For more on Prague - and potentially slightly more useful info than my bitty pieces here and there - check out this blog on Prague. Makes you feel all sorts of summery. Even in the snow.

The legacy of a troubled nation in evident everywhere in the Czech Republic, from the alarming number of people walking around in ex-army camoflage gear, to eight year olds smoking on street corners, and the lightning bolts etched on the traffic lights at pedestrian crossings that make you think you could be setting off a land mine every time you push the button.

Capitalism, however, is alive and well in Prague, evidenced not least by the McDonalds directly underneath the second floor Museum of Communism. Even worse, the Prague Palace actually has the names of corporate sponsors (Banka Slava and other major companies) built into its stained glass windows.

Our tour of the palace was hosted by Ivan, a Slovakian guide who’d been lured over to Prague by the promise of lucrative tips from American tourists (none of whom tipped him today, which resulted in him miming machine-gunning all of them down as they wandered away).

He was full of stories, though, even about the old well in the palace grounds. It’s said that by tossing a 10 cent piece down the well your return to Prague is ensured, a 20 cent piece results in good luck, a 50 cent piece means you’ll be married within one year and one day, and a 1 euro coin ensures your divorce (for those who so desire it).

‘And if you throw in a 100 euro note,’ Ivan quips, ‘you’ll see something you’ve never seen before - a tour guide jumping in a well.’

A mate is heading off soon to Prague to do a study abroad semester at Charles University (the oldest in Europe). This was one area of town which did not escape the reaches of our ghost tour in Prague.

If I remember rightly, it is by the main entrance of the university that the skeleton of a giant who used to guard the front door there stands.

In the fourteenth century (yes, the fourteenth century seemed to be a happening time in Prague) there worked at the university an old professor of anatomy who was obsessed with collecting bones. He was particularly taken with the idea of inheriting the giant’s bones, because, well, they were giant.

So one day he made a deal with the giant. ‘Listen up, big fella,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay you ten thousand crowns now, if I can get your bones when you die.’ ‘Sure thing, little man,’ said the giant, figuring that as he was a good forty years younger than the professor he was sure to outlive him anyway.

This made the giant very happy as he was now a rich man, so basically he did what any good Czech would do - he went to the pub down the road and got thoroughly drunk for three days in a row.

But on the third day, as he was stumbling home, he happened to trip and hit his head on the ground, fatally fracturing his skull.

Meanwhile, the professor was overjoyed at having acquired the bones so quickly, and, being not without a sense of humour, had his students polish them up to perfection and then stood the full skeleton back outside the door of the university, complete with giant’s staff and all.

Whereas in Vienna we couldn’t find a single guided tour of the city and had had to satisfy ourselves with getting lost of our own accord, in Prague the opposite was true.

We sifted through piles and piles of brochures trying to weigh up the comparative merits of the Ultimate Walking tour, the All in One tour, the Prague Insider, the Intro to Prague, the Grand Walk and the Grand Walk Deluxe.

Not to mention dozens of specialty tours like the Ghost Trail, Pubs of the Old Town, the Good Morning Walk (no, thank you) and the Micros-Scooter tour (’What a great way to see the city - we have scooters with tyres and brakes!’ You’d hope so, wouldn’t you.)

Tonight we opted for the Ghost Trail walk. First stop was the fourteenth century church that still has a human arm hanging above the doorway - the remnants of a thief who tried to steal the statue of the Virgin Mary because she reputedly has priceless jewels and gold stashed inside of her. But when he reached out to snatch away the statue she wrenched off his arm and hung it above the doorway as a warning to other such hooligans.

There were many such stories on our ghost trail walk this evening, but as our guide was more mouse-like than frightening we found ourselves walking along grumbling about being ripped off. Just as we were saying ‘If I was running this tour I’d have spooky noises and ghosts jumping out from the shadows..,’ out from the shadows jumped a ghost. Well, an actor really, wearing a bloody white t-shirt and brandishing a butcher’s knife. Same effect, though.

Prague is just a hop, skip and a jump away from Vienna so the sister and I decided to give it a bash.

After hitting the snooze button no less than four times, we finally made it to the train station in Vienna from which we THOUGHT we were leaving for Prague. In fact, we made it with time to spare - only to stand in the ticket queue behind a tiresome old woman who spent twenty minutes showing the ticket guy photos of her grandkids before actually buying her ticket. Then we discovered we were at the wrong station anyway – we were leaving from Vienna South, not Vienna West - so one mad cross-city dash later we finally made it to our (already overflowing) train.

There was more security on this train than I’ve seen anywhere outside of London the day of the bombings. No sooner had we settled back to enjoy our chocolate croissants when the Austrian passport controllers swept through, followed by the Czech customs officials hot on the heels of the ticket conductor. On the upside, this doubled my passport stamps to a hefty grand total of four (one Austrian, one Czech, one Croatian and one from Sydney airport).

We knew we’d crossed the border into the Czech Republic when we lost sight of vowels. We passed many a train station with 25 letters plus in the name, and all of them consonants. It was also a return to the post-war shabby-chic theme of Croatia, only this time with an added twist – let’s call it post-communism shabby chic. Ugly brown apartment buildings with smashed windows, peeling paint and crumbling chimneys, wrecked car yards and dirty, dirty rivers.

And now to another German-speaking part of the world… (For those of you on the ball, Maastricht is of course officially Dutch speaking – but there are so many Germans here you’d never know it).

My Lonely Planet says that the Viennese exist on a diet of ballet, art and opera. It also says that the city’s Volksoper (or ‘people’s’ opera house) is the place to be in Vienna if you’re into the slightly more unconventional shows (as opposed to the stick-up-it’s-bum State Opera House, I’m guessing).

The production of Alice in Wonderland that we saw could certainly be described as a show less ordinary, so to speak. We’re talking the mad hatters’ tea party in ballet form, the white rabbit with one butt cheek naked, and a giant caterpillar-type creature made of a line of dancers with their heads up each others bums.

This wasn’t our only ‘post-modern’ experience in Vienna. On account of torrential rain the next day we went to the Museum of Modern Art to get an eyeful of an exhibition on ‘Viennese Actionism’, which basically means guys drenched in blood standing next to strung-up goat caracasses, and someone wrapped in head-to-toe bandages alternately eating and electrocuting a chicken. And a plaster skull with a pair of scissors jammed into the eyeballs, neatly entitled ‘This is where it stabs - how pink it is.’

The sister’s verdict: ‘That’s not art - it’s by some psychotic creep who should be in the loony bin.’

Several years later, and Maastricht is officially my home away from home. With the weather having turned to ice over the last few days, Willy and I decide to step out on the town in search of some dinner in order to drag ourselves out of that typical cold-weather depression. He suggests we go out to a nearby jazz cafe which ‘has a great atmosphere, you know, a great vibe, a lot of ambience - and a wood fire.’ Didn’t have to say any more than that to convince me.

Of course the minute we step out to dinner it starts bucketing down with rain, so after splashing through the freezing streets he bustles me hurriedly into what he thinks is the cafe he had in mind. Instead we look up to find a grim row of starched waiters and table upon table of posh, snooty patrons all alternately glaring and staring at us with shock as we drip all over the place like drowned rats and shake off our drenched coats. All my instincts tell me to turn and run into the nearest cheap pub, but Count Willy with his elite boarding school breeding stands tall and demands a table and a bottle of red, pronto.

After polishing that off we figure that as long as we’re there we might as well enjoy ourselves. So throwing caution into the wind, I order the wild duck and he the wild boar, even though the prices on the menu make me want to duck into the ladies and crawl out through the tiny window. Another bottle of wine later, and Wil calls the waiter over and complains about the shotgun pellets not removed from his wild boar, with all the dignity he can muster while I, still dripping and now utterly drunk, can barely stay upright in my chair for the helpless giggling.

Casting a disgusted glance in my direction, the waiter returns shortly with apologies from the chef and instructions for the manager that the ‘respectable young man in the blazer with the silly little girl will not be obliged to pay for an unsatisfactory meal.’ Would have been the perfect end to the night had I not been escorted straight home where I promptly threw up in the kitchen sink.

Staring down the barrel of a gun. One thing you will not do in Maastricht. Even on a billboard.

In all fairness I ought to give Germany a bit of break, since I’m not even living there any more. The first time I ever came to Maastricht, where I live now, was back in the heady days of my youth – oh, a good two and half years ago now – when I still thought the Netherlands might be a fun and interesting place to live.

Maastricht, I’ll grant you, is a beautiful old medieval city, on the borders of Holland, Belgium and Germany, with a well-preserved walled town and (naturally) cobbled streets featuring those twiddly little boutiques with designer labels (though, admittedly, H&M has weaseled its way in and now has 3 stores all within 3 blocks of each other.

On my first visit we spent the morning wandering about the old town blathering on about how charming and quaint we thought the place was and how more than happy we were to be able to spend a few days there. Until we made some new friends in a bar – Germans, admittedly, who studied there – who said something to the effect of ‘Are you kidding? It’s small, boring, country and…well…didn’t you notice that all the locals look suspiciously like each other?’

Turns out that as a university town that attracts students from all over western Europe, the Germans tend to stick to the Germans, the Swiss to the Swiss, the Scandinavians to their own and the Dutch to themselves, and none necessarily break out of their national gangs too much.

But as far as first impressions go, as a place to spend a few years studying I thought it looked just as nice as Cambridge, but without quite so many snots.

Since we’re on about the oddities of Germans (continued), here’s one final cultural lesson to note.

Whereas in Australia the little green man at traffic lights is in practice really more of a ’suggestion’, in Germany crossing against the little dude gets you an on-the-spot fine as well as endless tsks from mothers and old people. That no cars have set tyre on the road since 1967 is of no matter; break the rule, and you’re a goner.

I don’t know if that is a result of the police having nothing else to do about town or if it’s got something to do with being naturally pedantic, but apparently its not unusual for the cops to take your driver’s licence away for the crime of being a bit too keen off the curb.

This means that you have to allow half an hour each morning for what would otherwise be a five minute walk, and inevitably results in a throng of thirty people waiting to cross a one-lane street that sees more traffic from geese than cars.