Prague

After a much too brief stay in Amsterdam, I hopped a Sky Europe flight to Prague, Czech Republic. Sky Europe is one of the much talked about European super discount airlines. The advertised fare for the flight was 7 Euro (about $10 US). Unfortunately, these airlines advertise their fares sans a laundry list of taxes and nickel and dime fees that end up adding about fifty Euro to any ticket, so you can never get too excited. The flight, no frills as it was, was still operated efficiently and professionally. The big old airlines have a thing or twelve to learn from these guys.

I was excited to meet two separate sets of friends from the Bay Area who coincidentally happened to be scheduled to be in Prague the same week. I was disappointed, however, that I wasn't able to book the same hostel and had to find one of my own.

My arrival was tricky. Even though Czech Republic is a burgeoning, independent EU country, it is still recovering from being a communist, Eastern Block country and is still rough around the edges in areas like efficiency and customer service. The shiny new airport looks great, but getting into the city center was an IQ test I barely passed.

You must take a bus from the airport to a train station or take a private shuttle or taxi. The normal buses and shuttles don't run late in the evening though, and since my flight arrived late, I had to brush up on the late night transit system which is completely separate.

To my surprise, the day bus was still running since I made it to the curb before 11pm, however I wasn't sure if the train station it brought me to would be. Let's hope. I also needed some local currency and to buy a ticket for the bus, but all of the normal human help for this was shut down.

I had a couple of nuggets of wisdom under my belt. One: The money you get from the ATM is rarely in a denomination small enough to take public transportation. Two: You can sometimes get smaller bills from the ATM by requesting an odd amount (1900 CZK rather than 2000 CZK). Three: You might actually need coins, so try to find a way to get some change.

I confirmed that the sole bus ticket machine only took coins, no bills. Since there were no stores open, I looked for a change machine. I only found a machine that took foreign currency (not local) and changed it into Czech Crown. I gave it a couple of US dollars and it spit out a 20 crown coin.

Nearing 11pm, what could have been the last frequent day bus pulled up, and a horde of confused tourists rushed the driver with their naive wads of Euros and huge denomination bills. It seemed like some folks were getting tickets and some were getting turned away. I asked the driver in Tarzan sign language if I could buy a ticket waving a 100 crown note. He waved me away and pointed to the ticket machine on the sidewalk. I ran to the machine but it seemed to be made as a movie prop rather than something for real humans to use. No one could figure out how to operate it, including me.

I thought maybe he just objected to my 100 bill because he couldn't make change. I produced my 20 crown coin for him and he nodded his head and gave me a ticket and a couple of coins back. Success! I got on the bus, the driver closed the door leaving a substantial portion of the horde behind, and drove to the nearest train station. Poor horde. They are probably taxi bound now.

I ran into the train station to catch the last day trains along with everyone else. I asked a local who I heard speaking English where to go and she happily explained the metro signs and how they worked, and also told me which station I should transfer at.

After some aimless midnight wandering in the city center, I found my hostel (my friends Kristen and Mary's too) and all was well.

The next few days we toured the city, checking out its sights. Here are a few observations:

• The city center is as picturesque as everyone had told me. However it may be a bit too picturesque. We kept commenting that (especially tourist areas) looked more like a movie set than a place where people live and work. We were constantly joking as we would walk down a less travelled road and saw no people, that the town forgot to cast extras for the street. The buildings, as old and beautiful as they are, all seem to have a less than authentic finish of stucco and pastelish paint. It just plain looks like Disneyland. This isn't really a complaint. We had just never seen anything like this before.
• Everything here costs extra. There are some sights you can see for free, but even some cathedrals charged an entrance fee. Public restrooms all cost money, even at MacDonald's. Sitting at an outside table at a cafe might cost extra and those pretzels the bar puts on your table may seem free, but think again.
• Many of the local folks we had contact with were not the friendliest sorts. I am not sure what attributes to this, but even at our hostel, simple requests for common things were met with the body language equivalent of an eye roll or a heavy sigh. Come on, now.
• One understandable reason for this is that the place is just crawling with tourists. This can't be too fun for the locals, and honestly wasn't super fun for me either. I am beginning to develop a distaste for hordes of people. I sort of miss the days of mostly deserted beach towns.
• There are plenty of bars and restaurants. Prague is definitely into beer. It is the home of the original, authentic Budweiser beer. Each bar tends to be loyal to one beer in particular, so that makes ordering one simple enough. As prevalent as the establishments are, though, we had trouble finding too many places open after 10 pm. It's a pretty quiet place at night. I imagine if we knew some locals, we could have done better. I actually had the name and number of a local who is a friend of a friend, but I dropped the ball and never called.

Within four days, we all felt that we had seen all there was to see. The general atmosphere of the place was not holding us there, so we moved on sooner than I had originally intended.