Prague: Wandering the streets – 2 & 3 January 2007

Today we started off by eating breakfast and reading our books at the Bohemian Bagel shop.

After such a leisurely day yesterday Elsa and I decided to walk up to the Letna Gardens the walk along the north bank of the Vltava river. We spent a couple of hours wandering round then Elsa headed back to the hostel. I went in search of a power adaptor. I was so cranky – my adaptors for Egypt are the same as needed for Czech, but the power points at the hostel had an extra pin poking out. My adaptors are round and they don’t fit below the pin. I looked everywhere for different adaptors but I only found two adaptors at all and they were both Czech to the rest of the world. Fortunately when I got back to the hostel moaning about my bad luck I discovered one of the Norwegians had a charger that fits my phone so I used it to recharge and I was able to plus my camera charger into my adaptor then into Elsa’s adaptor then into the wall – probably some serious fire hazard risks but nothing exploded so I took that as a good sign :)

In apology for the noise and spew etc the Norwegians (we were down to 6 by this stage, one had to go back early) had bought us chocolate and a card. They were so cute – in the card they’d drawn up the bed formation and written their names in their beds and drawn little stick figure pictures.

On Tuesday when Elsa and I were out trying to find somewhere for dinner we decided to go to a Black Light show. It’s basically where there is really black screens up and people come out in bright suits then people in all black move other things around. It was pretty cool. Some bits were just weird, but the dancers were amazing – so flexible and graceful. Makes me want to stretch more – they could get their backs to bend backwards and their legs to go over the heads – I’m not that ambitious but being able to touch my toes without wincing would be ok.

On Wednesday morning Elsa packed up her stuff and we went and got some breakfast. We sat in Bohemian Bagels for an hour or so then wandered round the streets. She found a cute little backgammon game for her sister which cost exactly how many Korunas that she had left. Then we went back to the hostel and read a bit more.

When it was time for her to go to her bus I walked her to the station. I was concerned that she didn’t have any snacks and she was about to embark on a 14 hours bus ride back to Bordeaux in France. She said she’d be fine once they got part way there because the currency would switch to Euros and she had some of them on her. I decided that wasn’t good enough so went to the supermarket and bought her some bananas, grapes, chips and lollies to see her through.

Once she’d left for the bus I was all on my lonesome so I went up to the museum. I spent a couple of hours looking around – there was heaps of prehistoric stuff and a massive mineral and precious stones section. Once I’d looked around the museum I went back to the hostel and read for a bit. Then I embarked on my first solo meal – I went to a little Irish pub and got the most expensive meal of my whole trip. It cost about 500 Koruna which is about AUD$30 for a steak and some vegies and a soft drink. It was very nice, but expensive considering how cheaply I’ve gotton other nicer food.

I wandered round for a bit then went back to the hostel. About 10pm the boys were heading out and they invited me to go with them. They went to get some dinner but I just had a beer. Then we left the restaurant and went to find a close pub. I couldn’t believe the number of strip club promoters that approached them. They were all Africans and all trying desperately to convince the boys to go to one of the strip clubs – only 250 Koruna entry blah blah blah. Egal wanted to go, but didn’t want to go on his own and the others weren’t keen coz the beers are always too expensive at the strip clubs. One of the promoters said to them – ‘Are you with the lady?’ and they said yes and he goes ‘well ladies entry free’. I thought bloody better – there is no way I’d pay 10 Koruna let alone 250 to see a bunch of naked women strutting around! We managed to convince Egal to come to a different pub where we had some beers and the boys started doing tequila shots. I decided tequila was not something I wanted to be a part of (especially given recent history!) so decided to stick to beer. About 1:30am Tom decided to call it a night so I headed back to the hostel with him. The others were in for a very big night and got extremely wasted.

About 3:30am the boys arrived back at the hostel totally wasted with two new Norwegians in tow. They were louder and crazier than every other night put together. Of course the two ring-ins that’d collected at the pub were no where near as graceful getting up and down from the top bunk and I got stepped on twice. I was not impressed by this. I decided I could survive them being noisy and the rest of it, it was only one night, so I didn’t say anything. Fortunately for me I didn’t have to. There is a night security man at the hostel that the boys named ‘The Ogre’ coz he was a bit creepy looking and he came in and chased them all away because you aren’t allowed to have guests in the rooms after 10pm. I can’t say I was disappointed to see them go. Once they’d been chased out Tom apologised on behalf of Norway again for their bad behaviour.

A few hours later they arrived home again – this time to sleep but they were still drunk and disorderly. I’ve been very impressed with my ability to sleep through drunk boys banging and crashing about plus the snoring symphony – my brain must have decided for the sake of my sanity it was safer for me to be asleep. In my normal world I don’t think I could have slept. It’s weird living away – it’s like because its not my normal world the rules have changed – I’m drinking beer, sleeping through noisy room mates with ease and able to go out for dinner on my own… it’s a strange world when you’re in another country – guess you have to be tougher… otherwise you’d never survive :)