After our exciting evening of beer and sangria in downtown Vienna, we checked out the Museumplatz on our way out of town.  I had visited it back in 2008 when I was in Vienna for the first time.  It was a very similar situation... we just walked in and had a little wander.  This is one of those places that is (still) on my list of places to come back to and really spend some time.  I swear I could spend days there.  There are two sticker photos in this group that are significant.  The first is mine - the Give More Hugs - and the second one is a no monkeys sticker.  That is a photo specifically for my friend who is monkey-phobic. :)

From Vienna we hit the road to Czech Republic.  Every time we crossed into another country, we had to buy a 'vignette' for the car to use the expressway.  We ended up with these vignettes all over the windshield :)

We were going to meet some friends at a cottage that they had rented in Moravia (the eastern part of Czech Republic).  My plan - as we had no GPS and could not actually call (but we could send a text message if my cell phone battery was not dead...).  As we drove into CZ, we discovered that everything - EVERYTHING - was closed because of a national holiday.  I knew about the holiday, but I was expecting to find an open bookstore in Brno, a big city, where we could get a regional map to use.  Nope!  Ah well.  It was pretty frustrating because my Czech was TERRIBLE after not having spoken it since 2008, and not regularly since 2007.  Yikes.  I did eventually find an open pub with two younger guys working there who were able get me rough directions to the town.

So... we did eventually find the town.  I had some vague directions from my friend, Vasa, about how to get to the cottage once in town.  The key word there was vague.  We ended up recruiting and old man (Mirka) who spent a good half hour riding around with us in our Panda (which was absolutely full of stuff and had no space for another person to fit) and getting out every five minutes to ask anyone knew where the Americans were going.  He also kept trying to talk to Mike and Sam in Czech.  Like a lot.  Mike was driving and ended up learning all the directions in Czech (right, left, stop, straight, keep going, etc.).  It was a pretty hilarious experience.  

At one point we stopped at a house to talk to some people.  While Mirka and I were talking to the people there, Mike decided to play with my camera as he is learning about shooting manually on an SLR.  The shirtless dude started FREAKING OUT and wanted to know why Mike was taking photos.  He thought that Mike was doing some kind of identity theft surveillance or something... I tried to explain that Mike is just visiting the country and taking photos of things that are different from what we have back home and the guy would have none of it.  He started shouting and pointing at Mike in Czech (of course) and then started to take pictures of him back as a 'so there' gesture.  Of course Mike had no idea what was going on.  Ah, good times.

Anyway, we did eventually find Vasa and the cottage and spent the night there.  We had big plans for a bonfire and a sleep under the stars, but it rained.  It was so, so great to see Vasa.  He was another close friend that I spent a lot of time travelling with (along with Robert who we'd met up with in Palmanova).

Want more Europalooza? See more of Vienna or visit Czech Republic.

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Wow.  It's been an interesting few days.  This weekend was great for me... personally and in terms of my photographic work.  I am so charged up right now - I CAN'T WAIT to get out there in shoot.  My path has become clearer and I feel that I am starting to have a stronger sense of how I'm different and how to make it work for me.  I feel like I took a giant step toward my future this weekend.

On top of that, I found out that I've been accepted to Fearless Photographers.  This site is a collection of wedding photographers from around the world, and you have to apply to be a member of this community.  Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about making the cut.  There are contests every few months and you can submit a handful of photos for each one.  Let's hope that one of these days I'll will a Fearless Award ;)

Lastly, I came across this quotation about art this past weekend and thought I'd share:

The act of making art exposes a society to itself.  Art brings things to light.  It illuminates us.  It sheds light on our lingering darkness.  It casts a beam into the heart of our own darkness and says, "See?"

"Nature reveals to him, and, seeing and feeling intensely, he paints, and whether he wills it or not each brush stroke is an exact record of such as he was at the exact moment the stroke was made."

What a true and beautiful sentiment: the work itself is a record of who the author was at the moment they created it.  Anyone can look back through their own body of work and be reminded of who they were at the moment each piece was made.  Your body of work is your history.