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| Gang Prague (Left to right: Vanessa, Candice, Chris, Jessica, Wilson, Me & Simon) |
Day One: A Cold Awakening
There aren't many places colder, and more miserable than London at this time of year. Prague just so happens to be one of them, and with a Siberian freeze blast set to pass through Europe on this particular weekend, it was a natural choice of destination for us forward thinking Yiwis (yellow-kiwis).
Our trip started typically. A person down with about 5 minutes to board. Admittedly this was my fault, as I hadn't met Candice after work, grabbed her by the hand, attached a leash, and walked her to the correct train to take her to the airport. It is quite hard catching a train these days. You have to get to the right platform, at the right time, and on the right train. That's three rights all at once. Get any one of those wrong, (or 2 in Candice's case) and you're on the wrong side of the tracks, as they say. I later thought she did it intentionally as a vindictive act for not being there to hold her hand the whole way. Girls do strange things when emotionally outraged, but with me 35 hour working week, I'm a busy man these days. Saved her life once ((see
Paris), hate bringing it up)... can't be there all the time. She managed to make it, just, and we were off and away.
For this trip we were joined by some fresh new travellers. The regulars in Wilson, Chris and Candice were there, but in addition we had the joys of Vanessa and Simon (Candice's friends from NZ) and Jessica (Chris' better half from Te Awamutu or Te Aroha or Sydney or something)... she's not actually called Jessica (real name Kelly) but was given that name by Chris coz he likes Jessica Alba. Respect. The flight is only 90 minutes from Gatwick which is great. The Captain announced we were about to walk into a balmy Prague night (-15C) which sounded wonderful, and felt equally wonderful as we stepped out. The first thing I noticed, and couldn't understand, was there was no snow, anywhere. -15C and no snow?... That's like a desert without sand. If you're going to be that cold, puff out some fluff at the very least. I harp on about this because I have a trust complex against things I can't see. Examples include gaseous releases, road signs at long distance, most Gods, and freezing cities without snow. Being snowless, your eyes have no frame of reference, no measure upon which to inform the brain. Its just not cricket. To restore balance and reason to the world, I had to give this type of cold a name in my head, and used words my sister would describe. I called this cold the
'lika fark phantam cold'.
Having waited 20mins in the
lika fark phantam cold for a bus that we'd missed, we hopped into a warm taxi-van to get towards our booked lodgings. We arrived there early so had to then wait another 20mins in the
lika fark phantam cold for the owner to arrive. The exteriors of these apartments always look as about as inviting as a drug dealers hangout, but inside they are superb. This was no different, and better yet, was warm. The only offshot was that I would again, have to share a bed with Wilson. I accused Chris of always booking lodgings that would see Wilson and I sharing a bed, but he rebuked that claim saying this was the first such instance where he had done it on purpose... which was true. I'm not sure why I had thought otherwise. Probably because he's the one who gets the most pleasure out of it, reasons undisclosed. Having got nice and comfortable inside our central heated sanctuary, we then decided it would be good to go out for a stroll, the night still being young.
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| Not bad at night |
Hadn't noticed coming in, but at street level at that time of night, Prague is quite a pretty city. It seemed the most untouched of modern architecture in all the cities that I had come across so far in Europe. I imagined it would make an excellent backdrop for a WWII film, where the streets would hardly need any dressing at all. We stumbled upon Old Town Square, a large opening centred around a monument, surrounded by impressive buildings including the Old Town Hall with its Astronomical Clock. Flooded with orange and blue light, it was quite a sight indeed. The Kodak moment was soon eclipsed again by the conditions
(lika fark phantam cold) and we found our way into a beer hall, and the first of Prague's great pleasures.
I'd heard rumours about what I'm going to explain, but I don't think I ever quite believed them. It's like the Loch Ness monster, in that its existence seems only plausible in the realm of myth. But this was a myth, about to be realised. We picked up our menus, and turned to the page 'drinks'. Beverage: Beer. Volume: 0.5L. Cost: 33 Czech Kronas. Cost equivalent: 1 pound sterling. In all my days, across all my travels, I had never seen such good honest prices for beer. I haven't had many epiphanatic type moments in my life, but this was definitely one of them. I felt like Jesus must have felt, when he read the Bible for the first time. And it was good beer too. Top quality. Thick head, nice rise, a clean crisp finish. As I sipped away each pure drop in admiration, I decided this was a country that had laid some solid foundations, and that I may have to move here. Good brew, at people prices. Nondiscriminatory and embracing. All that it should be.
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| Wilson enjoying four for the price of one! |
After 3-4 roundsish we headed back in. It was quite late by then and we didn't want to overindulge on the first night. It took a tremendous amount of willpower to do so, but we left... picking up some cans on the way of course. They were unfortunately disgusting so we soon headed to our beds. I warned Simon and Vanessa who were sleeping in the mezzanine above Chris and Jessica, not to be alarmed if they were woken by an angry herd of Buffalo. It would just be Chris snoring.
Day Two: P is for...
We'd set ourselves a 9:30am get-up-and-go time the previous night. Ambitious. I got up 15minutes beforehand to have a shower. Everyone else was content to remain in their own filth, but I need my morning clean... I mean I had just shared a night in the bed with Wilson. Noticed something odd in the bathroom straight away. The nob to turn towards hot and cold, is opposite to that in London, Auckland, Singapore, pretty much everywhere else I'd been in the world. When you think about it, it actually makes more sense, health and safety wise. If you want hot water, pulling the lever towards you, takes your hand away from potential hot water danger. Another tick to the Czechs. I proclaimed this to the group afterwards, and out of all of them, only Vanessa had noticed similarly. I commended her for her keen like sense of observation and we were off.
The doomed sight of our own breath, dismissed the thought that last nights
lika fark phantam cold was night induced. It actually felt more cold during the day. I'm not sure what the sun was up to, just sitting there, not doing nothing. At least in London through its absense, you can't see it staring at you from the sky, in complete mockery. I quickly felt unprepared for the chill in the extremities. Wilson had kindly lent me some cotton inners to go with my fingerless gloves, but as good as they were, they weren't much good. Chris was leading the way, map in hand, as we more or less traced our steps back to the Old Town Square. Wasn't quite as awe-inspiring as it was in the evening, but was still nice. Our main destination for the morning was Prague Castle, apparently the most ancient of all ancient castles. To get there we had to cross another famous structure, being that of Charles Bridge. As far as bridges go, this one was great. Overlooking the Vltava River, even in the snap, it was picturesque. I had to keep a close eye on Candice as she kept jumping on the ledge and I didn't want to have to be called to save her life again ((see
Paris), still embarrasses me). We took some nice photos and pressed on, finding a cafe to warm up in.
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| Not a bad bit of backdrop and bridge |
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| And that was only half of them... |
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| At least the view was good... and the city in the background was pretty too |
A common prerequisite to a castle I have now discovered, is it has to have no less than a thousand steep steps to its gates. For Prague Castle there were at least twice this many. Half-way up we figured it would've been a good idea to count them, so I told Candice to jog down to the bottom to start a tally, but she wouldn't. We eventually made it to the top and in a slightly exhausted state, took in the view. Again, it was pretty. It seemed for every suffering to be had in Prague, there was something to savour at the end of it. A zen balance (big on zen) kept the place in check. Inside the gates of the 'castle', it was a little disappointing... It didn't really feel like a castle to be honest. Just a series houses and buildings in a condensed space surrounding a Cathedral. Wasn't like Edinburgh Castle where you had turrets and canons and gargoyles and Andrew trying to molest you (see
Edinburgh) and other such castle type things. We were feeling a little underwhelmed. That soon changed, for the girls and Wilson at least, when we came across a statue of a naked boy with a golden penis (wouldn't be the only penis for the day). The girls got into a bit of a frenzy over this, especially Jessica. In about 2 minutes they had doubled the amount of photos we had taken on the trip thus far. I made a joke about it being the inspiration for Goldmember, which made the lads laugh, but the girls were far too fixated to take notice. There were poses, there was touching. I felt real sympathy for the boy, having been a victim of objectification throughout life myself. We managed to pry them away, only to run into a second lot of statue penises no less than 30 minutes later. These ones were slightly morbid, attached to zombie like figures, trudging down a slope. Still, there was a frenzy and flurry of photos took. It's amazing the effect a penis appendage can have on people, out in the open.
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| The girls loving it. |
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| Simon reenacting an awkward changing room moment as Chris wishes his was made out of copper brass. |
Speaking of penis appendages out in the open, our next stop was the Ballet, and Swan Lake. It was taking us a while to walk there from the castle and the
lika fark phantam cold was starting to be felt. Gloves on, hands in pockets, I had still managed to lose feeling at the ends of my fingers. I was convinced they were frostbitten, and would have to be lopped off. In my head I was quickly trying to think of good war stories to explain fingerless hands. "Frost exposure on the way to the ballet in Prague" I felt would not be the yarn I'd want to have to tell. We ended up getting there just at the right time, and the fingers were saved. The Ballet isn't something I really grew up with, and this was to be my first experience of one. The tickets were incredibly cheap compared to London, and the Prague State Opera House itself was quite stunning. Possibly one of the best I had seen. The first thing I thought when the show started was the men's leotards could definitely be tighter, definitely. I didn't quite understand the purpose of these leotards to be honest. They served no concealing function, they looked like they would be uncomfortable invading every whisper of space, and they must be hell to get on. Why don't they just paint them naked from the waist down in whatever appropriate colour, and have them run around like that?.. You could hose them down after easy, no dramas. Found the first half of the show quite hard to get through. It was really warm in the theatre and we'd all just had a hotdog each. We all dozed off at several points. In the intermission I grabbed a Coke which gave me the boost I needed, and actually enjoyed the finale. They really start to break out the moves near the end, with good skills on demonstration. The curtain calls at the end were quite funny. They came out repeatedly to receive the applause and love of the crowd, but it seemed self motivated as opposed to audience initiated. That's maybe a bit harsh, and I didn't really mind. I figured they had just danced around 2 1/2 hours for us, so you could hardly complain about sitting on your ass, clapping for 5-10 minutes.
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| Looking up at the rafters |
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| Spot the bulb out. |
Because Simon and Vanessa chose not to come to the ballet with us, we arranged to meet them at the McDonalds close to the Opera House afterwards. Simon turned up on time, but apparently they got separated in their shopping escapades, and Vanessa was nowhere to be seen. We waited for a while figuring she would turn up. After 20 minutes it was mused that she may have gone to the wrong McDonalds, but I quickly interjected on her behalf defending her powerful skills in observations, established earlier that morning. An hour later she appears, apparently having gone to the wrong McDonalds. Now, I don't mind saving a girls life, like I did for Candice (see
Paris) for the sake of example)) but it is quite another thing to vouch for one and then not have them turn up to the right McDonalds. I could've cast her out of the Keen Observers, but through my weakness of pity and grace, I let it slide.
Dinner time was upon us, and although Jessica insisted in going to a Hooters, we found a good pub to settle down. Prague cuisine is based around meat... and lots of it. I ordered some ribs which were tasty, but after you've had about 3 of the suckers, the fat coating oozes down the throat a little less easily. My meal was nothing compared to the hock of pork Wilson and Chris had to devour. It was painful to watch their attempts. Wilson in particular struggled, head in his hands, with the sweats. We followed our meal with drinks back at our previous nights drinkery where the beer tasted just as good the second time around. Couldn't quite manage the restraint of the first night (only human) and continued on to a beer museum after sending the girls home. We didn't last much too much longer after that as the boys were talking my ears off, and called it in just before it all got messy. To our credit, we were sober enough to attempt to not wake the girls up as we were coming in, but ultimately did so anyway... it's the slightly inebriated thought that counts.
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| You got to grin it, to win it |
Day Three: Pragueatory
The day began a bit late as we had to wait for the apartment owner come to check us out. When the good gent turned up around midday, he allowed us to keep our luggage there till later that evening when we would depart for the airport. It was well decent of him, and saved us finding alternate storage. We had lunch at this place which served warmed wine in these huge wine glasses they heated in front of you. Hadn't seen that before.
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| Old man heating wine |
We headed for the Jewish cemetery after eating which seemed to take an eternity in walking, (although any distance does at -15C) but when we got there we saw the entry cost was the equivalent of 10 Prague pints worth, which was just too much to
beer (best joke yet). Upon deciding where to go next, Jessica suggested a public garden of some description (she had shaken off her taste for the titillating momentarily) so we followed a map there. Again this seemed to take an age, and when we arrived it was in a rather derelict and disheveled state. What's more it involved another thousand stair hill climb, on steps completely iced over. We'd walked all that way so did it anyway. It was a very strange place. There was 'trol' graffiti on the walls everywhere, cobblestones overturned, I couldn't understand why it hadn't been maintained. Simon got quite excited as he kicked a rock into another rock some distance away. Such was his enthusiasm I began to get the impression this act may have been his life's greatest physical achievement. Horses for courses I guess. Some people save lives ((see
Paris), you know she's not even grateful), others kick rocks. Once Simon had calmed down, we decided to descend as there was little to actually see. It was at this point we figured why the gardens were in the state that they were. It was built in honour of a certain Joseph Stalin during the communist era of the country. A harsh reminder of some bitter history.
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| Yiwis in the middle of nowhere... |
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| A spooky clothesline for shoes. |
The girls then decided that a Thai massage was of their fancy, so we headed back to the town square to a place we had passed on the way in. When we got there, a blonde local host greeted us and began facilitating our needs. She had a slightly unusual manner about her. Not sure exactly what it was. A cultishness. She was forcing a niceness, that wasn't natural. Probably nerves as it was a brand new establishment, but still, it disconcerted me. She never once looked me in the eye. That takes some resistance. They only had enough for 5 massages at once so Chris and I sat out whilst the girls and Simon got their feet done. Wilson opted for the full body massage and was taken out back for it by an old woman.
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| Last call?... no just last card... |
Dinner was dined on quick as we had to make our way to the airport for a 9:45pm departure. We were coy about this flight, as we knew snow was wrecking havoc in London. Unfortunately the online departure boards, nor the EasyJet website told us of any delays, so we had to go in as scheduled. As soon as we got to the check in desk, we were told it would be at least 2 hours. Ended up being 6. It was a draining way to end the trip. There's no downtime in limbo. Just second after long second. It had been the theme for much of the trip. Torment and triumph, cycling over, battling one another. Frank Kafka once said
"Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made". Only a man from Prague, could surmise it so well.
