So we got ourselves a place to stay in Prague. We got a more centrally located place the next day.

 

Prague is a gorgeous city ... very interesting, nice and picturesque (to use three of the most insignificant words in the English language) but, gee golly, it's packed with tourists. They're absolutely everywhere! And they're are soooo many of them, too. OK, sure, we were there on a weekend in summer but, really, i think i might have heard Czech spoken about 2 percent of the time i was there. After the fairly tourist-light places i'd been previously, it was a really depressing reality. What was more depressing were the kinds of tourists there.

 

The main demographic was drunk British men. We had bachelor parties: i think it was the matching t-shirts, the one god-awful drag outfit ... can't they at least wax?!?! ... and the stupid jokes that gave these guys away. And we had rugby teams: the end-of-season-team-piss-up-trip seems to have the alcoholic-friendly Prague keenly in its sights. Take this observation as an example ...

 

Setting: The main street in Prague.

The actors: Gary Woopster, Phil Blunthead, Neville Bishopsmeat

 

(the actors wander down the street with loose direction, their behaviour suggests inebriation)

 

Phil: Oi! Gary! Neville! Hold hands with me. (the actors join hands and pose as a massive charm bracelet) Y'see, that way we have six legs holding us up. Errr, when v'you ever seen a millipede fall over?

 

Gary: You're a bloody genius Phil. Have i ever told you that you have very soft skin?

 

Neville: Hey boys, fancy a cheeky beer at the hostel.

 

Gary: A cheeky beer? Brilliant! Beer's brilliant! Prague's brilliant! Beer's brilliant! You're brilliant, Phil! I have ever told you that? Well, you are brilliant, and your hand's really soft ... I like that ...

 

(as the actors turn a corner, Neville envelopes the corner of a building in a loving embrace to ensure that he is, indeed, turning right. the actors proceed towards the horizon as the astronomical clock looms against the setting sun. curtain)

 

But don't think that the freak quotient in Prague is met purely by the tourist population. One of our dorm buddies turned out to be a Czech national. We had arrived at our second place of residence when he was out, but a quick scan of his bed had suggested the possibility of a mildly interesting character. There was: a dirty, scruffy teddy bear; a German-language newspaper and comic book; and other backpacker paraphernalia such as water bottles and the like. Anyway, Anna and I turned in fairly early that night and were just settling in to our respective literary distractions when a stout old man entered the room with brisk steps. His pot belly and balding scalp was attached to an aged body that carried with it a certain odour (and it weren't no 'odour of chrysanthemums' to be sure). He cleared his smoke-stained throat and hacked up some muck that must have included a small gerbil, judging by the sonic boom it created. He sighed with determined gusto and announced his grey-haired chest to the entire room as he began to disrobe. Anna, her head lying only inches from this man's groinal region, felt compelled to make conversation (an advisable course of action) and asked if he'd had a tough day. He huffed and said "Czech". Now, this was obviously an attempt to end the conversation due to linguistic issues but, with hindsight, i wonder if he wasn't perhaps also explaining that in a city so replete with tourists, it isn't enough to say "Czech" to fully suggest that, "Yes, i've had a very hard day, i want to go to sleep, eff off". As it turned out, he didn't speak German either, which clouds the newspaper and children's comic in mystery. As for the teddy bear, the less thought about that the better.

 

We didn't just admire the people in Prague, though. We ate dinner at a smashing little Afghan restaurant one night and walked around the old town a whole lot. I managed to find one area which had no shops or bars and was therefore tourist-free and it was only then that i began to really appreciate Prague's magnificence and charm. The complex chains of little alleys, main streets, squares and other cobble-stoned thoroughways are great to explore but contain few hidden gems ... everything that you can go into has been touched by touristitis. Still, our trip to the top of the Palace hill was wonderful and, as a big Euro 2004 match was on, most people were inside watching the football.

 

Another definite highlight was an exhibition devoted to the work of photojournalist Robert Capa. It was the first such collection of his work into a unified display and the photos and stories were compelling and rather inspiring ... now, if only i was really good at taking photos. Less impressive was another photography exhibit, this time an anthology of a Czech photographer's work from the 80's onwards. Some of the photos were very striking but the whole notion of posed studio photography seemed very superficial and pretentious in relation to the Capa exhibit. Perhaps some more breathing space would have allowed better appreciation of the work or perhaps it was just self-important arty shite (it takes one to know one and all that).

 

We had planned to meet friends in Prague (that's you, James and Pia) but through the indirectness of email, a bit of bad luck and our desire to get away from the hordes of tourists we managed to miss each other. Instead, we got ourselves tickets on the overnight train to Krakow, Poland. We were a bit optimistic about the speed of the Prague underground late on Sunday night so we ended up madly rushing up stairs and around corridors. Anna managed to gracefully stack it on an escalator (going up, thank god) so at least one of us had scars to show for it (though we both ended up smelling subtly of eau de backpacker). We finally get on the train, on the wrong carriage but we figured that by the time we deciphered the ticket info the train would have been across the border. We finally get a sense of where we should be through combining interpretive dance with ensign in order to communicate with one of the train conductors. As we squeeze past the other passengers spilling out of the cupees into the narrow corridor, I hear a Swedish voice make a disparaging, throw-away remark about Anna. With feline-like reflexes i turned, looked him down (fine, he was a good foot taller than me but this is my goddamn moment to shine, so back off) and said in flowing Swedish prose "Shut the *#+% up". And he did. Later that night he apologised (to me) and after a quick chat it turned out he was from the town of Kinna. For those of you not in the know, this won't mean a thing, but suffice it to say that this counts as a major case of small world.

 

On our way to Krakow we shared a sleeper with Susie and Deborah, a pair of Canadian modern dancers. And it's safe to say that it was backpacker-love at first sight. Our senses of humour matched, our destinations matched and we thought they were mid-20s and they thought we were mid-20s. In the end we worked out that there was over a decade's age difference between us, which has weirded out a lot of people who've met us as a group and definitely gave us a bit of a shock too. What's important though is that the four of us have been travelling together for the past week and have had an absolute ball.

 

Krakow was brilliant. The hostel (the "Dizzy Daisy") was super-chilled (god, it's obvious i've been hanging around Canadians) and had a really good communal feel. The city itself features yet another cobble-stoned old town with beautiful churches, facades and sidestreets. Most impressive is the town square, which is enormous (and home to the second largest pigeon flock in Europe). There are cafes aplenty, an arcade in the middle, buskers everywhere (Gypsy bands, breakdancing kids, hippy drummers) and generally a wonderful atmosphere.

 

Deb and I hired bikes to go around the Jewish quarter one day and saw a very good exhibition of photography that examined the remnants of Jewish influence and identity in Poland. Krakow, once the hub of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe, now is home to only 100 Jews. It is very difficult to describe the apparent paradox between the importance of Jewish history and living Jewish culture here and the distinct lack of a large Jewish population (almost a case of Baudrillard's simulacra).

 

On an even more sobering note, we also used Krakow as a base from which to go to Auschwitz-Birkenau. I don't think I could possibly say anything that hasn't already been said.

 

We managed to miss our connecting train in the Polish city of Katowice, which gave us a chance to experience more of what Poland has to offer. Fortunately, the rest of the city didn't reek of urine quite as much as the train station, which was nice. We settled in at a cafe in town to have lunch and had some fun with the waiter using farmyard sounds to differentiate various meat dishes.

 

Getting on our train from Katowice, we were joined by a Mennenite family. It would seem that God and barn-raising hasn't spared the kids from acne but at least they get to wear really neat linen shirts, which has to make up for the rest. We were also joined for a short moment by someone who presumably had something to with the train though he wasn't wearing a uniform. Walking past our little cupee, he stopped, opened the door and began speaking quite excitedly. We looked blankly back at him and explained that we were English-speaking, to which he replied "Oooohh, Engliiish". That wasn't all though, he again started to speak and gesture loudly. My rough translation of which was:

"That's a door! That's a window! That's air conditioning! I'm holding garbage! I'm closing the window! Don't open the door! Hot dog! Tasty! Thank you! Goodbye!"

 

In the end we did manage to leave Poland but our journey to Olomouc had one more stop along the way. The small Czech town of Prerov hasn't been making the news lately, nor should it, but it will always have a special place in our hearts. We had an hour to kill in this rural town (think of the town in Milos Forman's film "The Firemen's Ball") and the best solution was, as is often the case in the Czech Republic, to chat over a pint. Not surprisingly, there was a pub directly across the street from the train station. Twenty excited steps later and Deb was first through the doors. By the time I entered, Deb was already being warmly welcomed to Prerov by the council-employed welcoming committee in the form of a local barfly. He must have thought he'd hit the jackpot as four young women walked into his local haunt. It was only on closer inspection that he determined that one of the girls was flat-chested and had a scruffy beard. This guy would have been 30-going-on-alcoholic and had the kind of fascist central part in his hair that cries out for a revitalising shampoo with active enzymes and vitamins (Omomatic could have made an improvement) yet alcohol had decided that he wasn't going to let looks, language or anything else obstruct his path to the hearts of the ladies. Actually, I'm not convinced it was their hearts he was interested in. He was smooth, real smooth ... it was with balletic grace that he managed to suddenly sit beside Deb in our little corner booth. As his hand searched for a welcoming knee, his verbal assault of Czech searched for comprehending ears. Finding neither, he moved the 'conversation' to music. Deb had made a temporary escape to the jukebox and had just arrived at Eminem. Monsieur Slim Shady seems to be one of the few truly global cross-cultural specimens and it was with yelping glee that our new Czech friend announced "I love you, Eminem". After he repeated this three times in quick succession, I realised that he was combining the only two phrases of English he had at his command. In any case, half an hour later he was nowhere near exhausting his appetite or his moves but, with a clever and cunning subterfuge, we had managed to rearrange the seating so that i suddenly became the sacrificial lamb. He seemed to take almost as much of a shine to me as to the girls once he ascertained that i wasn't seeing any of them (he used some rather suggestive clapping-like gestures to gather that little fact). It wasn't long until he was trying to tech me the traditional Czech beer-greeting (it says something about a nation when they have a beer-greeting). So, try this one at home kiddies: clink the top of your glasses together, then the bases of the glasses, then rub them together in the horizontal axis, then rub them on the vertical axis, then touch the ashtray with the base of the glass, then touch the glass to your coaster or the table and then drink up. The army officers sitting on the other side of pub watching the football looked on this blossoming friendship with bemused cynicism ... but they don't know about us and they haven't heard of love. Anyway, we didn't want to miss yet another train, so it was with heavy hearts that we left Prerov behind in search of more adventures.

 

Right now we're in the Moravian province of the Czech Republic, in the town of Olomouc. Break it down for us, Anna.

 

ok, so first things first, i think we win on the bad hostel story... we arrived in olomouc and went to poets corner which is the name of the hostel we had booked at only to find that because we missed a bus and arrived late, our beds were gone. this was a bit of a bummer as poets corner was totally cute, a little hippy, very homey feeling, so the guy sends us to this other hostel and looking back he did seem a little reserved on giving details about it but at the time we just thought it was because he was stoned. so anyway, we find this place, and all seems kind of ok until we get upstairs and the place is bare. I am talking devoid of people, paintings, decor of any sort. it felt the way a house feels when its for sale, like there are chairs and tables but NOTHING friendly about the place. soulless. and in the rooms the only thing other than beds and a boarded up scary looking cubby hole in the wall was a bible hanging on the wall. anyway, we are all joking abou! t how ! freaky the place feels, when in the bathrooms we see this other lady and she is possible the weirdest looking human in the world, dark dark circles under the eyes wearing this robe thing and thats the clincher. we have to head out and have a beer and on the way out we see this massive ornate cross hanging above the door that we didn't see on the way up because it was behind us. strange strange place. we ended up dragging the four beds into one room, locking the other, with the bible in it and then got a massive attack of the giggles about how pathetic we were all being, but still, a very strange night!

 

Anna's not exaggerating (much) about the weirdness of this hostel ... and if she won't, then i suppose i have to. The walls are painted in a strange pale pink, which i think Derwent would call Flesh Pink, and it gives the hostel the look of a place that's been decorated by Hannibal Lecter ... mmmm, fava beans. The fluoro lights and linoleum imbue the locale with a mental asylumesque ambience, which only adds to the (supposedly) introverted receptionist's remarkable resemblance to Nurse Ratched. All in all, to complete the cinematic analogy, this is where Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King researched 'The Shining'. I've been freaking out the others with my strange telepathic powers and constant references to 'redrum' but that is usually due to the 90 cent pints.

 

Speaking of 90 cent pints, may I just re-iterate Carl's little comment.... 90 CENT PINTS... that's right my folks, not 350ml for $7 thank you very much, but 500ml for 90 cents. It is little wonder then that every where we go, internet cafes, theatre, hostels... people are wandering around - bottle in hand and looking very much the satisfied customer.

 

By the by, we've been doing some serious clergy-spotting here in Poland and Czech Republic. So far we've got nuns at 29 and priests at 18. The priests are going to have to pull out quite the second half effort if they're going to catch the nuns before the siren but with Him on your side, anything must be possible.

 

Carl and Anna