Playful Prague, Part One

Originally I had planned to go to Cesky Krumlov, a quaint little town 5 hours bus ride south of Prague. After getting to the Czech capital and having had little to no sleep on the train, I couldn't really cope with the concept of having to work out the busses and then travelling for half the day to get down there. Added to that was my destination following Cesky being Prague, and the fact that I was here already just meant that the nice little quiet town simply got cut out of my intinerary.

The first thing to do when arriving in a new country, specifically a country with a currency that you do not have, is to find the closest ATM and get some cash. There's about 4 euro to 100 Krone, and so I figured that 2000 Krone would be enough to get me started. In my sleepless dazed state I wandered over to the nearest cash machine, punched in the relevant numbers and awaited my fortune. The machine went through the usual clunks and noises, spit out my card and then spit out my money; a single 2000 Krone bill. Thats like getting an 80 dollar note where most things cost below 2. Basically, no one wants to accept tender of such a large denomination.

Chris and I made our way to Sir Toby's hostel, a place that had been recommended to us by various people back in Krakow. He'd made a reservation whilst I hadn't, but the very helpful lady behind the counter was able to squeeze me into one of their rooms. It was here that I was able to break my 2000 Krone note and get some useful currency out of it, and after dumping our bags in the luggage room, Chris and I decided that we shouldn't waste a whole day, and got the tram into the city itself.

Our hostel was only a ten minute tram ride or so to the city center, and upon entering the tram both of us tried to be the bigger man and didn't take the single seat that was in close proximity. At the next stop an elderly man walked on, requested the seat to which we gladly offered. He seemed enamoured with our generosity and began to strike up conversation, explaining that he actually lived in Chicago and was over here to visit his mother who was ill. He began giving us his opinion on the Czech governing policies and what it is like to be a Czech citizen, punctuating these pearls of wisdom with why he prefers to live in Chicago. When it came to his stop, he insisted on us getting out with him, and so began our own private tour of Prague by the very friendly local old guy. He took us to a couple of the major landmarks in the city, explained what they were for and their history. He was very excited not for the landmarks themselves, but rather for the historical significance that they symbolised. To illustrate, there was one particular structure, a kind of gate from when the city was walled in, and it doesn't look very impressive, but several significant historical events had happened there. In his mind, this made the structure incredibly exciting and valuable to him, and he communicated this to us with no shortage of enthusiasm.

He took us to the main street of the city and pointed out what was in different directions, and where he recommended we spend our time. He gave us his opinion on where to change money, and urged us "Don't take their bullshit!" if anything seemed a bit dodgy. He then pointed to an Irish pub up the road that he vouched was an excellent place for watching the soccer, and just when Chris and I became concerned that we were going to be stuck with this guy a great deal longer than we probably had wanted, he wished us all the best, gave us a few other small tips and was off. It was a very cool experience, and probably the friendliest local I've met anywhere on my trip.

Chris and I continued our journey around Prague, checked out the main street that was very busy and ran through most of the main part of the city. It had the massive National Museum at one end, and the famous Charles Bridge at the other. We walked from the former to the latter, and then across the bridge. The bridge itself was crammed full of people, with many characiture artists doing their thing, several small stalls selling beads and necklaces and the like, and a musical group calling themselves the "Bridge Band". They were actually quite good, a trumpeter, a tromboner, a tuba-er. What was most interesting was the guy playing the washboard. He had metal thimbles on each of his fingers, and ran and tapped them along a steel washboard, essentially sounding like a tap dancer. He was definitely the star of the show, and the audience seemed to appreciate his solo efforts the best.

Struggling through the throngs of people, we eventually made it to the other end of the bridge. We continued down along the river and came across what is known as the Lennon wall. There is a mask resembling John Lennon that is affixed to it, and the whole thing is covered in various graffiti. Apparently it used to be where the youth of Prague would come to write their opinions on the current government, and today has become a sort of shrine for the advancement of hippy ideals. What I liked the most was one piece of graffiti on the wall that wrote "Coexist" with various religious symbols. The picture is currently on the wikipedia link, but here is a direct one in case it gets changed.

We walked further down the river and crossed back over to our side, saw the opera house and also the dancing building. I was excited to see what would constitute a dancing building, but by the time we'd gotten there I was completely knackered from our few hours of walking and while it is fairly funky looking, I didn't feel it was worth the effort to get down there. After standing there for a brief minute and taking a snap, we got back on the tram and headed to the hostel. We both crashed out for a couple of hours and then got some pasta at the restaurant next door.

By the time we'd finished dinner, the bar in the hostel had opened up, and was fairly quiet. We had a few beers and slowly met the people from the hostel who were filtering into the bar. It was during this initial lull period that we both met Renske, a very friendly traveller from Holland who had learned a majority of her English whilst living in the US. As a result, she had a very strong American accent whilst speaking English, but she didn't seem to take too much offence at being pegged as a yank. We tried to convince her to head out with us later that evening, but she'd made up her mind to have a quiet one, promised to head out with us another night and after finishing her cup of tea she left to get some sleep.

After a while we realised there was a reasonable contingent planning on heading to the biggest club in Prague; a five storey establishment with the reputation of being one of the biggest clubs in Europe. A few more beers were had, Pilsener Urquell and Kolner being the ones availabe, and at less than a euro a pint they go down quite well! Chris and I ended up sharing a table with a couple of Scottish guys and two English girls, and both the Scots and Chris delighted in showing us all a bunch of drinking games. The first was "Fuzzy Duck", which involves each person in turn having to say "Fuzzy Duck" until someone decides to say "Does he?". At this point the order is reversed, and then everyone in turn must pronounce "Ducky Fuzz", again, until someone utters "Does he?". The first to screw it up takes a drink and begins the next round. It may sound simple, but do it with yourself in your head a few times and you'll soon realise the hilarity that can be had.

The second drinking game that Chris introduced was "Ping, Pang, Pong!". Each person in turn must say the words in order. The person to say "Pong!" looks at someone, who is then required to start the sequence again with "Ping". For instance, Chris would say "Ping", I on his left would say "Pong", and the person on my left would say "Pang!" and glare at someone who would then have to say "Ping". The trick is to glare at someone whilst saying "Ping" or "Pang", and have them say something out of turn. Again, the first to screw up takes a drink, and it is also a very simple and fun game to whittle down the beers.

This went on for some time, and once the group got moving, we followed the Scots, who had increased in number once they'd found their other couple of friends, and also knew the way to the joint due to previous excursions. The tram could only take us so far, and the remainder of the walk took quite a while, about another 30 minutes. Looking at the map from time to time I think it could have been cut down significantly, but the roads of Prague aren't very regular, and I wasn't in the mood to be leader that evening.

We got to the club shortly after midnight, payed our entry fee and began to scope the place out. The bottom floor was fairly generic hip hop and R&B, and Chris and I quickly lost the rest of our group as we waited at the bar. I don't recall the name of the beer that was on tap, as it was a brand I hadn't heard of and haven't since, but I -do- recall that it was a 12% variety, but still tasted quite good. After retrieving our drinks we made our way to the next floor up which was a kind of loungey and chilled out area, skipping to the next one which was the trance/dance floor. The music was pretty commercial, but listenable, and we hung around there for a breif period before realising that none of our group were here either and made our way to the next floor up.

Upon entering it was clear that this was where a good percentage of the club population was, a population primarily made up of teenagers and people in their very early 20's. This floor was what I call the "cheesy retro floor", with everything from early Michael Jackson, to MC Hammer being pumped out of the ample speakers. The place was also where the majority of the girls were, so if you could stand listening to the crap in the soundwaves, there was a fair amount of eye candy to look at.

Chris couldn't quite finish his beer as the extra kick was giving him trouble, so he skipped a round and then decided that it was Mojito time. In fact, it seemed to be Mojito time for the rest of the night, and we must have gotten through quite a number of them by the time we left. Braving the cheesy retro floor for a while longer, as thats where our group had ended up, we sang crappy songs and danced crappy dances until eventually we'd had all we could take and went back down to the trance floor. The music hadn't changed much from when we were there a couple hours previously, and the generic house and trance music continued playing for the rest of the night. It was an extreme improvement over the trash upstairs, but had I gone into a club where this was the main floor then I would have been dissapointed. However, the company was good and we kept our groove on until 5ish at which point it was unanimously decided to head back to the hostel before the sun came up.

The walk back was just as long as the walk there, punctuated by a strange sculpture of a pig on a diving board (see the photo gallery), and a lot of puzzled faces as we tried to work out how the astronomical clock worked in the main square. Deciding the thing was broken anyway, we left it after a few minutes of pondering and managed to get back to the hostel around 6.

I had agreed to meet Chris the next day around 1, and we had it on our agenda to head up to the Prague castle. We battled with the trams trying to get there, the number we'd been given seemed to have been cancelled. Eventually we gave up and used the metro instead, and walked the rest of the way. It wasn't a terribly long walk, but the castle is up on a hill, so the steepness combined with our alcohol induced lethargy from the previous evening meant it was something of a battle to get up there.

The castle is supposed to be one of the biggest in the world, but it doesn't really look like a traditional fortified castle. It's more like a big collection of conjoined buildings, with a fairly elaborate cathedral in the center. I'd originally thought the cathedral was the castle, as it is the only real ornate building in the whole complex. There were quite a number of people milling about, taking in the sights of the area, with entrance to the cathedral being free. Chris and I were both fairly unimpressed with the castle parts themselves, and didn't really feel like paying the entrance fee to go into what was likely just another museum, but checked out the interior of the cathedral which was quite interesting. We also walked to the top of the tower, 287 steps that we both probably could have done without. The view was impressive though, and after catching our breath and milling about for a while up there we made our way back down and went to the train station to work out the timetables for the next leg of our respective journeys. I was making my way to Berlin in the next few days, and Chris was planning to head to Amsterdam. It took over an hour of waiting in queues to get this timetable information, after which we headed back to the hostel to see if anyone was keen on catching the England vs Germany soccer match that evening.

Apparently no one was particularly interested in seeing the soccer, so Chris and I made our way to the Irish pub, and watched the game there. The place was packed with Germans, who were obviously enjoying themselves quite a lot. On the couple of occasions that they scored, the whole place went crazy, and several of the well lubricated krauts would start dancing on the tables. It made for a good atmosphere, though England lost which didn't make my companion very cheerful for the next short while until we got back to the hostel and had a few more beers. We met up with Renske again who told us that she had a contingent of people organised to go to a different club, the "Cross Club", that night which was just around the corner. She showed us where it was, and then everyone else left whilst Chris and I got ourselves sorted. We then tried to follow her directions there, ended up making a wrong turn and lengthening our trip a considerable distance. We did eventually find our bearings and then find the club, the front of it being an open area, adorned by a bunch of coloured neon lights on a rotating platform spinning in different directions.

This would be the first of several trips to this club during my time in Prague. I absolutely fell in love with the place. The whole joint is covered and built from old industrial scrap metal, pieces of car engines, twisted metal sculptures and wrought iron barriers. The front area is a low lit outdoor beer garden and once you go indoors, it becomes a labyrinth of corridors and side rooms. There seem to be three or four main dance floors, several bars and many little side rooms to sit down and relax with your drinks. In every area the lighting is crazy, without an uncoloured light in the place, the majority of it being a combination of reds and greens. Most of the lights are attached to moving platforms, whether it is something as simple as a ceiling fan or as complicated as a moving montage of luminescence covering an entire wall. The most impressive of these was the lighting being the DJ one one of the main dance areas, the whole set of lights resembling a skull face, with the lights that made up it's outer perimeter moving in a hypnotic wave motion. In the center of the floor was some kind of twisted metal object that wouldn't look out of place in one of the Matrix movies, with it's entire body slowly spinning in a circle, with several lights attached to its exterior moving about in various ways as well. In fact, the whole club wouldn't have looked out of place in one of the Matrix movies, but rather than feeling sinister, it just felt really cool.

The music in the area that I spent most of my time in was some of the funkiest breaks I'd ever heard. The DJ really knew what he was doing, and his mixing and track selection was superb. I checked out a couple of the other rooms, the music mainly being either drum 'n bass or more chilled out in some of the seating areas. Chris ended up leaving around 1 or 2, still feeling a bit worse for wear after the previous evening, and also having to catch his train to Amsterdam the following morning. We'd met up with Renske and her posse when we'd arrived, and apparently the group of guys she'd come out with didn't understand that she was a girl capable of taking care of herself. She split off from the group earlier in the night and they spent most of their night running around the club trying to find out where she was. I ran into her a bit later on and she'd picked up a local Czech guy and was enjoying having some chats with him in an upstairs bar area. Once she'd calmed her little group down and convinced them that she was fine, most of them left. As I was the only one left in the club from our original group, I promised her I'd let her know when I was leaving if she wanted a chaperone back, and headed back downstairs to the funky breaks room.

After a few hours of dancing around in there I moved back out to the bar and ran into two Dutch guys and a few Irish girls who all happened to be staying my room. It was quite a coincidence and I spent a couple hours drinking with them, until they decided to call it a night and headed back to the hostel. Initially I didn't feel like leaving quite yet, and I went back into the breaks room which had slowly changed styles into more generic house music. A few minutes later I realised I wasn't really into it anymore, and the alcohol I'd consumed sitting down with the other group probably hit me as well, and I made a hasty exit from the club to try and catch my roommates headed back to the hostel. I didn't actually catch up to them until I made it inside the hostel, making a far too enthusiastic dash up the stairs and nearly falling the whole way back down. It was not my most graceful of moments, but luckily I was uninjured and crashed out promptly to bed. It wasn't until the next day that I realised I'd completely forgotten about Renske at the club, and fortunately we ran into each other later on. She informed me that she ended up hanging around with her new Czech friend, who luckily wasn't a psychopath and she'd made it home without incident, though not until many hours after sunrise.