Episode Eleven: Prague Kafka’s Grave, Bob Marley and Little Bird We are on the overnight train to Prague. We did not book a bed car, mainly due to the fact that neither of our fathers is the CEO of any major corporations, thus our funds limit us to riding coach. We are in a regular […]
Episode Eleven: Prague
Kafka’s Grave, Bob Marley and Little Bird
We are on the overnight train to Prague. We did not book a bed car, mainly
due to the fact that neither of our fathers is the CEO of any major
corporations, thus our funds limit us to riding coach. We are in a regular
coach car that is made to seat six people. Luckily, instead of having a room
full of people staring at each other’s heads, it is just the two of us. We
take this opportunity to spread out. It is an interesting ride as the lights
never go off, the train is loud and the ticket guys bug us every time we
stop at another depot. Other than that, we are just tired and uncomfortable.
The night becomes more so, and we eventually lay across the seats that God
has seen fit to provide us, but the conductor comes by and yells at us to
sit up. Being resourceful youths, we figure out that by putting our legs
straight out onto the seat in front of us, it feels enough like a bed (minus
the butt support) to put us to sleep.
We are semi-happily nodding off to the vibrations of the train rolling
beneath us when the conductor comes in again and tells us that we have to
sit up correctly. He says we did not pay for a sleeper car so we do not lie
down like we have one. Apparently, we have to suffer for the fact that his
wife is withholding sex from him. I knew Austrian sounded too much like
German for me to trust them to be civil for long.
Earlier in the day, Chris mentioned that the Eurail pass did not seem to
actually cover our ride through the Czech Republic. He said maybe it would
be okay, since the only way to get from Austria to Berlin would be to go
through this region, so we would have to go this way regardless. Our rail
map doesn’t actually say that it does not cover the Czech Republic, it just
shows the rail line in red up to the border, then when it hits this region
it turns gray, and then when it leaves this region it turns red again. If we
ignore the legend on the left side of the map, this could be a printing
mistake for all we know.
I suggest to him that we are on an overnight train, meaning the train
workers will most likely be sleeping or in the bar car drinking the vodka.
Also, if they really had a problem with it, they would stop the train before
allowing us to so easily enter such a forbidden region. The train does stop
at one point, in a small town that is below the Czech border, but it looks
like a normal stop and no one announces we have to disembark. Of course,
even if they had made such an announcement, I would have stayed put. Heaven
knows the last thing I need is to be wandering small border towns in the
middle of the night.
We eventually decide to take the wrath of the conductor and lay our weary
heads upon our seats. Being on a train at night makes it possible to do only
two things, sleep or solve murders. It appears we are doing fine as the
conductor passes by the door several times without looking in on us. Perhaps
he thinks we have disembarked or perhaps he has decided to leave us alone.
Maybe his wife is ovulating and told him to hurry home.
It is four in the morning when the door to our compartment opens and two men
enter. Neither of them is Austrian. These men have on dark, blue uniforms
and appear to be Czech.
We immediately sit up to show that we are not, in fact, using the seats as
beds. Neither of them seems concerned with this. The younger of the two asks
to see our passports and the older one plays the part of the tough, quiet
friend.
We give him our passports and our Eurail passes. After looking them over for
a bit, he confers with the older man for a while. The older man’s voice has
a menacing sound to it. I cannot help but think the worst. The younger one
bends to me and shows me the map of the region. He traces the rail line and
points out the obvious. The red line turns gray. I try to look confused and
then surprised, but I do not know if he was able to appreciate my
performance in this light.
Chris is looking at me and his eyes are either saying “oh shit” or “your fault”.
It is not exactly my fault, but even if it is, what is the worst they could
do to us anyway? The older guy leaves the compartment for a minute and the
younger guy tells us it will be just a minute. He does not hand our
passports or rail passes back to us and I wonder if this is because they
need something to identify the bodies with later.
After a few minutes, a third man is brought in. He looks nice and speaks
remarkable English. He tells us that our tickets are not valid to enter the
Czech Republic and we will have to purchase tickets to continue on this
train. We are relieved that the remedy is this non-violent, but concerned at
what a train ticket will cost us. We have been calculating the trips we have
taken, and have realized that without this Eurail pass, we would have had to
stay put in Den Haag for a month. Tickets from point to point are quite
expensive in Europe, even if the cities are only a thumbnail apart on the
map.
He figures out what we owe and writes down the amount. Chris takes out his
calculator and does the math. They are asking the exorbitant amount of seven
dollars apiece. It turns out this third guy is an exchanger of money and he
gives us Czech Krones for our Austrian Shillings. We remember what my friend
Nicole had told us about the Czech Republic. Apparently, since the fall of
communism, the Czech economy has been doing crazy things. She was in Prague
not a month ago and remembered drinking thirty-cent pints of beer and
staying at hotels for under ten dollars a night. To them, seven dollars was
a lot of money, to us, it was seven dollars. We thank them for not killing
us, take back our essentials and lay down on our makeshift beds. Tomorrow we
wake up in Prague, city of a hundred spires.
We arrive into town during the early morning hours. The platform is full of
people who are waiting for the train and there is one man in particular that
is apparently waiting for us. He is wearing a periwinkle shirt, blue jeans
and a thick pair of glasses. He is a step or two ahead of us, talking to us
in German. Chris thinks we look German because he is no longer wearing his
white look-at-me-I-am-American sneakers. I am thinking it is because I look
grumpy, in a “someone is putting their feet up on a train seat” kind of way.
Either our confused looks or lack of response make the man realize we are
not German. He immediately switches to broken English. The man with the
broken English tells us that he has an apartment if we want to rent it from
him. He says he can take us to it and if we do not like it, we do not have
to stay. Chris and I slow down to hold a quick conference. We both hate
hostels at this point and having an apartment in Amsterdam had been very
enjoyable. Chris says he feels uncomfortable about this but I counter with
the fact that we can easily beat this man up if we have to.
We tell him we will take a look at it and he happily leads us to the subway.
He pays for our subway tickets, which I think is weird, but then remember
that he is trying to make a sale. On the subway, he sits next to me, leaning
in to tell me his facts. His name is Lubos something, and though I could
never pronounce his last name, he says it means “little bird” in Czech. To
emphasize this he makes a little bird hand gesture.
He seems really nice and I am not at all nervous about going with him, but
what does bother me is his breath is noxious as hell. It smells like a goat
died underneath his tongue. I am trying to lean away from him and praying
that our stop comes soon. We finally stop at the other side of town. Where
we exit has a Czech name, two words starting with P. That is all that stays
with me and will have to be enough to get me home should we become
separated.
We follow him to an apartment building and I so happily lug my backpack up
four flights of stairs. The building does not have an elevator, but what it
lacks in convenience, it more than makes up for in peeling paint. At this
point, it hits me that this would be the perfect set up for bad guys. First
you lead the foreigners to an empty apartment and have three big goons
waiting to beat us up and steal our stuff. Of course, I think of this after
I have made it to the top of the third floor and am willing to risk bodily
injury rather than go back down.
The apartment is a handsome little number. It is a studio, consisting of one
big bed, a kitchenette and a chair. There is a bathroom to one side and a
balcony on the other. No one is in here to beat me up and this gives it a
nice ambiance. He says that it is his apartment and he rents it out to make
extra money. He will be staying at a friend’s house.
His asking price is a little more than the hostel, but we would get our own
bathroom, so we decide to stay. We pay him for one night and he says that if
we want to stay longer, to leave the money in a kitchen drawer that he will
check every day. If he does not find any money, he will assume that we no
longer want to stay. He hands us the keys and bids us farewell.
Chris is amused that we have our own bathroom. He is surprised because he
saw this film once, in grade school, about people in Russia living in one
room of an apartment building full of hundreds of families. The one bathroom
was in the basement, for all to use. He knows it was about Russia and he
knows it was during the Cold War, but there is some kind of point he is
trying to make and I am unable to tell what the hell it is.
We do notice that there is a lack of toilet paper to use, but as luck would
have it, I have my traveler’s emergency toilet paper for just such an
occasion. No one can say that I do not take things seriously. Chris is
thinking that maybe he should write an essay about our toilet paper
adventures, calling it “Toilet Paper and the Grand Cities of Europe”.
We change clothes, lock our bags to the bedpost and head out into the world
of the Czech. Lubos (little bird) has told us that our subway tickets are
good for one hour, so we assume we can at least get downtown before they
expire. As we waltz down the stairway to catch our train, a man in a purple
sweatshirt says something to me in Czech. I am assuming he is trying to
borrow some money or wants to sell me a can opener, so I say no thanks and
continue on down. Chris stops for him because he can tell the man is serious
about something. I head back up and he asks to see our subway tickets. After
looking them over, he then asks to see our passports and we hand them to him
like a couple of idiots. He walks to the entrance of the subway and we
follow. He tells us to read the signs.
To our amazement, they are written in English. We have not seen English
since London, so assuming we won’t ever again, we do not bother to even look
at signs unless they seem to be warning us about killer waterfalls. The
signs tell us that our subway tickets are good for one hour, but only in the
subway. If you leave for any reason, they become invalid. Lubos (little
bird) forgot to mention this part.
I tell the man we are sorry, thinking that it is not only obvious that we
did this on accident, but that we are foreigners and therefore slightly
stupid. What is his reply to this?
He says, “Sorry does not do no good, you are going to have to pay.”
Sorry does not do no good? What the hell is that? Then the jerk makes us pay
a fine for breaking his idiotic, bullshit rules. We do not really feel like
we have a choice, as this purple-shirt monkey is holding our passports. We
have to keep from smiling as he hits us with a fine amount of seven dollars
and ten cents.
There must be something about breaking the law here, in relation to seven
dollars. Though subway tickets are only twenty-four cents, the seven dollars
still seems like a small amount to part with. We give this chimp cash, which
he puts into his pocket and then hands back our passports. He tries to give
us one of those hard looks that say now don’t let me catch you doing this
again, but all that his beady, little eyes convey to us is that he is a
very, very small person.
On our way down the stairs, Chris is cursing under his breath. He says that
when that jerk asked for our passports, we should have kicked him in the
shins, pushed him down the steps and left the country. I bet you anything
that the money we paid him is going toward a hooker or a gambling debt or
whatever else this guy does on his days off.
We get on the train and Chris finds he is fascinated with the Prague
subways. He likes that each station is announced loud enough for us to hear,
even if we cannot tell what the hell they are saying. He says it is the
thought that counts. He also likes the fact that the drivers are maniacs.
They go from being perfectly still to driving a hundred and fifty two miles
an hour in a matter of three or four seconds. We found the most fun is to be
had while staring out the door at the front of the car. Watching the other
cars twist and turn ahead of ours makes for an amusing ride.
For me, Prague officially wins as the coolest city in the world. It is full
of canals, bridges, castles and cobblestones. It is exactly the Europe I was
dreaming of. The city is amazing to look at from a distance, with all the
steeples and spires jutting into the sky. When you are in it, it transports
you back at least a century or two. We check out a few places that we needed
to hit while here, mainly the post office and a bank.
We walk to the river and look over the side. There is a huge, concrete
embankment on our side, at least sixty feet wide and we notice some tables
and chairs underneath the bridge. A long staircase takes us to the bottom,
and to a café, that serves beer out of one window and coffee out of another.
We order beer from a lady that services both windows and then go sit at a
table. Not ten seconds later the same lady stomps up to our table.
She folds her arms and says, “No beer, go!”
I notice that the tables are divided into two sections, those in front of
the coffee window and those in front of the beer window. The beer window
seating is all filled up, and despite the fact that the coffee window
seating is empty and a mere six inches away, these are apparently not suited
for our alcoholic ways. I point out to her that there are no seats in the
beer section, but she does not want to have any discussions about it.
Milling around like idiots we finally give up on the fact that we are going
to find a seat in the beer section. We walk to the edge of the river and sit
with our legs dangling over. Luckily, she lets us sit here and finish our
beers. This is probably because she has such a kind heart.
On our way back to the apartment, we are stopped by yet another man, who
asks to see our subway tickets. This time we know the scoop and he looks
disappointed that he cannot humiliate us. He then spots two other people
with backpacks and immediately yells at them to show their tickets. These
jerks are only stopping tourists. How nice is that? Then, when he is not
able to steal their money, he turns around and shrugs to another man across
the terminal. We turn to see to whom he is shrugging, and lo’ and behold, it
is our little friend from earlier today. Chris says he hopes these guys were
beaten as children.
The next morning we are up at an hour normally set-aside for army recruits
and paper-delivery boys. Okay, maybe it is not that early, but it is pretty
early. We wander into town and look at everything in the daylight. The city
itself is almost beyond words. The main strip, Wenceslas Square, I remember
seeing in documentaries. It was when thousands of people were gathering
around the statue of St. Wenceslas, during the Velvet Revolution of 1989. We
find a café for breakfast and order Crepes. Chris gets the one that has
fruit in the middle and mine has scrambled eggs.
The train tickets, the beer seating and the subway guy are the three things
that have introduced us to Prague. Luckily, the surroundings make up for the
people and I suggest that maybe we are in for a good stay since we have had
our three bad things happen to us. I forget to knock on wood at this time.
We wander around town for a while and eventually decide it is time to visit
Kafka’s grave. Oddly, the book we have shows his place of work and his home,
but does not mention where we can find his decayed remains. There is a young
girl in a glass booth in the middle of the square. The sign above her says
information, so we assume she is the person most likely able to inform us on
this matter.
We show her our map and ask for Kafka’s grave. She points to where we are
and then to where we need to go. The place where her finger is says
cemetery, so we thank her and begin our journey. Half an hour later and we
are still walking. The road is alongside the river, which is great the first
ten minutes, but as we get further from the heart of the city, it is turning
ugly and industrial. Are my feet starting to hurt?
Two months before we left, I decided I needed to get in shape for the trip.
I bought this great pair of boots, and every Sunday, hiked up to some
waterfalls that are a little way outside of Tucson. The hike totaled almost
seven miles both ways, and by the fifth or sixth week, I was making good
time getting up there and back. My legs were ready for a trek, and though my
feet have always been wimpy and less-than-rugged, they would do fine in my
amazing pair of boots.
What I did not foresee, is that we would be walking for ten to twelve hours
a day on concrete, asphalt and cobblestones. I have walked my boots to
death. Underneath the protective inside of my shoe is a waffle-type base
that absorbs and distributes my steps. This waffle-type base is very
uncomfortable when it becomes the area your foot is coming directly down
upon.
I begin by complaining to Chris that my shoes are killing me, but of course,
he has the compassion of a lawn ornament. I push ahead, complaining every
eleven feet, when suddenly my pain becomes a limp. Thinking I am cashing in
on my fake pain, Chris is even more annoyed with me and pushes on. The
underside of my feet feel like they are on fire and I am hoping that I get
hit by a car or something heavy falls on me to take my mind off the pain.
Finally, we round a bend and see the church up on a hill. Unfortunately, up
on a hill means we have to get up there, from down here. I am happy to
report that the staircase has never heard such vulgarities, this I can
guarantee.
Lush bushes and trees surround the church. The graveyard looks to be a
thousand years old. We wander the headstones and poke around the home of the
dead. Some of the dates on these stones go back hundreds of years and I get
a slight feeling of mortality. We wander here and there, looking, but not
finding Mr. Kafka’s grave. We hear voices and hold very still as some people
walk close to where we are. Now I feel like a grave robber.
I decide to sit down and get my weight off of the waffles from hell in my
shoes. Chris continues to poke around and eventually calls me from atop a
large stone slab thing, sticking out of the bushes. Atop this slab are four
headstones with the name Kafka on them, but none of them belong to Franz. We
compare the dates, assuming he may have been buried under a different name,
but these Kafkas died years later. We do not even know if they knew him.
After searching for a good while longer, we finally give up. I am wondering
if this is a joke to play on tourists, sending them to a cemetery that
contains a Kafka, but not the Kafka.
We walk back to town with thoughts of tipping over the lady’s little glass
booth, but these thoughts soon turn to hunger. Lubos (little bird) told us
of a place to eat. He said the food is amazing and the prices are really
good. He also said it is a very famous place, and if there is nothing Chris
and I like better, it is being able to name drop where we have eaten. The
place is called Club Nouveau. I am assuming this is the modern-day name of
this place, as its original name most likely forced tourists to sprain their
tongues while asking directions to get here.
Club Nouveau is magnificent, and we can only imagine what it was like in its
heyday. There are huge chandeliers up and down the room and a fountain on
one end. The left wall is covered in mirrors and the right consists of four
huge windows, light filtering through paper-thin curtains. The waitress
returns to find us staring helplessly at our menus. It is written in Czech,
and for all I know, I could be reading mine upside down.
She speaks a little English and we fake the rest. I want a meal that is
considered purely Czech and try to explain this to her. She eventually
suggests the fourth listing from the top, which, after doing a few animal
noises in her direction, I discover I will be having pork. It comes with
dumplings and light gravy and I am in heaven. After dinner we order
cappuccinos and I declare this to be the best cappuccino I have ever had. To
be sure, I order another, and after finishing it, I stand by my convictions.
We then head over to the castle. To get there we cross Charles Bridge. The
bridge is about thirty feet wide, covered in cobblestones and has a statue
of a saint every twenty feet on either side. One of the statues is of a
knight, and legend has it, his sword is buried somewhere within the bridge.
As we reach the other side of the bridge, I am excited to see artists,
multitudes of them, spreading out their interpretations of Prague for the
oncoming tourists to buy.
After climbing many steps, we reach the castle walls. The view of the city
is amazing from this height and there are steeples pointing skyward as far
as the eye can see. In front of the castle is a group of four men who look
like they just came back from a hobo reunion. They are playing some
instruments and have gotten the attention of the gathering tourists. This
allows us to walk right up to the black, iron gates surrounding the castle’s
first courtyard.
Suddenly, the changing of the guard begins and we have the best seats in the
house. I need to remember to give the musical hobos a tip for this
opportunity. After the marching around is over, they reopen the first
courtyard and we go in. We wander the castle grounds a bit and I even manage
to find a castle bathroom. After doing my business I notice a window that is
covered by a wooden shudder. A big yank and the shudder opens. The view is
amazing from here and I hurriedly snap some photographs, afraid the bathroom
police will wander in and charge me seven dollars for offending them
somehow.
Chris has read many things we should see while in here (the castle, not the
bathroom), but the amount of tourists gets to be unnerving and we decide to
go outside for a while. To the side of the castle is a grassy area with a
row of trees planted in honor of someone or another. We decide to sit here
for a bit and soak up some sun. Suddenly, twelve noon hits.
First a bell goes off across the river, then another. A few seconds later a
third and fourth join in. The bell in the church behind us starts to ring
and then five more, ten more, twenty more join in. The entire city of Prague
is below us and every bell is ringing in the middle of the day. The sound is
amazing and deafening, frightening and beautiful. I am listening to all of
this and decide this is one of those moments where unusual things occur and
I am supposed to make a life-altering decision. I decide that I need to try
and amount to something during my lifetime.
To be honest, for a second I thought all the bells would stop ringing at
this exact moment, as if I have just made a world-altering decision. But do
they? Hell no. They continue to ring for a few seconds more and then slowly
die off, one by one. After they all stop, I realize the daylight has never
seemed so quiet before.
We go to the main square and look at the tourists. Our backpacks give us
away and people approach us with flyers advertising the latest American bar,
American dance club or American restaurant. On the way over, I read that
over a hundred thousand Americans live in Prague. Everything is so cheap
they do not have to worry about jobs, and there are enough of them that they
even have their own newspaper. Is that the sound of my brain asking me if
this is the place I want to be? Can you imagine how beautiful the city must
be after its first snow? Would signing a letter, From Prague with Love, be
enough to make me smile every day?
We find a bookstore that sells English language books. Chris feels it is his
duty to buy The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Kundera, a Czech-born
writer. I cannot find anything I want to buy. We go to a café a few doors
down and order some Coke. We write our postcards and stare out at the people
walking by. Across the street I notice a Levi’s store opening and wonder how
long it will take for capitalism to come here full force.
A beautiful woman is walking by our table and I cannot help myself. I grab
my camera and take her picture. She turns just as I am clicking away and
gives me a scowl. It does not matter though, when I have this picture
developed and show everyone exactly what she looks like, they will
understand. After finishing our postcards, we decide to find the post office
we saw last night.
We are close to the statue at the end of the square and behind him is a
building that looks rather majestic. We cross the street and walk up to its
entrance. It is the National Museum, and though it is closed, from here we
have a straight on view of Prague: the statue, the city, the river and the
castle silhouetted against the sky. It is a perfect city.
To my right is an area where they are doing construction. No one is here
now, and what has been done so far, is the cobblestones have been ripped up
from a thirty-foot area. They are gray cobblestones, no bigger than a coffee
mug, and in perfect condition. Has Josef Myslbek, the sculptor, ever walked
upon these cobblestones? Did they feel the weight of the oppressive Russian
occupied winters? They have to have been underneath the feet of a person who
realized that the Czech Republic was free once again. The poet in me wants
to have one of these cobblestones. The kleptomaniac in me gets one.
At the post office, there is a wall of phones and we decide to call home. It
is weird trying to sum up what we have been doing these last few weeks in
just a few minutes, but all they really want to know is that we are not
dead, broke or in jail. We then see the sights of Prague, including the old
town hall with its astrological clock, watching as death turns the hourglass
upside down and the twelve apostles’ parade past the windows. Across the
courtyard is Týn Church, the most impressive building in my book. Now we are
off to find the house of a Mr. Franz Kafka.
Kafka’s house is very small and unimpressive and is exactly what one
expects. It is at the end of an alley-like street and the tourists push,
pull and gather to get in, get out or just be annoying. Chris enjoys the
house, but is a little disappointed that they have turned this man’s life
into a commercial endeavor. He says he understands how I felt at the Van
Gogh museum, and then proceeds to buy a coffee mug and a postcard.
After we fight our way out of tourist alley, we head over to the Jewish
Cemetery. The cemetery is strange, intriguing and sad. It is a little piece
of land that was expected to hold over ten thousand Jews. The headstones are
piled against each other, some holding up the others that have fallen.
Graves are one on top of the other and give the ground an uneven look. We
walk through a roped off section and occasionally see small stones that have
been placed upon the headstones, the Jewish sign of respect.
From here, we walk around town a bit more. We see a huge building that looks
like a mall, but upon closer inspection, discover it is a K-Mart. These
things are bad enough back home, but here? It is huge, at least five floors,
covered with everything you would expect a K-Mart to have. I wander around
and I eventually get lost. This reminds me of when I used to get lost in
K-Mart back home, and then the lady on the intercom would have to announce
that if the parents of Vince are in the store, to please come get him.
I have a feeling they would not page Chris t