You Better Bring More than 10 Koruna if You're Moving to Prague

The view from where I wrote this blog...I know...it's beautiful

When I first came to Prague, I obviously didn’t know specifically what to expect, other than everyone telling me how beautiful it was. “Oh you’re going to Prague, that’s such a beautiful city.” After I literally had 6 people tell me the same thing, I began to doubt their claims because, as I’ve learned in college, the masses aren’t correct. But, having been to Prague, I can tell you that it is beautiful but the beauty is the same on every street. So, like you would get used to the beauty of the mountains when living in the mountains, you quickly get used to the beauty of Prague living in Prague. (as with other cultures like Swaziland) Make sense?

Bathrooms cost money here. Everyone knows that when you go to Europe you’re going to pay to pee, but why? The test I use when deciding about whether I like a place is very simple and consists of two questions- 

1) free pee and 2) free water. 

So far Prague has a 0 and 2 rating with my test and therefore fails with a 0%. The same grade I received on my senior year Spanish test after my cheat sheet fell to the floor. Sorry Mrs. Rymer.

So you can obviously picture my disappointment when I order water by saying something like, “Do you have tap water?” Dumbfounded look ensues…”Um…water…in glass…(point to faucet) from sink.” Look of understanding ensues. Receive…bottle of water with a glass. While you might chalk this up to American ignorance and my lack of Český (the language Czech’s speak), I can assure you these restaurants have glasses and they have sinks. I have seen them both.

The second, bathrooms, is obvious and needs no further explanation, save to say, if you don’t have 10 Czech Crowns, you pee your pants. Since not peeing your pants has roughly the same value everywhere around the world…enough said.

Prague is also said to have the most beautiful women in the world and so far I’m thinking when people say that, they mean the most beautiful women in Czech Republic.  I’ve only seen two girls that I think are beautiful. The first at a club and I couldn’t work up the nerve to ask her out because she was in another league and the second had a “boyfriend.” Whose name I didn’t ask but was probably Pavel.  No offense to all the Pavels out there…you guys are great.

Another thing about Prague is they don’t efficiently label street names, which isn’t a big deal of course unless you want to go somewhere. When they do label the streets, they put the names on the corners of buildings. So if there isn’t a building on the corner, you guessed it, no street name. Which makes driving and getting places difficult, as  every street usually has things on it that you want to get to. If there is a building on the corner, they put the name of the street that you’re already on, on the side of the building, making it impossible to see the street name of the building you want to turn on until you’ve already turned.

The last thing I’d like to point out is that for the most part people aren’t that nice here. I think this is probably due to the whole 1948 coup d'état  and the Prague Spring, but I can’t prove it. The culture only changes you if you let it. Now that Czech Republic is a pluralist multi-party parliamentary representative democracy I have hope for their future. And since I have no desire to become a grumpy old turd I’ll keep saying hi to people and keep getting rough stares back…I don’t mind.  

There are also a lot of good things about Prague: It is beautiful; the public transit is quite easy, ridiculously clean, and surprisingly quick; beer is very cheap and better than PBR; and everyone smokes, which makes social smoking a true past time because it’s unbelievably easy to bum fags. If Prague had bike lanes, Wal-Mart, and better sausage, changes are I'd want to stay. But since they don't, I'm off to South Korea. When, I'm not sure. love. war. 

Things to think about:

-Are your rights being infringed upon?

Things to watch:

I filmed this outside the Kafka museum today...