Praha – Pub Crawls, Pivo, Panoramas and Pacifying Kaitlyn

Foreword: This is not the full Prague story as, due to a consistently hectic schedule of sight-seeing and bar-viewing, I have limited time for writing.

Prague – the city of 100 spires. It really is just as beautiful as I remember it. Almost as beautiful as I look this morning after three hours sleep and a marathon pub crawl where the word ‘crawl’ became quite literal. But I’ll pull a Julie Andrews and start at the very beginning.

Thanks to the aforementioned "air traffic congestion over China" and our subsequent flight delay, we arrived in Prague quite late. Our wanky boutique hotel is about a ten minute walk to the museum – which is probably best explained to those who don’t know Prague as the start of the city centre; the Liverpool Link of Praha. We had plans to venture out for a celebratory beverage to commemorate our first night together in Europe, but on account of a sleepless flight (thanks to the concerto of catarrh to my right), we settled for a quick walk into the main drags and ice-cream – we’re pretty hard-core like that. 

The next morning we awoke early and hit the streets of Prague. In brief, we did the essential touristy things: Charles Bridge, Prague Castle, Old Town Square and the Astronomical Clock (or, as Kaitlyn referred to it, Gastronomical Clock). Prague is still bursting at the seams with tacky souvenirs; Kafka posters, ‘Czech Me Out’ t-shirts (and condoms) and a lot of Absinth paraphernalia. There is also a plethora of amber jewellery, Czech glass, ceramics and horribly tawdry Babushka Dolls. Although I was somewhat intrigued by the Silvio Berlusconi doll...I can only assume there are girls inside and each one gets younger and younger. 

Despite being tired, we were pretty keen to go out for a few drinks and meet some people. In brief, it didn’t happen. We did go out for a few drinks, but all they did was exacerbate the fatigue. So we gave up and decided to have another early night and save the partying for the next evening.

So the next morning we again started early, and did much of the same thing: a lot of walking and enjoying the city. Obviously it’s all amazing and interesting to us, but I’m not going to bore you guys with intimate details about every church and every old building façade. But I will tell you about the Hotel U Prince. It’s a hotel for rich people smack-bang in the middle of the Old Town Square. However, it has a beautiful rooftop bar with the most amazing views of the city and, whilst comparatively expensive with the rest of Prague, drinks are cheaper here than the Welcome Stranger (and you won’t run into people shooting up in the bathrooms). So we went up there for a cocktail and, on the way down, shared the lift with three Australians who were going on a pub crawl that night. Given our geriatric behaviour the evening before, we decided this would be the way to go as it would force us not to bail at 8.30pm. And one of the guys was kind of cute. So, after hotting-up and lining our stomachs, we became those Prague tourists and hit the crawl.

Four words: Drunken Monkey Pub Crawl. Four more words: free beer and shots. I’m not really sure where to start –firstly, because so much happened, secondly, because there are several blank spots, and thirdly, because I’m not entirely sure of the chronological order of the events I do remember. What I do know came first was several shots and a few games of Beer Pong. I teamed up with a guy called Alex, and Kaitlyn teamed up with a Swedish guy named Thor. I’m not making that up – his name was actually Thor. Kaitlyn, who had imbibed in as many shots as I had, was somewhat excited about knowing a guy called Thor. ‘CLAIRE! HIS NAME IS THOR!’

‘I know.’

‘THOR LIKE THE MOVIE. I NEED YOUR PHONE NUMBER SO I CAN TELL EVERYONE I HAVE THOR IN MY PHONE!’ 

About halfway through our first game, I looked across the table and saw a guy identical to Thor approaching. When I say 'identical’, I don’t mean identically dressed, but I mean an actual identical person. Realising Kaitlyn was going to kind of LOVE this, I called out to her, ‘Kaitlyn! Look to your left.’ She turned around and looked to her right. ‘Your LEFT.’ By the time she made ‘L’ shapes with her hands to determine which was her left, he had disappeared. About ten minutes later, Thor2 came back over and stood next to her. She turned and looked at him, and then did a sort of double-take. She then asked Thor, ‘Do you know this guy?! You look alike.’ After dominating at Beer Pong for a while and subsequently getting Thor very drunk as Kaitlyn doesn’t drink beer, we went to sit down for a bit. By this stage, Thor had taken a bit of a shining to Kaitlyn, and he was proving quite hard to escape. Thor2, whose name wasn’t Thor and therefore I didn’t commit to memory, seemed to be under the same delusions as his brother, only in regards to me. It turns out Swedish people are incredibly stealth, and twins can cover twice as much ground in the same amount of time as an individual. Fortunately, we had Alex, Glasses (he wore glasses) and British (he was British) assisting us and running interference and, by the time we left the bar, they had busied themselves with two children who’d forgotten to put on pants with their tops before going out. 

The next few hours are a blur of beverages, random political conversations, and a lot of cutting sick on the dancefloor. Seriously – Beyoncé better hope that baby comes quick, because my hips are more truthful than Shakira’s. I can’t even describe the clubs in much detail as smoking in bars is still legal here (and, from what I observed, this extends to the smoking of greener substances), and coupled with smoke machines, my mad dance skillz, and handsome dance partners, there was limited opportunity to study the architecture. There are, however, two things I can tell you about the last club of the crawl: it was a very long way away (on a tram), and it had strippers. Apparently they were "dancers" and not "strippers", but if you’re wearing a white leotard which was made for a small child, and have industrial lights shining on you, you’re essentially not wearing anything. Tomatoes/tomatoes. Whether it was the naked, gyrating women, or a good break from alcohol, we started to sober up. Kaitlyn, Alex, British and I decided it would be a good time to bounce. Only problem was, we had no idea where we were. The people who took us there didn’t seem to know either, but gave us vague directions about how to get back to the city. Cue Kaitlyn melt-down.

I am toying with the idea of creating a separate blog called ‘Kaitlyn’s Tantrums’. For those of you who haven’t met her, Kaitlyn is somewhat renowned for her "cracking of the shits", and histrionic reactions to the most routine of situations. (Prior to this trip, examples of scenarios in my "Top Ten Tantrums" are the mid-restaurant breakdown in Bali where, upon thinking – and I stress the word thinking – she had Bali Belly, she broke down and furiously ranted that she’d ‘RATHER JUST GET BOWEL CANCER AND DIE’ and ‘MAY AS WELL STAY IN BED FOR THE REST OF THIS [EXPLETIVE] TRIP UNTIL WE FLY HOME OTHERWISE [SHE] WILL DIE’; and, after failing to be served in a prompt manner at a café, she stormed out while loudly describing the red-headed barman as a ‘RED-HEADED RANGA [C-WORD EXPLETIVE] – AND I DON’T USE THAT WORD,’.

So far there have been some absolute doozies, and it’s only day three. Her habitual reaction to the presence of a wasp within a three metre radius is a little bit of shrieking and a whole lot of arm flapping; if the wasp moves to within a two metre radius – even if only in passing – the shrieking is replaced by phrases such as ‘PISS OFF YOU LITTLE [F-WORD EXPLETIVE]’ and ‘IF THESE MOTHER [F-WORD EXPLETIVE] WASPS DON’T [F-WORD EXPLETIVE] OFF I’M GOING BACK HOME’. But the best outburst thus far brings us back to our departing the strip club on the pub crawl. Upon reflection, I can’t help but wonder if Roald Dahl travelled to the future to this very night and based Veruca Salt on what he saw. It went a little something like this: 

A gentleman at the club (who possibly had been smoking something which wasn’t tobacco) told us to turn left and then left again to catch the tram to go home. We left the club and turned left and then went to turn left again, but Kaitlyn thought we had to turn right. We tried to explain to her that we had to turn left again, but her GPS system was apparently saying something different  (and we hadn't forgotten the brilliant direction skills she displayed early on in the evening during beer pong). British insisted that we turn left, to which she replied, ‘Fine. But we’re going the wrong (f-word expletive) way. And we’re going to get lost, but whatever.’

British tried again to explain, ‘We’re not going the wrong way. The city is in that direction and the tram stop is just down the road.’ I’m not sure if the fact he was correct was the catalyst, but that was when she lost it. ‘FINE THEN. I DON’T F@%$ING CARE ANYMORE. WE’LL GO THAT  F@%$ING WAY THEN. AND WE’LL GET LOST DOWN SOME DARK F@%$ING ALLEY WHERE THOSE STRIPPERS ARE F@%$ING FL ASHING US THEIR F@%$ING [LADY PARTS] AND WE’LL ALL JUST DIE.’ Poor Alex and British had only experienced, happy, tipsy Kaitlyn who liked vodka and dancing, and they weren’t really sure how to react. Alex tried with a bit of placating. ‘It’s okay, Kaitlyn. We’re going to get home.’

‘I DON’T WANT TO GO HOME TO THE HOTEL. I WANT TO GO HOME TO AUSTRALIA.’

Tears started streaming down her face, and there may have been a foot stamped on cobblestone. ‘I F@%$ING HATE THIS PLACE. I WANT TO GO F@%$ING HOME TO F@%$ING AUSTRALIA. I’M F@%$ING HOMESICK. I WISH I’D NEVER COME HERE.’ At this point she dropped down to the ground, hugged her knees, and rocked back and forth like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man when Tom Cruise tried to make him board a plane. After a bit of encouragement and the promise of a lollypop when we got home, Kaitlyn agreed to get up and come with us. Soon after, we found an American man at the tram stop who assured us that (surprise, surprise) we were going in the right direction.

It was a long walk from the city back to our place. Long enough for Kaitlyn to find the whole situation funny and laugh about it, but also long enough for her feet to hurt and for her to rip her shoes off in the middle of the footpath because 'THEY F@%$ING HURT BECAUSE THESE PEOPLE ONLY USE F@%$ING COBBLESTONE. WHY CAN’T THEY USE F@%$ING CONCRETE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. F@%$’. But we made it home without any more Rain Man.

And that was only three hours ago. The Czech in my blood seemingly allows me to recover from binge-drinking quite well. Today we will battle some more wasps and get our culture on.