he hands me five stamps for 7 Crowns. He does not mention that the postage to America from here is 12 Crowns. So, I proudly mail out the five postcards I carefully composed (4 of which were to people that had not yet received one!) before I left Prague. But here in Cesky Krumlov, at the Egan Schiele museum, the guy working at the counter broke the bad news to me as he sold me the proper postage I requested. Oh well, I suppose I'll try to rewrite them as best I can...

There's not so much to be said of yesterday. After the great night previous, I had scheduled myself a number of important tasks for the morning and planned on catching the earliest transportation I could to Cesky Krumlov, a medieval town (15,000 peeps) in southern Czech Republic. After missing the 12:23 train because I went to the wrong station, and then the 1:50 bus because it took going to three separate stations to 1) find out where I needed to go to find out where the bus departed, 2) go to that place and 3) actually purchase a ticket, and by that time the bus had gone, I caught the 2:23 train and did not arrive until 6:00. The train ride was nothing to complain about, though. Running from station to station with a full pack is miserable, but I tend to find the knowledge that I am on the correct train very soothing. I know that all I have to do is sit and wait, and I am being brought only closer to my destination. As opposed to when I run around the city, often heading in exactly the wrong direction.

The final leg of the journey was on a single car train, a first for me. I finally finished Jane Eyre and began a collection of mysteries by a Czech writer named Karel Čapek, described to me by a book salesman as "The Czech Shakespeare."

Not much happened when I got to town. I took Alex from last night's hostel suggestion, found a spot though I had no reservation and had dinner in town.

Feeling adventurous, I ordered "The Chef's Secret". Deciding to play along with whatever mystery the Chef was trying to create, I did not ask what it was before I ordered. When it arrived, it smelled good, but besides the side vegetables (beets, red cabbage, carrots, lettuce, mustard), I was mostly unable to identify what I was eating. Clearly part of it was meat, and part of it seemed to involve some sort of grain (or mashed legume...) After clearing my plate, I ask the waiter what I had just ingested.

"It's a secret!" he replies.