Prague, glorious Prague, and Eirin and I together again'
Ok, Prague – where to begin?! This is such an amazing city and since I was here 4 years ago the English have discovered it. Yes the English, particularly groups of guys searching for their own Russian bride/Nicole Kidman of the east if you haven’t seen that movie I’m rambling. But there is a way to tell them apart from the other English speaking nationalities if you are concerned as a drunken stag party group approaches you. Australians for example don’t have covered shoes… whilst pale and perhaps also wearing stripy shirts as the English their slightly more bronzed feet are encased in no other than havaianas. It’s easy to spot the Canadians too, no need to worry about them, they’re too busy been feared of being called American, and so, have diligently sewn the Canadian flag to their backpacks/shorts/wallets… ah yes and one cannot forget the Americans no need to worry about confusing them with anyone else, you can hear them coming before you see them and they’re saying “Oh my god” about something old/new/sparkly.
But all this and I have not yet mentioned Ota’s house! To use an American expression ‘Oh my god’ this place was bizarre. Eirin got there first to check in before I arrived from France – and she warned me that the whole afternoon there had been death metal music playing while she tried to nap. Rude. However when I got there, apart from the slightly out of the way location all was quiet. Unfortunately this was not to last.
At 7am the new ‘hell of Ota’s house’ began. The music started as some sort of new age-organ-are we in Transylvania-electronica and moved through to pop-rock (U2) all before breakfast. At breakfast I met Ota for the first time: stinky…and eating gruel with a wooden spatula. Yes, charming fellow he was with his long greasy hair and insistence on piping music throughout the hotel (no joke there was even speakers placed above the toilet for your listening pleasure – and we tried our hardest to unplug them- I swear they were like super-glued there). Oh and the music did not get turned off until one am – no joke it was continuous and painful.
I really can’t describe this place. It was like an old house next to a main road – think Hitchcock’s psycho… we don’t think Ota did anything other than run a guest house through his inherited place, and drink too much absinth. In fact he seemed to have fried all his brain cells on something – so much so that he almost forgot to get our money at the end of our (extremely long) 2 day stay. Also he insisted we pay cash – though the website had not mentioned anything like this. Our theory was he couldn’t wait until master-card paid him and had to buy more cocaine to sprinkle on his breakfast gruel.
So began our stay in the centre of the city, in the same Hostel that my other friend Erin (spelt slightly differently) and I had stayed 4 years before (yes- can you believe that was 4 years ago!). We developed another skill, adding to our repertoire of nationality spotting. The Czechs- in a tourist town like Prague it’s not always easy to know who is local or not, but let me assure you there is no mistaking Czechs from anyone else, and once again the secret lies in the footwear. And so Moses came down from the mountain with the 11th commandment- If thou art Czech thou shalt wear skin coloured stockings and sandals at all times.
I won’t bore you with details of beautiful Prague castle, or Charles Bridge or the old Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust memorials but I will let you know that we took 3 walking tours each one better than the last. The last was the best ‘The Ghost Tour’ of Prague at 10pm with an enthusiastic guide who seemed to care that you had a good time and learnt a lot… and we love learning. The 2nd tour had been the pub tour which included free beer and goulash – so we can’t complain we got home at 2am after having a blast. Our first tour – and yes we had bought a 3 tour ticket – otherwise we wouldn’t have taken anymore tours was something of an interesting scientific experiment in the study of Czech accent as spoken by a freakishly tall, saggy breasted tour guide, who reminded me of something like out of blade-runner if the soviets had won the cold war and decided to make their own ‘Replicas’. But here I am showing my true nerd, so I will continue…
She spat when she talked and as the tour company was ‘the yellow umbrella’ we were rather hoping she’d put it up. It was the ‘castle’ tour and was meant to be 2 hours, and after one hour when we were yet to arrive at the castle we wondered somewhat about the possibility of seeing what the Guinness Book of Records describes as the biggest castle in Central Europe (have they REALLY run out of things to make records out of or what?!?!)
As she described with her robotic twang all that we passed and deliberately avoided all the things where you could actually go inside the castle – or that may have been of historical interest our wonder increased, surely this should have been named a castle-perimeter tour! The final clincher came when Eirin and I realised that our stocking-sandaled guide was in fact making up names for the architects-noblemen and such. Luckily good natured girls that we are we weren’t too miffed. After all, the 2 hours had been well spent, formulating and further perfecting our theory for nationality spotting.
Our week long trip in Prague is over, 12-05-06, and I write this on the train to Budapest to visit Livia, my friend from Kuwait, who I am totally excited to see again! I should mention how much we struggled walking to the station and changing metros etc with all our luggage, but I don’t like hearing all the ‘I told you so’… basically though one of the funniest little Britain-esque moments occurred on our way this morning.
Eirin and I struggling with our large suitcases spot our refuge in a small wheelchair lift from the station platform to the station exit. ‘So much better then escalators’ we exclaim! Upon entering the lift, truly designed for one wheel chair and pusher we rose – up we go…. Looking out across the station platform what do we spy, no other than genuinely wheelchair bound small children looking bewildered as the two tall well-abled rich westerners took their lift up, up and away.
But all this and I have not yet mentioned Ota’s house! To use an American expression ‘Oh my god’ this place was bizarre. Eirin got there first to check in before I arrived from France – and she warned me that the whole afternoon there had been death metal music playing while she tried to nap. Rude. However when I got there, apart from the slightly out of the way location all was quiet. Unfortunately this was not to last.
At 7am the new ‘hell of Ota’s house’ began. The music started as some sort of new age-organ-are we in Transylvania-electronica and moved through to pop-rock (U2) all before breakfast. At breakfast I met Ota for the first time: stinky…and eating gruel with a wooden spatula. Yes, charming fellow he was with his long greasy hair and insistence on piping music throughout the hotel (no joke there was even speakers placed above the toilet for your listening pleasure – and we tried our hardest to unplug them- I swear they were like super-glued there). Oh and the music did not get turned off until one am – no joke it was continuous and painful.
I really can’t describe this place. It was like an old house next to a main road – think Hitchcock’s psycho… we don’t think Ota did anything other than run a guest house through his inherited place, and drink too much absinth. In fact he seemed to have fried all his brain cells on something – so much so that he almost forgot to get our money at the end of our (extremely long) 2 day stay. Also he insisted we pay cash – though the website had not mentioned anything like this. Our theory was he couldn’t wait until master-card paid him and had to buy more cocaine to sprinkle on his breakfast gruel.
So began our stay in the centre of the city, in the same Hostel that my other friend Erin (spelt slightly differently) and I had stayed 4 years before (yes- can you believe that was 4 years ago!). We developed another skill, adding to our repertoire of nationality spotting. The Czechs- in a tourist town like Prague it’s not always easy to know who is local or not, but let me assure you there is no mistaking Czechs from anyone else, and once again the secret lies in the footwear. And so Moses came down from the mountain with the 11th commandment- If thou art Czech thou shalt wear skin coloured stockings and sandals at all times.
I won’t bore you with details of beautiful Prague castle, or Charles Bridge or the old Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust memorials but I will let you know that we took 3 walking tours each one better than the last. The last was the best ‘The Ghost Tour’ of Prague at 10pm with an enthusiastic guide who seemed to care that you had a good time and learnt a lot… and we love learning. The 2nd tour had been the pub tour which included free beer and goulash – so we can’t complain we got home at 2am after having a blast. Our first tour – and yes we had bought a 3 tour ticket – otherwise we wouldn’t have taken anymore tours was something of an interesting scientific experiment in the study of Czech accent as spoken by a freakishly tall, saggy breasted tour guide, who reminded me of something like out of blade-runner if the soviets had won the cold war and decided to make their own ‘Replicas’. But here I am showing my true nerd, so I will continue…
She spat when she talked and as the tour company was ‘the yellow umbrella’ we were rather hoping she’d put it up. It was the ‘castle’ tour and was meant to be 2 hours, and after one hour when we were yet to arrive at the castle we wondered somewhat about the possibility of seeing what the Guinness Book of Records describes as the biggest castle in Central Europe (have they REALLY run out of things to make records out of or what?!?!)
As she described with her robotic twang all that we passed and deliberately avoided all the things where you could actually go inside the castle – or that may have been of historical interest our wonder increased, surely this should have been named a castle-perimeter tour! The final clincher came when Eirin and I realised that our stocking-sandaled guide was in fact making up names for the architects-noblemen and such. Luckily good natured girls that we are we weren’t too miffed. After all, the 2 hours had been well spent, formulating and further perfecting our theory for nationality spotting.
Our week long trip in Prague is over, 12-05-06, and I write this on the train to Budapest to visit Livia, my friend from Kuwait, who I am totally excited to see again! I should mention how much we struggled walking to the station and changing metros etc with all our luggage, but I don’t like hearing all the ‘I told you so’… basically though one of the funniest little Britain-esque moments occurred on our way this morning.
Eirin and I struggling with our large suitcases spot our refuge in a small wheelchair lift from the station platform to the station exit. ‘So much better then escalators’ we exclaim! Upon entering the lift, truly designed for one wheel chair and pusher we rose – up we go…. Looking out across the station platform what do we spy, no other than genuinely wheelchair bound small children looking bewildered as the two tall well-abled rich westerners took their lift up, up and away.
posted by Ingrid @ 12:49 PM
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