I found my way back to my train, still without a ticket. I almost made it to Prague, but got busted one stop away and had to pay the collector 20 deutchmarks (it would have been 8 if I’d bought the ticket in Germany). We got into Prague at 5:30am, and were attacked in the station by people who wanted us to stay at their apartments or youth hostels. We ended up going to a hostel in a school near the city center, and have bunks in a classroom. We went and wandered around the main drag that runs through the city center.
While changing money at the American Express office, we met some girls from the States where were in Prague for a figure skating workshop. They told us about a fun place to go dancing and we agreed to meet them there that night. We went to a restaurant recommended by a tour book for lunch. The food wasn’t amazing, but the beer, a brand called Gambrinus, was outstanding.
Liam (the guy from New York) and I dropped the girls (Kristi and Dara) off at the hostel and went back out. We saw Wenceslas square and watched the famous clock strike six. The clock has animated figures. A skeleton bangs on something and other figures move around.
We walked to the Charles Bridge, where people gather to sell things and play music and such. The bridge itself is fascinating, with detailed sculptures every few yards on both sides. I saw two girls that looked kind of familiar. Just as I was coming to realize who they were, they tackled me — it was the Norwegian girls from Berlin. I talked with them for a bit, and they headed off, going to catch a night train for Vienna.
Saturday, August 7th, 1993 — Prague, Czech Republic
I haven’t had a chance to continue that last entry until now. That first night in Prague, we went out to find a place to drink. It was raining and there was lots of thunder and lightning. Wenceslas square was really cool with lightning flashing behind the old, scary-looking church. We looked for a while before we found a nice pub on the corner of the square. We went down a wooden spiral staircase into the basement. There were no free tables, so we piled in along side a guy from Boston (Desmond) and his cousin Steven, from Dublin. They had both had a bit to drink already. Steven and I went back and forth making fun of each other. He was quite a character.
We were drinking Pilser Urquell, the fine brew named after the town of Pilzen. Half-liter glasses cost only the equivalent of 50 cents American. There were a bunch of Czech guys at the next table. Desmond told us that they were street musicians. They ended up sending shots of vodka over to Kristi and Dara. The pub closed at midnight, and we hung out in front for a while avoid the rain which was coming down in torrents at this point (it was pissing, as Steven put it). Eventually, we went for broke and ran out into the rain. While stopped in an alcove for a breather, Desmond reached into his backpack for something, and when he pulled out his hand, pills of all shapes, sizes, and colors spilled out into the street. He had joked earlier about being a pharmacist and how he could get his hands on any drugs he wanted. This certainly seemed to be the case. He collected his supplies as best he could, looking rather embarrassed.
We ended up at a disco called Hollywood — the club that we were supposed to meet the figure skaters at. It was quite a scene. Liam and I danced for a while with the figure skaters. They were staying at a hotel with an adjoining skating rink, and were in Prague with a Czech woman who had defected to the US and was now their coach. She had been in the Olympics in the 60’s. We went outside with a couple of the skaters onto a big balcony. It was still raining, and we stood underneath an umbrella for shelter. Suddenly a Czech woman grabbed my arm and shouted something at me. I wasn’t sure what was going on. Eventually it became clear that she just wanted to dance. So, I ended up dancing with a barefoot Czech woman in the rain for a while. We went back inside and danced some more. I went to the bathroom and met an Italian guy. We had an incredibly meaningful conversation that mainly consisted of us saying names of Italian foods and places (Linguini! Fettuccini! Napoli!…)
We decided to leave around three, and had to wait while Kristi got a hot dog in a baguette. While waiting, Dara was approached by a guy who said he’d spent all of his money on beer and his “homey” with the rest of the money had disappeared. He wanted 100 crowns for a cab, and Dara, who was pretty smashed at this point, made it her mission to get it for him. We got back to the hostel around four. Quite a long first day in Prague.
The next morning, we got up and wet to the butcher, baker, and grocery store near us to get stuff for breakfast. Everything was ridiculously cheap. The shops in the tourist area of Prague are cheap, but as soon as you get a few blocks out of the way, the prices cut in half. We walked through the square and over the Charles bridge. I was really struck by the beauty of the city. I think it is the nicest place I’ve been so far. We walked up to Prague Castle, high on a hill overlooking the city. The castle is a huge place. We went to a few galleries. One had a collection of 20th century French painters — Picasso Monet, Rousseau, Mattisse, Renoir, etc. After visiting the castle, Dara bought us all ice cream. After finishing our cones, we had a passerby take our picture in one of the alcoves in the wall of the Castle.
On our way back to the hostel, Liam and I were waiting for Kristi and Dara to run an errand when we noticed an incredibly beautiful woman walk by. Suddenly, she came back to us saying that she was desperate to have a conversation with an American. Her name was Bianca, and she said that she was 17 (she looked over 20). She told us that she’d been born in Czech, but had gone to New York when she was 14 to model in Miami.
Later that day, we saw Dara and Kristi off. They were taking a train to Munich. We me two other girls back at the hostel, and asked them if they wanted to do something with us that evening. They said yes, but they were going to the opera (!). We decided to meet them at the clock.
Liam and I wandered around for a bit. We heard a wonderful string quartet playing. When we saw them, we realized that they were the Czech guys we’d met at the pub the night before! When the finished the piece they were playing, we went over and said hello. The only guy who spoke English, Krystof, said that he’d meet us in the pub later on. We went to the pub to meet him, but had a run-in with proprietor and left. We ended up having an expensive beer outside in the square (expensive being $1.50 for a half liter of good beer). We met the girls and went back to the pub. Their names were Michelle and Bree and they were from Cuppurtino, California. They told us that their “opera” turned out to be a two-person vaudeville-like show (guess that explains the cheap tickets…) It sounded like it was hilarious — particularly if you were expecting a full-on opera, as they were.
We met Krystof at the pub, but he was involved with some other friends, and asked if we could meet him the next night. I said “maybe”, and he replied “no, surely”. Michelle and Bree dragged us to a club called the Bunkr where a friend of theirs was supposed to be. We found the place, and descended down a flight of stairs into a dark space with black walls. Very gothic. It was mostly metal music and the place was packed with bizarre people. The whole dance floor was one big pit. I was wearing my tivas so it was kind of dangerous. I had to dance very aggressively to keep people from stomping on my feet (it didn’t always work — it’s amazing that I didn’t get any permanent damage) and to keep people from knocking the girls off of the dance floor. Liam had on big, solid shoes and was bouncing all over the place.
Sunday, August 8th — Budapest, Hungary
Picking up where I left off… Friday was spent doing laundry. Literally, we spent almost the entire day doing laundry. After a search, we finally found what must be the only public laundry in Prague. It took us at least four hours to get the job done. I ended up with clean, but wet and green (so that’s why you separate the colors from the whites…) clothes. We went back to the hostel and said goodbye to the Cuppurtino girls who were about to leave for Berlin. We went to change money and I ran into Bianca, the Czech model, again.
We found a place to eat dinner. There were no free tables, so we sat down next to two girls from Australia. We go to know them while trying to get service from a blitzed bar tender. It turned out that they were sisters. One, Jodi, had been in Europe for a year and the other, Vicki, was visiting her. They’d been living in Prague for a while. We gave up trying to get served and they took us to their favorite restaurant. It was a great little place. We sat outside and had a nice meal. You can’t complain about a good meal in a really nice restaurant for less than a dollar.
After dinner, we all went to our favorite pub for a drink. Krystof was supposed to meet us there for a drink, but he wasn’t there. We met, of all people, two Australian brothers to complement the two sisters we already had in our party. A while later, Krystof showed up and introduced us to two Czechs named Adela and Andre and tow others, Frederic and Claire, who were visiting them from Aix, France on a school exchange. We had been drinking for a while when I heard the word “Swede” in the background. I bellowed out “Jog are Svenske!”, the only Swedish phrase I knew. As dutifully taught to me by my Swedish friends it meant “I am Swedish”. Apparently my pronunciation wasn’t too bad because I soon had two Swedes jabbering at me. We switched to English once it became apparent that I really didn’t speak Swedish. After the pub closed, we wandered around with our new Czech and French friends. We agreed to meet them the next day, and Liam and I returned to the hostel.
The next morning, Liam and I were distraught to find out that our favorite food shops were closed (it being Sunday and all) and we couldn’t get our usual breakfast. While looking for a place to get something to eat we ran into a guy named Kevin from Dallas. We had lunch with him and then went and met our friends from the night before. They took us to see the John Lennon wall. This was the place where people would gather to meet before Czechoslovakia was freed from Communist rule. The wall was covered with artwork and slogans, dominated by a picture of Lennon and the song lyrics (in English) “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”
We went and crashed in the grass in a nearby park for about an hour and then had a drink in an outdoor garden. We went across the river for dinner. The place we were planning on going to was too expensive. We found a cheaper place and had beer and goulash. The waiter tried to rip us off. The rest of the group was going to accept it, but I wouldn’t let it go. We ended paying what the bill should have been and left to go see Krystof’s quartet play. We’d seen him earlier in the day. While going up an escalator in a metro station when we hear a voice shouting our names. Krystof was going down on the escalator next to us. He ran down and the back up to greet us, huffing and puffing. A word about the escalators in Prague. They’re crazy! They are twice as steep and twice and steep as any I’ve ever seen. You get used to it after a while, but it’s scary the first time you get on one. Anyway, we listened to Krystof’s group play and then went for a beer at the pub. Liam and I reluctantly told everyone that we had to leave, as we were catching a train that night for Budapest. Krystof gave me his card and an American dollar bill that he’d gotten as a tip playing that night.
We just barely made our train. When we got on, there were no empty compartments and people were trying to keep compartments to themselves. Eventually, we forced ourselves into a compartment occupied by a German woman and a Hungarian guy. We had to be very forceful at first, but things worked out in the end. By morning, they were telling us how to get around in Budapest and were giving us food and drink.
At the station, we were mobbed by hawkers from a hostel. They practically shoved us into a van and took us to their place of employment. We promptly left, and checked out another hostel. It was nice (on the top of the Citadel — a hill overlooking the Danube), but it was quite isolated and we decided to stay at the first place. On the way back, I sliced up my toe on a bit of metal sticking up from the sidewalk. It was kind of ugly — I hope it doesn’t get infected. We went to an amazing restaurant for dinner. I had goose breast in mushroom sauce. Dinner, complete with great bread, beer, and a generous tip for the waiter cost us only 300 florens (a little over $3). Incredible!
Monday, August 9th — Budapest, Hungary
I woke up in the crowded dorm room this morning and realized that I really need some time to just relax in my own place with my own shower and no roommates. I’ve been traveling “alone” in Europe for some weeks now, but I’ve hardly ever really been alone. Maybe I’ll get a hotel room for a few days in Vienna, my next stop. At least I think it’s my next stop. Liam keeps trying to persuade me to go to Bucharest, Romania with him. It’s tempting, as I’d like to see Romania, but I feel more like going west.
Wednesday, August 11th — Budapest, Hungary
Monday, Liam and I did the tourist thing and went to see parliament. There wasn’t much to see, really. Very impressive building, though. I got my picture taken with a statue of some famous Hungarian poet. We went a walled city-within-a-city and wandered around. Not much fun, but we had a nice view of Buda. I say Buda because Budapest gets its name from two separate cities, Buda and Pest, one on each side of the Danube.
We had dinner in the same, great restaurant. I had turkey breast and broccoli in cheese sauce with roast potatoes. Yum! We met up with Jean Phillipe and his friend Julie. While searching for someplace to have a drink we picked up another American. He was pretty obnoxious. He observed that when you meet two American girls traveling together, one is always the fun one and the other is the spoiler. He told us that what you need to do is execute a good old “pick and roll” with a friend. He takes out the spoiler so that you can get a clean shot at the fun one.
We found a cool place called Morrison’s Music Pub, but I was getting really tired we were planning on catching an early train the next morning, so Liam and I left. We started to walk back to the hostel, but we went the wrong way at some point and it took us forever to find our we back.
The next morning, we got up at 5:00. We had decided to visit Hungary’s large lake — Lake Balaton. We arrived at the train station shortly before 6:30. There was only one 6:30 departure listed, and we didn’t recognize any of the towns it was destined for. The town you want isn’t always listed, so we went to the gate and asked if the train was going to Lake Balaton. We were told it was, so we hopped on. A few hours later, we realized we had made a mistake. The train was indeed going to Lake Balaton, but we were on the north side of the lake instead of the south side, where we wanted to be. We ended up in a dump of a town called Badacsony. There was absolutely nothing there and yet the place was swarming with German tourists and had bad food and cheesy souvenirs to cater to them. The only interesting thing was a goofy old man selling whips. He’d swing a whip around his head and then Crack! He’d grin as he scared little German kids.
We hopped the next train out of Badacsony, returning to Budapest with out heads hung low. On the way back, the train stopped at a station on the edge of the lake. There happened to be another train there that seemed to be going to the other side of the lake. We figured that our day couldn’t get any worse, so we hopped off our train and on to the other. On the new train, we happened to run into Kevin, the guy from Dallas we’d me in Prague. He was traveling with a guy from Britain that he’d met. We all got off in Siofok. Kevin and his friend went to find a campsite, and Liam and I saw what there was to see in town. It didn’t take us long to decide that we didn’t like Lake Balaton. It seemed to be just an area for German tourists. The fact that it was cloudy and cold didn’t help any, either. We had a beer in a park by the lake, a mime conversation with an old Hungarian man, and hopped the train back to Budapest.
We got in at 7:30 and made our way to our favorite restaurant. It was packed, so we were forced to go somewhere else. After dinner we went back to the hostel and went out for a drink with Horatio, the Romanian guy we’d met earlier. The conversation got pretty intense. Horatio had tears in his eyes at one point while describing how he can’t change the way his parents are because they lived too long under communism and can’t adjust to the changes. He also told us that he’d had trouble getting a bed in the hostel because he was Romanian. I guess there is a lot of prejudice in Hungary toward Romanians. After our conversation, I decided to give in to Liam’s attempt to get me to go to Romania with him. While Czech Republic and Hungary have been fairly westernized, it seems that Romania is still much as it was under communist rule.