Sometimes it's not so easy being so far away

Today my best friend in the whole wide world is getting married.  Needless to say, I'm only going to be there in spirit.

When moving to a far away place, even for a short period of time, inevitably you face the reality that life goes on without you.  Even important, life changing stuff happens, for which you can't be present.  This isn't the first wedding I've missed because I've been too far away to make it feasibly possible to attend, and it probably wont be my last.

There are definitely upsides to traveling and being far and away from home, all of which are obvious.  Sometimes the downsides aren't so obvious when we make the decision to leave.  I'm not at all implying that the downsides ever make me wish I had chosen to do things differently.  But when things do happen, it just makes it glaringly obvious that Skype sometimes just doesn't cut it for everything that life throws at you.

But it will have to do for now.

And with that, I am thinking of her constantly and wishing her all the best and sending her so much love for the beautiful occasion.

They didn't call it the Cold War for nothing!

Most of my adult life, I had wanted to travel to Prague.  I heard wonderful things from others who had, but never actually thought I would actually make it one day.  It always seemed like one of those "pie in the sky" hopes and dreams that would never actually come to fruition.

Luckily for me, one of my closest friends this year had the same hope and dream and the gumption to actually do something about it.  Fortunately, I got to come along for the ride.

Taking advantage of a long holiday break (before the actual holiday break), we snuck out of town on Friday to make our long journey to Prague.  I say "sneak" because upon our arrival in Prague, we were shocked to find out that only a few hours later nearly all flights coming in and out of Spain were grounded to an air traffic controller strike that continued for 3 days (apparently, they're opposing the upcoming privatization of airports which might keep them for earning unlimited overtime, and for some of them, over €1,000,000 annually.  I still have yet to understand why Spain is in financial trouble.)  Moving on...

Old Town Square, Prague

Prague turned out to be everything (and more) I ever imagined it could be.  I felt like I was living in a fairy tale for 36 hours.  The snow dusted everything spectacularly and gave that extra Christmassy feel.  The Markets stole my heart and the food my appetite.  When I didn't think anything could get more beautiful, we would turn the corner and the sight would then take my breath away, and probably a little bit more because of the extreme cold as well.  When we landed in Prague, it was 17° and it only got colder the remaining time we were there (warming up, of course, the day we left).  Unfortunately, due to the weather, we probably didn't see as much as Prague as we would have liked (frequently stepping into stores and cafes to warm up and defrost our extremities), but it didn't slow us down too much, and didn't keep us from loving almost every second of it.

Overlooking Budapest

Two days later, we made our way to Budapest via a 7 hour train ride (thank goodness it was great scenery).  Even though it was only in the 30s when we arrived, anything felt like a nice Spring day compared to brisk Prague.  Unfortunately, we didn't have much time in Budapest, a city that after all was said and done, seemed like the type of city that really would take time to discover and see all its hidden wonders.  But in the one whole day we did have, we saw a lot.  The Markets in Budapest, although not as spectacular looking, were my favorite because the stands were either full of handmade crafts or large pans of savory stews.  To finish the day, we went to the Turkish baths which offered us a warm reprieve under the stars.

Presidential Palace, Bratislava

Finally, the next day we took a much shorter train ride to Bratislava (leaving Budapest just as it was warming into the 50s).  None of us had a strong desire to go to this particular place, but as we were using it as an inexpensive flight back to Malaga and we thought we would take advantage of it in the meantime.  Of course, after our successes in Prague and Budapest, we immediately headed to the Bratislava Christmas markets where we once again indulged in delicious food and drink and spent way too much money on gifts (...for ourselves).  The next day we had a few hours before having to head to the airport, but even in that short time, we felt like we had seen the bulk of Bratislava and felt that it was surprisingly charming and beautiful.  We were glad we made the effort.

It was an amazing trip and I'm so glad I got to do it, especially at such a festive and magical time.  I'm hoping that maybe at some point in my life I'll be able to make it back to these cities to explore them even more (and preferably at a warmer time of year!).

The links to the full Facebook photo albums are here: Prague, Budapest, and Bratislava