Tuesday 5 February 2008

Prague - crappest weekend away EVER

Well, my much-anticipated trip to Prague turned out to be one my crappest weekends ever. Do excuse this, my most self-indulgently whingey post ever.

Dot point summary:
  • My Friday night plane trip to Prague was delayed by an hour, and I was sat amidst a dozen or so drunk, ugly, post-teen Scottish guys on a cheap beer weekend, who constantly shouted repeated, short, buffoonish songs and harrassed the air hostesses.
  • Eventually, I saved my sanity by moving. The Czech girl I sat next to further up the plane warned me about the extreme prevalence of pick-pocketing and petty theft in Prague, including them snatching money from your wallet if you open it.
  • Eduardo, my travel companion from Madrid, had been pick-pocketed by the time I arrived, and the buses and metro had finished for the night.
  • Eduardo was destroyed by a very recent broken heart, though did a good job of holding his head up.
  • The room we'd hired was very central, right near one of the more famous Prague monuments in old town, Charles Bridge. So central, in fact, that it was over the tram line on the main street. The vibrations of trams went where earplugs couldn't help. It was also the main thoroughfare for the UK tourists expressing their alcoholism on their path to bed.
  • To my surprise, I spent all of Saturday nauseous in bed, vomiting into a rubbish bin, and feverish. I was nauseous for the rest of the holiday, and only once did I consume something other than white boiled rice, crackers or tonic water. Eduardo had nursemaiding duties all day. It's the third time out of three that he's travelled to see me or travelled with me that I've been really sick.
  • The one thing I consumed that wasn't listed above was a set meal in a pub, one of the worst meals I've ever eaten. See below for an image and a litany of complaints.
  • Sunday afternoon, I felt well enough to venture out. It turns out, on my third day there, Prague is a very beautiful city. We went up the Old Town Hall tower for great views, popped into a little modern art gallery, and visited the church where the Infant Jesus of Prague is kept, a birthday promise for Auntie Bill's 96th birthday. It was a very saddening, I felt a long way away from them. We then walked to the Strakov Monastery, which was 15 minutes from closing. We then went and ate aforementioned worst-ever meal.
  • Worn out, I rested for a few hours and waited for the nausea to reside, before catching a taxi to a club I'd intended to go to with Eduardo on Saturday night. It was the standard club, though I was entertained by people shameless dancing facing themselves in the full length mirror. A third of a beer and a lot of cigarette smoke later, I felt nauseous again, and we headed home reasonably early. Both ways we had to confirm taxi fares beforehand, as the taxi drivers like to treat the tourists to triple or more the correct fares.
  • Monday was spent exploring Prague's beautiful Jewish quarter, with a ticket to all the old synagogues. I'd have to say that Prague is the most beautiful city I've been to. Edinburgh has a lot of stately, old-world architecture, but Prague is more recent, colourful and accessibly aesthetic. We saw how yet another city's Jewish population was persecuted through time and then massacred. The interior of one of the synagogues was stunning, and a collection of torah pointers was novel and beautiful.
  • We packed our bags before heading for the metro to go to the museum. The transit police were plundering the tourists, and we were fined 42 pounds for not having valid tickets. That was pretty awful, especially because Eduardo was doing the talking, and wasn't realising that they were threatening to escort us to the police station for an exciting 420 pound fine if we didn't dish out cash on the spot. The museum, when we arrived, was just closing. On the way back, I left a trilingual note warning of ticket inspectors below stuck to the ticket validators with chewing gum, my civil action giving me some small satisfaction.
  • When we reached our room, Eduardo talked about how destroyed his heart was, and we caught a taxi to the airport.
  • In the airport, I realised I didn't know where my credit card was, even after ransacking every pocket. I thought the transit police may have stolen it when I was emptying out my pockets looking for tickets. (When I arrived in Glasgow, I found it in a coin purse, not in my pockets or wallet.)
  • Two babies across the aisle screamed deafeningly nearly the entire way home from Prague to Glasgow. I was sat next to a Very Important Person who was too good for the rules of the normal people on the plane, who drank seven little bottles of wine and then decided to befriend me, telling me about the importance of his work for a global firm, his penthouse for two months that he was hanging about in Glasgow, how he hadn't slept since Thursday, his girlfriends around the world, and the rates they charged. I spent a good portion of the flight home crying into the plane window, feeling very sorry for myself. About three hours and two bus trips after touchdown at Glasgow, I was back home in Edinburgh.

If the nausea, vomiting and heartbreakingly heartbroken companion weren't enough to really set a scene for a basically awful weekend, the rest of the details sure rounded things out. All in all, one of my worst weekends ever, in a really beautiful city.

Some illustrations for you.

First, the flat.

Bara Basikova may be Czech Cindy Lauper. I don't when she did her thing. The poster below adorned the entrance hall. Also featured in the flat was a calendar featuring her cigarette sponsorship.


The Tardis shower in the middle of the "room with own bathroom".


The traffic queues behind the tram to drive under our room. Footpath of the Drunks, to left.


The shtoonk-bouquet of this collection of a hundred spices greeted my stomach every time I came back to the flat.


The view from the Old Town Hall.


Some eastern European fashion brightens up your day.


The Infant Jesus of Prague has an ornate shrine.


The worst-ever meal - slices of sponge-loaf, pork-something dumpling in cheap brown sauce, nastily pickled cabbage, brown lettuce, and a yuk slice of citrus fruit. And the desert we'd been hoping would clean our palate was vaguely off cream with another yuk slice of citrus fruit.


Cathedral in Prague castle, by night - very beautiful.


The almost surreal beauty of streets in the old Jewish quarter.


Me in my free skull cap at the Old-New Synagogue.


The elaborate glittering interior of the Spanish Synagogue.


The VIP at my side was struggling to cope with ceaselessly SCREECHING babies behind him across the aisle, as much as I was.


My weekend in the Prague, The End.