Camp Champions Blog

Susie loves water.  Like a dolphin loves the water.

To a normal human, Venice is a bit of a tourist trap.  Here is a city of 60,000 that often has 150,000 tourist descend upon it.  They have all the hallmarks of hyper-tourism.  They have posted prices that apply only under very narrow circumstances.  For example, a $5 sandwich becomes a $7.50 sandwich if you sit down rather than order from the counter.  But if you attempt to pay at the counter, they pleasantly encourage you to sit down and wait for your panini.  Since there is not indication that price varies with the location of my posterior, we all sit and incur the $15 penalty (6 times the extra $1.50 per sandwich).

Susie was not happy to join a club that most of us have long been members of - the legions of drivers who have received a speeding citation.  She managed to get through high school, college, graduate school and many years in Marble Falls where driving is a way of life.

Yet she has managed to maintain a pristine driving record.

We learned an important lesson today: plans are helpful.

Before I write my usual blog, I want you to know that the apartment we are staying in has been a little bit of a disappointment.  In addition to the fact that it is not (as noted yesterday) actually IN Vienna, it has proven to have less than ideal amenities.  By “amenities”, I mean “a working toilet and lights”.  We discovered rather quickly that the toilet does not really flush.  Luckily, there is another option 30 feet away in the compound we are staying in.  Last night, as we were turning on some lights, a breaker popped and all our lights went out.  Also, the bed makes us long for the relative comfort of college days when we crashed on the lumpy futons of friends.

Finally, the promised wi-fi internet connection is essentially nonexistent.  I can, for brief periods of time, walk out of our apartment, across a courtyard and up a flight of stairs to a balcony.  From this perch, I stand outside the door of another renter and hope to get the necessary signal.  If I stray more than 4 feet from this unknown occupant’s door, I lose the signal.  This high level of internet connectivity came AFTER a 30 minute discussion with the owner of the compound.  For this reason, the last blog and this one are without any pictures.

I think we might need to slow down a touch.  We have been approaching this trip like it is a week long junket and it clearly is not.  We are like a runner that has become skilled at 10km races who then decides to run a marathon.  If she goes out at her 10km pace, she will implode before the race is over.

We had a full day yesterday and a travel day today.

I would like to do two things in this blog.

I started to become aware of international politics in the 1980s.  In addition to being the decade that gave us marginal musical acts, it was also the decade that the Soviet Union cratered and the Iron Curtain was lifted.

I share this because when I was first starting to understand the world, the Soviet Union was in obvious decline.  They failure in Afghanistan had signaled the end of their military aggressiveness and dominance.  I could see all that and I believed that they truly wanted to modernize and become less belicose.

OK, I do not have the blues from Budapest, but I am struggling with the fact that our apartment here has a virtually non-existent internet connection.  I am seriously longing for the speedy days of dial-up.

Nevertheless, I want to share a few thoughts despite the ridiculous connectivity.

I am dead-dog tired.  As I alternate between staring at my bed and this screen, I think hard about passing on the blog for a day.=

But then I see this problem as an opportunity.  I think this is a good time to talk about sleep.

My goal today was to write about the unequaled splendor of the Prague Castle and its massive Gothic church.  I had been thinking of ways to describe how it majestically overlooks the city, giving the city a sense of majesty and magic.  It truly feels like a combination of Walt Disney's castle and Hogwarts, except oddly more impressive.