How to see the great Arlington County Fair in 15 minutes: Park in the neigborhood by the highway on your way home from work. Cross the bridge and walk quickly past the ponies, through the food stands and inside to the info both. Pick up the T-shirt you won on Twitter. Do two aisles in the exhibition hall, checking out friend Rob's ribbon-winning Arlington honey (which by the way, dear reader, was your nickname in high school). Hustle back outside, down the midway, to the trailer that sells deep-fried Oreos. Watch the six Oreos drop into the fat and come out coated, ready for powdered sugaring. Start the deep-fried Oreos on your way back down the midway, fend off a sucker-less kid carnie, — "Don't you know how to throw?" "I know how to throw," jackass — pass the ponies again, exchange hellos with your local scoutmaster, cross the highway bridge, and return to your car, finishing your deep-fried Oreos. wiping powered sugar off your hands, face and pants.

I hope to return.

The honey:

The Oreo trailer:

The Oreos:

If the original is right for a cloudy day, this demo version is perfect for a rainy day. Which it is, in this region. "It's a bummer," the local weather blog says. Weather aside, though, I've had this track up all week. The direct link is here, but the context is on This Mornin' I Am Born Again.

I thought at first … well, after the first several dozen plays … the demo had a slower pace, but finally switching to the finished take, only the chorus was slower. Then I thought it was the drums. The drums were so prominent on the finished version and not on the demo at all. But I switched back to the demo and there was a drumbeat. Obviously, the final cut had more, louder drums, but they weren't the real difference.

What was? The backing vocals. Kim Ritchey did the album's, random people live. Beyond sound, the song meant one thing when a second voice joined the chorus. The song meant another when no one did.

My favorite graffiti of the trip comes courtesy Big Black's Bad Houses.

The graffiti and some of David Cerny's babies were on the castle side of the river, far away from the crowds but easy enough to find.

Crossing back over the river, we arrived in busy Old Town Square just in time to see the Orloj (Astronomical Clock) ring the top of the hour.

From across the square, 12x zoom captured the Apostles' appearance. When the bells stop ringing, Apostles stop moving and the doors shut.

Not a bad looking place, Prague.

But one David Remnick could differ. This was the shop of the wannabe whores, Kristin said. She admitted to shopping there only sometimes.

Over the river yet again, back to the castle's side, we approached the metronome representing freedom where a Stalin memorial once stood.

Further along that hilltop were men playing marbles, families kicking soccer balls, couples napping in the grass, and flowers everywhere.

The statue whispered, "Drink Gambrinus…"

We sat in the beer garden at the end, drank beer and talked for hours before heading to dinner with Kristin's boyfriend and their RFE friends.

Took a train the next morning to Salzburg, resumed the academic life.

Hint: It looks like one thing. But it's actually a school supply. YES.

Please comment with your favorite school supplies: pens, highlighters, pencils, erasers, binders, folders, scissors, glue, etc. Keep your graphing calculators out of this. Favs off the top of my head: a folder that was a Topps card featuring mediocre Ranger outfielder Pete Incavigilia, any left-handed scissors, any pen that was not erasable (erasable pens hate left-handed people), and the arrival of glue stick. I also associate Super Madballs with my school supplies, but I have no idea why.

Update: Any erasers from Roy Rogers kids' meals. Also, thinking more about Pete Incaviglia and why, I think to 9-year-old me a massive MLB player with a seemingly unspellable name would've been The Other… Still not sure about the Super Madballs except they were awesome.

Everyone touched this Charles Bridge plaque for luck. But what kind of luck? Faithful, financial, fertile? Eek. Googled later: To return to Prague.

What to eat after a huge breakfast? Ah — rolled dough, cooked on a spit and dipped into cinnamon and sugar. Perfect for walking up a hill.

Atop the hill was Prague Castle, the largest ancient castle in the world, office to kings, emperors and now presidents. A crowd had gathered.

No idea what hour it was, we'd met the changing of the castle guard, and at noontime it brought with the only change fanfare of the day.

There at primetime, we circled St. Vitus cathedral but didn't try the line. We did have a good conversation about what nationalities cut in lines.

Thought Kristin was going over the side here. And a random girl came up to me and said she liked my Threadless T-shirt. (Go Threadless!)

Fun Explosive followed us everywhere. More writers need wild design.

Just outside the castle gates: absinthe ice cream. I passed on tiramisu gelato for it. It was great. (Potential slogan: "Go crazy for ice cream!")

Not done on the ice cream: Wonderfully light with the cream flavor just above the spirit. Also, may have made me fall back in love with cones.

I write this half for love of obituaries and half for love of orangutans.

We need a rule. When the AP uses the word "some" in the lede, you deserve a better obit. Like: "John Quade, who played the heavy in some Clint Eastwood movies and was the sheriff in the television mini-series Roots, died on Aug. 9 at his home in the Southern California desert town of Rosamond," AP writes. NYT runs the obit at six grafs.

A.V. Club, meanwhile, gives two more reasons for a better obit. This line: "His most famous roles, naturally, were as 'heavies' in westerns like High Plains Drifter and The Outlaw Josey Wales, and he squared off against Clint Eastwood again as motorcycle gang leader 'Cholla' in the famed trucker-orangutan love stories Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can." And this line: "As he more or less retired from his acting career in the 1990s, Quade became an increasingly outspoken opponent of the U.S. government and a figurehead of the anti-New World Order movement, giving frequent lectures on the Constitution and, common law, and what he saw as the dangers of being forced to register for drivers' licenses and Social Security cards."

Is everyone going to get behind that cause? Including his call for the repeal of the 14th Amendment? Heck no. But should his politics plus orangutan movies make for a complex life and interesting obituary? Yes. The LAT, the country's best obit paper, lets me down this time.

Our train arrived in Prague late at night. and fireworks from the city center mixed with flashes of dove flocks over the National Theater.

Kristin lived in the neighborhood, and opened skylights in her spare bedroom let me wake up with birds, horses, trams, and church bells.

Breakfast at Cafe Milena, a Kafka spot now run by the Friends of Kafka. Named for the journalist Milena Jesenka, Kafka's great lost love.

Outside, whether this moment was lost love or not, it was hard to say.

Near the river, a wine bar advertising everywhere promised new love.

Also everywhere. Every-where. Possibly every single store in the entire end-to-end Czech Republic. Toy for people or pets? I still have no idea.

But who needed wine, toys or even new love when you had this view?

We crossed the Charles Bridge, rumored for centuries to have eggs in the mortar, making it stronger, and headed for the castle on the hill.

People I've never met but now care about via the magic of newspaper:

Back in July, Ian ran into his ex and her friends when he was on Date Lab with Erin. While the situation defused and they both gave the date a 4, neither felt a spark and things fizzled. But what an unexpected winning streak Date Lab has published since then. Nationals-esque, if you will. First, Kareem was an hour late for her date with Sherwin, but she ended up giving it a 6 and him a 5 plus "If you can go higher, I would definitely go higher." Then Frank and Kathy, both in their 50s, seemed too wise for their own happinesses (Kathy: "Giving a number to a date is an unfortunate attempt to quantify something that can't be quantified"), but they ended up on a good second date. Next, most recently, Julian and Susan made the mistake of seeing Bruno (Julian: "not a great pick for a first date") but had a great time otherwise.

In Vienna, we were in need of beer. But before we could have beer, we needed a system of government. We needed a governing body.

What kind of governing body? Good thing they put the name in a huge sign on the front of the building. Perfectly classy place to bum smokes.

Now we really needed beer. Thank you, Vienna, for your bars in parks.

Where the old men play accordion and a duck has only one way out.

Re-energized, we found Hofburg, former seat of the Austro-Hungarian empire and where earlier I think my taxi driver took me the long way.

No longer home to Hapsburgs, Marie Antoinette and coutless wars, the palace now houses the Austrian president, museums and, yes…

… skaters.

Failing to find the opera house, we accidentally reached the mile-long Naschmarkt, which made up for the opera and fulfilled other desires.

Restaurants, market stands, food shops, "the international stomach of Vienna," a video promo says. I couldn't guess at the vendor numbers.

A flea market made the place even bigger on Saturdays.

Fortunately for you, Dr. Falafel is there all the time.

With new pastries and fruits in hand, we then headed to the bahnhof, bound for Prague that night. (Photos beginning tomorrow in the blog.)

I fall asleep on the blue couch at 9. Wake at 10, stumble steps to bed, close the blinds. Wake at 2, change, wash up, turn out the lights, click through sad Sinatra songs for the next hour. Debate which version of Last Night When We Were Young is better, and by better, sadder. Is it 1955, after the big Ava break-up, or 1965, more distant and haunted? Both have too many strings, a symptom of the era, even on the more lightly strung Wee Small Hours album. But the versions spark a search for alternate takes, ones with just Frank and maybe Bill Miller on piano. Minutes later, they turn out not to exist, not on easy Internet at least.

A television performance appears on Yahoo Video en Espanol. Strings are still there, but the bundled coat and fake snow work to chill them. The song looks hard to sing in performance, when performance means more than vocals. Performance is a hopeful communication. Place and time turn out to be semi-precious incidentals, like the strings but more likely to lead us all into the next song. The connection drops mid-song, and I hold Sinatra partly responsible and myself the same. I write and an hour later the connection comes back, hopeful and sad and awake.