Prague, Czech Republic
July 16th, 2010
Prague… the jewel of Eastern Europe. I had extremely high hopes and aspirations for this city when I was originally planning my trip; so much so, I had once considered quitting my job and moving here to teach English. However, upon my arrival, I was so enervated and downtrodden that I was afraid I’d never leave the hostel. Suffice it to say that I think I have literally reached the breaking point of my body. Two months of non-stop partying, travelling, sleepless nights in noisy hostels, poor diet and dangerous excursions have beaten me to a pulp. My back feels like that of an 80-year-old man, and my knee gets worse with each passing day. I can barely walk, and stairs prove to be quite a challenge. I have felt sick for over a week now, no doubt the result of some foreign virus or bacteria I ingested with my head on a filthy hostel pillow. But ultimately, I set out on this trip not to complain or be hindered by bodily aches, but to live, learn, and make memories and friends for a lifetime! So enough with the whining… suck it up and get on with the damn blog!
Tim, Kevin and I arrived in Prague after a 9-hour train ride… it was supposed to be a 5-hour ride. Don’t ask me how it ended up so late because I have no clue. It sucked because I hadn’t eaten before I left, and had zero Hungarian or Czech currency on me to grab a bite in the dining car. To make matters worse, once we passed the border into Slovakia, we were approached by the conductor for our tickets. I brandished my Eurail pass, as I had done countless other times, but in this case, the man said in broken English “no good in Slovakia!” You have got to be kidding me. This douchebag is yelling that my rail pass isn’t valid in his country and I had to buy another ticket to just pass through! When I told him I had no cash, and learned he didn’t accept credit, he threatened to kick me off the train at the next stop. Luckily Tim and Kevin were able to pull together just enough change for me to stay on board, for which I am super thankful because when we finally saw the next town, it looked like that scene in Eurotrip when they arrive in Eastern Europe and it’s a cold war era ghost town. I highly doubt an ATM existed there.
We arrived into Prague, grabbed a quick lunch together, and then I set out hobbling about for a solid hour to find my hostel. A cab would have been nice, but I still didn’t have any cash. I checked in and set about meeting new people at the bar, and finally indulge in Czech beers, purported to be the best in the world. It was too late to explore the city, so I might as well explore these fine pilsner brews! I must admit, they are delicious, and certainly on par with the German lagers, but I’m sorry Czech Republic… nothing will ever beat the Belgian beers. They continue to reign supreme. I caught a healthy buzz, but was strangely exhausted from the train ride, even though I just sat there doing nothing the entire afternoon. I plopped into my bed, but was granted very little sleep due to my room being as hot as a sauna. There was a heat wave tearing through Prague this particular week, and this hostel (despite being rated the best in the city) had no AC. Fantastic.
The next morning, I set out to explore and learn about the city. Prague is positively gorgeous, with a massively winding river in the center, the biggest castle in Europe placed upon a hill in the background (every successive king would add a new section to it over the millennia, and it now consists of dozens of architecture types, from Gothic to Nouveau to Victorian…very cool), and houses of every color imaginable. It seems that at the fall of Communism, the people could not wait to paint their bleak and monotonous homes in vivid yellows, greens, reds, and blues… a veritable Easter basket of tones!
Another striking feature of this city, which is in stark contrast to say Budapest, is how old it truly is. While Budapest, Munich, and some other cities were ravaged by war and rebuilt to appear old, Prague survived the onslaught relatively unscathed. And there are two reasons why; one is a tale of heroism and triumph, the other purely sinister…
Hitler loved Prague and considered it a true gem of a city. When the Nazis came in and started deporting all of the Jews to death camps, he did something he did not do in other cities. As opposed to razing all of the Jewish edifices, as he had done in other cities, he chose to leave them standing. The reason being that after he had completed the eradication of an entire race, he would set up the Jewish quarter of Prague as a sort of museum: a testament to a destroyed group of people. As a result of this sick bastard’s intentions, the Jewish district is oddly well preserved, and thus very beautiful. In fact, the oldest still-functioning Jewish temple resides here, and is actually comprised of bricks from the original Solomon’s temple in Israel.
The other reason for Prague’s survival was the Citizen Uprising, an amazing story of a small group of people revolting against the brutal Nazis. At the very end of the war, the people were so angry at the Nazis, they wanted to fight back and show that they would not tolerate any more injustices. When Patton and his American regiments were within 60 miles of the city, the people took to the streets with whatever weapons they could fashion (pots and pans, broomsticks, bricks, etc.) and starting beating the Nazis to death, despite overwhelming losses due to Nazi machine guns. The hope was that the Americans would soon arrive and support them. However, unknown to them, the agreement between the US and the Soviets had Prague just east of the demarcation line, and thus Patton was unable to advance any farther. Knowing this, the Nazis began to furiously fight back. But then an odd thing happened; Nazis started shooting other Nazis! These were in fact Russians who had defected to Germany to fight with the Nazis, for they thought that Hitler was the lesser of two evils when compared to Stalin. These defectors, knowing the Red Army was only two days away, decided it would be better to surrender to the Americans rather than be executed by their former countrymen. The Nazis were confused as to who to fight, so they retreated, but began to burn the city down. Knowing that the Americans and Soviets were both pushing forward, they decided it might be in their best interest to regroup to protect Berlin. The Prague citizens, watching their great city begin to burn, did an interesting thing: they proposed a truce to the Nazis. If the Nazis would leave, without destroying another building, the citizens would not fire upon them. And so it was… the Nazis left, and the people rejoiced!… for a whopping two days. When the Soviets arrived, they took credit for the expulsion of the Nazis, and until 1989 when Communism crumbled, no one knew this amazing tale of how 30,000 Prague citizens fought off over a million Nazis. Amazing.
After my history lesson, I prepared to head out on the Prague Underground, supposedly the best pub crawl in all of Europe. But it started to pour, so I called it an early night. The next afternoon, I met up with Cammy (Florence), Sarah (Budapest), Kevin (Nice), and Chris (Corfu), and we set out on the pub crawl. The first bar was jam packed, but for 90 minutes, it was unlimited beer, wine, and shots of vodka/rum. We descended upon the bar with a vendetta; I think I was able to stomach about 12 shots and 10 beers before the heat became unbearable. At one point, I pleaded with the bartender to blast me with the cocktail gun; he obliged and soaked me in a stream of soda water… and everyone behind me! I was now dripping wet, but hammered and happy!
We continued on to bar after bar, until ultimately along the walk I realized I had to profusely urinate. I ran down into a metro stop, but was instantly dismayed to see that it had been locked up for the night. I hobbled back up to the streets to find an open store that may allow me to use their bathroom, but everything was closed. I turned the corner and walked down an alley looking for another bar, but I hit a dead end. When I headed back the way I came, I was shocked to see that someone had come along and trapped me inside this alley! A huge metal gate was stretched across the doorway, and there was no way out! I tried ripping it open, knocking on doors and windows, and screaming for the culprit who had locked me in, all to no avail. Great… let’s climb this here 12-foot wall on a torn knee ligament.
Just as I crested over the other side, I lost my grip and plummeted straight onto the concrete. As I lay cursing this gate prankster, an elderly woman came shuffling over to me. Oh how pleasant, a local is coming to my aid! What she had to say next was the most disturbing/hilarious thing I had heard in weeks! “Oh my, you have big fall! You are big boy! Here I help you up. You ok? Yes? Good! You want blowjob for 600 koruna??” ($30 US dollars) She made a move to grab my groin, and I instantly started laughing my ass off! This woman was the same age as my grandmother. Through hysterical laughter, I thanked her for her offer, but all I needed was a bathroom. I limped off cracking up to rejoin my group.
The girls went home early, but Kevin, Chris and I stayed to hit up the last spot on the pub crawl. It’s a massive club on the top floor of a 20-story building, accessed by elevator, affording an amazing view of Wenceslas Square, Prague’s central square steeped in history. I was having fun dancing under the massive crystal disco ball, but it was getting late and we were all running out of money. We cabbed it home and crashed.
The next day, Chris and I went in search of a supposed beer garden, but were disappointed to find a small café in some park. Beer garden my ass. Nevertheless, we sipped on some lagers and hung out all afternoon in the newfound coolness that had descended over the city. I headed off to grab dinner, and met up with everyone again later on at the hostel. We were all pretty beat from the pub crawl the night before, and since I wanted to be fresh for Berlin the next day, we decided to have a chill night (oh how wrong would I be in the end of this disaster). We headed over the river via metro to a local movie theater. The girls went and saw some more of that Twilight garbage, and Chris and I caught the new Predators movie, completely dubbed in Czech.
After the movies, we were supposed to meet in the lobby and head home together, but the girls were nowhere to be found. It was roughly 11:45 pm, so we walked all over this megaplex looking for them. Yep, they left us. After spending 20 minutes looking for them, we headed to the metro, but learned we had missed the last train of the day by five minutes! We had to head back up to the streets, and walk over the bridge to the other side of the river to catch a tram… in the now pouring rain. Upon arrival, we learned our usual tram had also stopped running, so we had to make an educated guess as to which of the night trams went past our hostel. We guessed very wrong, as after 20 minutes, we ended up in the Prague projects at the very last stop on the southeast part of town, at which point the tram driver kicked us out into the rain. Bewildered, defeated, and moody, we had to wait 45 minutes for another to come along. We figured we had just taken this tram in the wrong direction, since we both had an inclination that this was indeed the correct line. Finally, the tram arrived, and we rode it… all the way to the other end point on the complete other northwest side of town without finding our stop! Angered, we started asking everyone we could, but suddenly no one spoke English. We now realized we had to get on another line, so we rode this damn tram again in the southeast direction, but got off to catch a connecting train which we hoped was going in the right direction. It paid off because we finally found the hostel… after literally seeing the entire city! We left that movie theater at midnight; we arrived at our hostel at 3:20 am.
Long story short, I got four hours of sleep… again! Now I’m on the train to Berlin, my last real destination before heading back to Amsterdam for a single night before catching my flight home and ending this odyssey. I am quite conflicted at this point; I’d love to keep travelling indefinitely, but I can feel my body can’t go much further. I’m excited to go home and see everyone, to have ice cold beer, to lie in my bed with the History channel lulling me to sleep (as opposed to 12 drunks in my hostel room), to lift weights, to drive my car or make a call on my cell phone. I have four days left, but you can be assured I will make the best of them! Besides, my next hostel has a pool on the roof!
-Batty
