I was checking my Facebook after waking up and the entire homepage of my friends’ updates were almost the same one: “RIP MJ.” MJ? The only two initials I could think of that could attract that wide attention were Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan. When I read another message relating to child molesting, I knew who they were referring to. But, Michael Jackson died? REALLY? I was confirmed seconds later after checking out the news. NO WAY! CAN’T BE TRUE! WTF! I could not think of anything but denial. It was like a soldier's spouse opened the door and found two fully dressed officers standing in front. He’s gone?! It cannot be true! I could not care less about what some of the others thought of MJ. To me, he was a legend whose status in the history of music world would never be replaced. (Can you think of any other entertainer after him in recent years who could be called a legend?) He gave his all to his fans in every song he performed on stage. He was a true performer that his dance moves would be followed by generations and continue on forever. He brought the crowd down like no others could. (Remember those girls passing out in his concerts and those who cried so hard on the front row?) He was a humanitarian who brought love to many children whose lives were in danger and wrote songs for those who needed help. (Let’s leave those controversies in recent years alone for the moment.) He was not one of us. He was THE King of Pop. And because of that, like a lot other uniquely talented individuals in his league, he was doomed to be messed up. I had a theory that he would collapse during his upcoming This Is It tour. To me, the schedule was simply too cruel for a 50-year-old who even had problems breathing normally. I told Caymin the news when she came back from the washroom. “MJ died? No way!” Obviously, she understood what MJ and his legend stood for in the same way as I did. I was glad to have shared the shocking news with her. We immediately started playing his legendary tunes on YouTube. What else could we do to remember him? We had nothing to say except “unbelievable”. So “when words leave off, music begins.” Caymin’s favourite was Will You Be There. We played that one again and again. I wanted to see MJ dancing so I searched out some of his live concerts -- love the atmosphere. We were singing and dancing together in our German hostel room to celebrate a legend’s life who was half way across the globe. I wanted to stop for a day in my trip and dedicate it to MJ because all in my head was his music. I knew there would be something happening in Prague -- a beautiful artists’ place. “Have a good moonwalk up there, Michael!”
After saying bye to Caymin at the train station and wished her luck on bussing/hitchhiking to Copenhagen that day, I stored my luggage and went out for my Dresden tour before heading east to Prague in the afternoon. As I said, the city is beautiful with its magnificent baroque architectures. My first stop was the Frauenkirche, Church of Our Lady, a newly rebuilt icon just in time for the city’s 800th anniversary in 2006. A fancy restaurant in decent size located outside the church caught my eye because it had Canadians flags on everything. Its name was Ontario Canadian Steakhouse. I was curious and thought the owner must be a Canadian. To my surprise, the waiter told me it was all German owned but served Canadian cuisines. What does Canadian cuisine have? Poutine? Everything inside was fairly new and goldenly shiny. It didn’t have the feel of its history, but had the scale to make you wow. I made the trip up the stairs to the top of the church and had a great 360-view of the various gems in town. After coming down the church, I walked to Schlossplatz and Theaterplaz, where Dresden’s treasured buildings were located: The neo-Renaissance opera house Semperoper, Catholic Hofkirche, and fortress Zwinger. It was a royal feeling to stand around those structures. The last stop for me in Dresden that day was to watch a 40-minute film that told the history of the city with black-and-white footage from 1930s. From the film, I learned how closely they modelled the originals while reconstructing the city from rubbles. It also made me ask in what way Dresden deserved that brutal fate with no military importance left at the end of the war.
After having a delicious German pork steak sandwich, I got on the train to Prague. The train had no AC and was steaming hot. My experience later on told me that it was Eastern Europe -- the EC trains connecting to that direction were all a class lower than the ones in the Western part. However, the view was beautiful along the way. The train followed River Elbe and passed by valley of forest and limestone towers. A bit more than 2 hours later, I arrived in the dream city everyone talked about. At the tourist office at the train station, a couple from Vancouver recognized my Canucks shirt and said hi. I had to exchange money as Czech Republic still didn’t use Euros. I checked into the hostel Sijia’s friend Yujing was in. It looked sketchy to me in the first sight. I started off half an hour before our scheduled time to meet Sijia in front of the National Museum. Since I gave myself more than enough time to stroll there, I didn’t use the map at the beginning, which turned out to be a mistake. The streets in European cities are not as square as they are in North America. 10 minutes later, I was lost, ending up on the wrong side of the train tracks. So I had to return almost all the way and followed the map to the main train station first. Unfortunately, the last road sign I needed for National Museum was fallen from the pole by the train station, so I had no clue where to go for a destination 5 minutes south. I asked a couple of people inside the train station, they either didn’t speak English or didn’t give me clear enough direction of which side to get out of the train station. Just when I figured out 10 minutes later, the thunderstorm came and it started pouring cats and dogs. Because I was already very late of our scheduled meeting time, I had to continue running in the rain. It didn’t take long to get me all soaked. I was about half an hour late when I finally found Sijia and Yujing -- the 15 minutes walk from the hostel took me almost an hour. Good they were still waiting for me over there, as Sijia’s bus was about 20 minutes late as well. The first sight I saw under Wenceslas Statue was a growing memorial for MJ. We decided to find Sijia’s staying place first and then go out for food. Sijia was working the summer as an intern in České Budějovice (Budweis), the city where Budweiser beer was from. She would stay at a university in Prague where her professor gave her. It was a bit of work for us to locate the office she was staying in, as the instruction from her professor wasn’t clear enough and the security guard in the building didn’t speak too much English. But, in the end, we did manage to work out the doors with the keys we had to find the room. In the process, I also found the intriguing magnetic key which only need to be touched against a magnetic button to unlock the building door. It was the first time I saw it. The dinner was good, except we were charged unexpectedly with big money for the side bread -- we thought it came with the meal. Sijia said Czech food was pretty much all meat. My order, Prague Plate, proved it -- it was simply a big plate of all sorts of meat: ham, sausage, bacon. We were all tired after the late meal and decided to call it a night to get ready for touring the next day. But the day didn’t end there.
After sending Sijia home, Yujing and I came back to our hostel. I was surprised the two girls from England in my room were all asleep by 22:30 when I got back. In order not to disrupt them, I went to bed straight as well. But I was waken up by the knock on our door: “Shane!” With my sleepy eyes half open, I found Yujing outside. “I got stolen!” “What?” Obviously, when Yujing went for a shower after coming back, the guys staying in her room took off and stole her camera, some money and some other things, including the power converter I lent her. We went downstairs and talked with the guy at the front desk, he didn’t look like he wanted to help too much and only called the police upon our strong request. Yujing was devastated but we all knew small theft like this would go away unsolved 99% of the time. In order to make her feel comfortable, I decided to stay in the same room with her. The incident only made me dislike that hostel more, and I had to drag my valuables out of my room since I didn’t trust that place any more.
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