Tourgasm with Pecos, part V: Prague (Praha)

Thank you, Al Gore. Thank you for scaring hordes and hordes of normally sensible Americans into visiting every last scrap of the earth's beauty before the polar caps melt and whole countries disappear into the ocean. I’m pretty sure every person who saw or ever heard of your movie was in Prague’s Old Town Square on Memorial Day weekend.

Next, please tell them to buy Chipotle stock before it all disappears.

Actually, Prague wasn’t too bad. Our arrival in the “city of a hundred spires” was preceded by an arduous drive from Krakow (six hours) through some poorly maintained backroads. This drive was punctuated by a very memorable moment at the border, where Kate and I had stopped to spend the last of our Polish Zloty currency, which was about $40 worth. Now, while there are many popular border crossing stations in these countries, such as on highways or main roads, the one we were at was teeny….so we did what we could to spend our money, including buying lunch, Polish candy, Polish beer, and an expensive basket of freshly picked Polish strawberries.

In the end, we actually gave away the remaining money (less that $1) to the cashier at the 7-eleven-type store, and went on our way to show our passports, right after I took this shot to prove that I, too, could be Polish.

So we got in our car and were ready to drive the remaining 100 feet to the checkpoint, happy to have finally spent our money and giddy with joking about shirtless Polish men and eating a basket of strawberries for dessert.

At this point, may I add, we’d been in Poland for four days, three of which consisted of very long drives. And all that time, we followed the new Polish rules (as of April 2007) of having your headlights on at all times when driving. Never once did we drive anywhere without putting our headlights on. Not once.

Now, like I said, it was 100 feet to the checkpoint. I started the car, pulled out of the 7-eleven-type store’s parking lot, and coasted down to the checkpoint, where there were three cars in front of me. The first car spent a total of seven seconds driving through, simply flashing the passports at the smiling policemen. No problems. He left and the remaining three of us simply scooted forward.

It was then that another Polish policeman looked at me and pointed me toward another checkpoint. “Oooh,” I thought. “This is probably a lot of traffic for these guys here. Express lane here we come.”

I was wrong. The friendly Polish policeman then informed me that it is illegal to drive without headlights on in Poland. Ha, I thought. I’ve been driving for 30 frigging hours in this country. I knew that. Silly me.

So I told him that we simply just pulled out of the 7-eleven-type store’s parking lots 15 seconds before he told me to pull over. I had simply forgotten for 15 seconds.

“Now maybe next time you remember,” he said, smiling.

Then came the rigmarole. He took our passports for processing and told us it was a 100 Zloty fine. This, ironically for us, turned out to be $38, almost the exact amount we had just blown senselessly. So, off I went to the exchange place to trade dollars for Zlotys when I was stopped by a female police officer who said she needed to see my passport to enter the country. “Buh?” I said, pointing to my parked car less than 60 feet away still on the Polish side of the checkpoint. I hadn’t left the country yet. No dice. So, back to the nice, smiley policeman I went, retrieving my passport in humility and then, once again, back to the bitchy cop to show it to her. This time, though, she was gone. No where to be found. I stood there, alone and in the middle of the road for about 10 seconds, frustrated by the incomprehensibility of the ordeal. Flagrantly, I raised my passport to the whole world, showing each direction in an embarrassingly perturbed way that I was, in fact, coming into this country that I never left. But no one was around.

So into the exchange place I went, irritated by the occurrences of the last two minutes, and stood impatiently at the counter. But there was no one there. Behind me, I noticed a sluggish movement. A young blonde woman who was reclining outside, sunning herself, took a puff of her cigarette, looking at me. Then another. Then finally, after a third puff, she idly snuffed it out in a nearby ashtray and slowly rose, lurching toward me. This was the exchange lady. When she got behind the counter, I handed over a $20 and two $10s, asking for Zlotys. Without even picking up my money, she looked at one of my $10s and said no. “NO?” I thought. She then pointed to a fold in the money where it looked a little faded.

I raised my eyebrows and opened my mouth. Potty mouth words jumped on my tongue, demanding to be uttered. I pushed my tongue against my cheek, ensuring nothing came out. “How about euros?” I asked.

After getting money, I rushed back to the car and waited for the nice policeman to take it away. In a minute he came, took the money, and asked for some more information, such as father’s name and address. Rather than dictating to this nice ESL man, I wrote it down, putting my Germany address and mentioning that I work for the U.S. Army. His eyes got huge.

In another twist of irony, it turned out that he had a soft spot for the U.S. Army, after serving side by side with them for a year in Iraq. “You should have told me before,” he said. “We could have worked something out.”

Anyway, that was the event. Now, back to Prague.

Our hostel was bright and airy and included a balcony with a great view of some nearby towers.

Within minutes of dropping our stuff off, we had walked through the old town square, walked across the famous Charles Bridge, walked down to the Vltava River so Pecos could cool down, and saw this weird moving statue of men peeing.

Prague is beautiful. We’d been here before (me several times, Kate once) and both agree that, other than the clogging tourists, this city is spectacular. It is the quintessential European city – big but neighborhoody, with narrow cobblestone alleys a vast array of historic and stylish statues, churches, squares, and bridges, and a huge castle within walking distance…all set along side a narrow but scenic river.

Later that night, I used the Czech I had learned several years back to order Indian food from a Russian woman while sitting next to a contingent of Asian men (what else in this multicultural city?).

Once darkness overcame the city, we purchased two $12 tickets for a ghost tour of the old town. On Kate’s request, of course. Unfortunately, the tour was mediocre, with only four stops and pedestrian stories about nice butchers, priests, and lovers being killed. No evil ghosts with axes sticking out of their heads who still haunt the nearby surrounds at night, frightening innocent people. Nothing too gruesome or ghostly, at all really, except for the manner in which the odd old Czech tourguide told us about each of the sites. Very stilted. Very goading. Very rehearsed. Too rehearsed.

Anyway, then the night – and our trip – was over. We’d seen a lot, eaten a lot, taken a lot of photos, and Pecos has added two countries to his list. It was a good but long jaunt and I think all three of us were glad to be heading home.