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Sunday, 9 November 2003
Prague, day 1 ::
I thought of staying in Berlin with B for the weekend before he went his own way. I didn’t tally this up until now, but since leaving California, I’d had 2 nights on redeye flights, 2 fairly low-key but very jet-lagged evenings with B, and 6 of those elongated, 3-5 hours of drinking and dinner with colleagues/friends, kinds of evenings, that seem much more common in Europe than in the U.S. (Or does travelling just force me to be more of a social creature than usual?) The company, food, and beer were all wonderful, but I found myself wanting some time alone, being able to eat/drink/rest on my own schedule.
So yesterday I took the train from Berlin to Prague, a 5-hour ride. I slept for the first hour or so. While stopping and passing through Dresden I wondered what it had looked like before the Allied bombardment.
I suspected my compartment-mate was an English-speaker, but he’d had headphones on the whole time, and I’d been drifting in and out of sleep, so I’d had no chance to speak with him. South of Dresden, the Czech border police went through the train checking passports. It turned out that this guy was Canadian and did not know that he needed a visa to get into the Czech Republic. He tried to talk his way around it, but was told he’d have to get off at the next stop, the last in Germany.
I got just a little extra scrutiny because in my passport photo, I look pretty disreputable—long hair, beard—and now I’m clean-shaven and my hair is quite short. The guard asked for another ID card. My California driver’s license photo seemed to satisfy her.
We passed through a gorgeous valley, with rock cliffs on one side. I wish I’d thought to get out my camera.
Once inside the Czech, I went and found the dining car, got a coffee, and sat down in the passageway outside a compartment in what I thought was my car, to have a smoke. (I found out later that I did not understand the rules about smoking, but that’s another story.) A young man in the compartment opened the door and we got talking. Jason was Canadian too, and had been travelling around Europe for a few months. He did have a visa (though it had taken a week to get one from the Czech embassy in London). He said they’d inspected his passport extremely carefully, using a fluorescent light and microscope or something. I wonder why we Americans can waltz right in, while Canadians are apparently less trusted? The guard had earlier said, “it’s a political thing, I’m sorry.” Later I thought, maybe the Czechs don’t like Canadians coming to entice their best hockey players to play in the NHL!
After about 10 or 15 minutes Jason invited me to join him so I went off in search of my belongings. A moment of panic: they were not where I thought they were. Finally I realized how it was that I’d lost track of which car I’d been in, and fortunately everything was where I’d left it.
Despite an unpleasant suspicion that I was being taken advantage of, I let a very polite and honest-looking old man set me up with an apartment not far from central Prague, for about the same as I’d been prepared to pay for a hotel 1 km from the non-centrally-located train station. No hotel amenities, but it’s right next to a metro station, only 2 stops from the heart of the central city.
The metro tickets for short rides are only 8 Kc (30 cents) but after studying my map I decided to set off on foot in search of dinner and a look at Prague on a bustling Saturday night. By simply following the flow of the other pedestrians, I soon found myself in the old town square and then in a pretty traditional Czech pub/restaurant. The local beer lived up to its billing, both in terms of quality and alcohol content. I wandered around some more, looking for any immediately enticing entertainment opportunities, but I didn’t feel up for anything more than mingling with the crowds, trying to build a mental map and a list of places to check out in more detail during daylight. My pride in my normally excellent sense of direction was shattered; there is nothing grid-like about the streets of Prague! I took it in stride, so to speak; the “random walk” algorithm can be fun too if one accepts that one may end up walking a couple of extra kilometers, as I did in finding my way home.
| << East and West Berlin | 2003 > November | Prague, day 2 >> |