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Not the Best Memories of Prague

by Doug Dosdall in Europe , Czech Republic , Gay and Lesbian

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A friend is heading to Prague soon and was asking me for advice. I hadn't been had I? No. Well, wait, there are some foggy memories. They aren't the best. Perhaps I've blocked it out. Oh Jeez, it's coming back. But you don't want to hear this. I'm sure Prague is lovely. I just don't have the best memories of it. You want to hear it anyway?

I was visiting a friend in Karlovy Vary, a cute spa town a couple of hours from Prague, who was teaching English and he told me and the two German friends I was traveling with that we didn't need a reservation for a hotel in Prague. And so we set out. When we got there of course everything was full. We spent four hours searching a finally found some beds at a hostel for one night. The next day we did the same thing and again all we could find was a single night. And so on the 3rd day, my German friends left and went back to Karlsruhe. I was flying out of Prague the next morning so I thought, what the fuck, I'll just stay up all night and then go the airport. I didn't even have a place to store my luggage though so I ended up in a disgustingly smoky bar (they all are) all night and even though it was really boring and I wasn't meeting anyone I didn't want to seek out another place. At like 4 a.m. I met a guy I really like and we hit it off and after a while we decided to go back to his place which he said was really close. Well after 2 different streetcars and about an hour of transport we finally get to his place at like 6am and I'm starting to panic that I'm in the middle of nowhere and my plane is now leaving in a few hours. We had some rather unsatisfying sex, in part due to my panic, in part due to the fact that he had 6 flatmates who were all asleep.

He then gave me directions on how to get to the airport bus and I went off running: a streetcar to the subway where I discovered I had no change. What the fuck, it's early on a Sunday morning there's no one around and I have no time so I went on anyway--it's an honor system there and I'd never seen an inspector. But of course when I was changing lines I was stopped by an inspector. The fine rather conveniently was pretty much equal to the last $25 I had on me. I still didn't have a ticket but thought it couldn't happen twice as I transferred to the 2nd train. It didn't thankfully. I reached the station where the airport bus was supposed to leave (maybe this whole story is a warning about not taking public transit in Prague to/from the airport?) and couldn't find it and then finally saw it pulling away and ran after it (it only left hourly and this was already an hour after the one I should've gotten). Well my luck must've been changing since they must've seen the panicked backpacker running behind the bus. I arrived at the check in counter 15 minutes before departure and again they somehow agreed to let me go and run for the gate since the airport was deserted at that hour. And I made it--off to London. I knew I had a 7 hour layover in London before my Seattle flight so I figured I'd have time to clean up: I didn't want to face a transatlantic flight unshowered after all night in a bar and after sex. Ick.

When I landed in London, my flight to Seattle had been cancelled (BA claimed the crew was sick---they don't have a standby crew for a full 747? The biggest airline in the world at the biggest airport in the world?). There was a flight leaving for San Francisco immediately that they could rebook me on. Urggh!! The agent claimed she couldn't upgrade me as compensation for this awfulness (despite leaving 6 hours early, I would still get to Seattle later than originally scheduled with the flight back from San Fran) but she said she'd put me upstairs in the 747 where the seats are better and in an aisle seat. And so I ran for the gate again. I discovered my seat on board was actually a middle seat. A gay couple had booked the aisle and window but left the middle free. I was wondering why they didn't offer to switch once they saw that the middle seat was occupied but I quickly discovered the reason. The guy on the window went immediately to sleep while the guy on the aisle wouldn't shut the fuck up. Not where I wanted to be after not sleeping all night. I guess my luck had changed since I managed to discreetly ask the flight attendant, also gay--this is the gayest story ever!--if he could take pity on me and move me given the situation he could clearly see I was in (and from what I also explained to him of the cancellation). So at least I ended up in Business Class.

That doesn't help at all does it? I don't have the best memories of Prague. I did really like Karlovy Vary if you have time to get to a smaller place. My friend there had an apartment in the courthouse that they had converted. Apparently after the fall of communism they were able to significantly scale down the size of the justice system so had a bunch of extra space to use. But there was no separate access to the apartment so they gave him keys to the whole courthouse so he could make his way through it to get to his apartment. One morning we had to wait before crossing the courtyard because guards were transporting prisoners in leg irons from the jail in the basement of the courthouse. So he had odd neighbors.

Published 23 Sep 2005 |