It has been days since I wrote anything in my journal. I honestly don't fell like writing at all right now but since it is the last day before I depart for home it seems necessary that I should write something here. There are reasons why I don't want to write in specific, and there are also apathetic felings that keep me from writing that feel completely unspecified. I spent the last couple of days in Romania, specifically.

As soon as I arrived in Romania I felt awful. The skies there are consistently grey and it rained the last day I was there. I remember thinking that perhaps Bucharest received so few visitors that the city itself was crying to see me leave after only two days there. But truly, Bucharest is a sad place, with mangy, angry mongrels running about and snarling in every dark corner of the cobblestone streets which wind this way and that in no good directions. Gypsy children with dark skin made even darker from the dirt that covers their faces and almost the air you breathe wander the streets of Bucharest, streets which seems to ooze garbage through the gaps in the cobblestone sidewalks. People there burn the garbage and leaves, perhaps because trash services don't exist. I remembered passage on certain streets because of the pungent odor, or the number of tires missing from an abandoned car. I also remembered the Irish girl because for a day I couldn't shower I was so ill, and her smell laid underneath my nostrils until the next day when my health returned. Even after this kind of experience I still would come to return to Romania and see the grave of Vlad Tepes, or Dracula's famous historical counterpart, and discover something good or wholesome about the country, because I couldn't find anything while I was there back then.

On Monday, I flew to Prague. It rained as I left and I waited for the bus for about 1/2 hour in the rain. I think it has happened in every city I've been to thus far, but I think every beautiful woman in Bucharest came out to say goodbye on that day. I had heard various reports that Romanian women were some of the best in Europe, ut I hadn't seen very many in the first two days I was there. I changed my mind that Monday. Not as good as Rome, but definitely some beautiful Slavic women with long dark curly hair, amont others. CSA, the Czech airline, was wonderful. The seats were large and clean, and the crew was responsive in general. I think you can tell a lot about a country by its major airline carrier and just as I was impressed by CSA, so was I by the Czech Republic herself. Prague certainly was a beautiful city. My friend Ryan, who was so captivated by Prague, understandably must have been awed by the wonderful architecture amidst clean streets and set in a more Eastern environment than the Western countries like France or Germany, which sport the same castles and Bohemian attractions. Though I am only to spend two days here the beauty of Prague will long last in my minds eye.