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Heathrow was remarkable.
So at the airport I was supposed to meet the Gray Line driver at the Dvorak taxi stand by terminal 1. I never found it. Nobody seemed to know what I was talking about. I finally just bought a metro ticket so I could take the bus. The nice guy at the metro information stand who had never heard of the Dvorak stand did give me a map with bus numbers on it, which was generally easy to follow.
Except at Devlicke A, which is a transportation hub west of central Prague. At night it looks like a location in Frank's Shadowrun-Arkham Horror crossover game. There are about eight streets that come together there with a blighted wasteland (or maybe just open space badly lit) in the middle. There are metal traffic barriers scattered around to keep you from crossing the streets. You are supposed to go underground and come out the other side but once underground the egresses are not labelled with what bus number they lead to, just "Bus," "Tram," etc. And at this point I know how to say "Prosim," and "kde je" and just enough numbers to say, "Prosim? Kde je autobus dva jeden sedm?" (excuse me? Where is autobus 217?) Again, nobody knows. One person went so far as to say "Ne autobus!" (there is no such thing as autobuses!) But a cheerful young man with golden curls walked me to the spot, so I got there, just in time to be lectured at length on the phone by the driver who could not comprehend, despite being Czech himself, that I could get lost at the airport and not find anyone who would help me.
So the next night I saw Frank and Amiruth who are really quite a matched pair, and I took Frank's phone tobecause I was going to the phone place the next day anyway (I didn't get there). My phone was never activated for international travel because AT&T was pretty well convinced I am a fraud and a criminal. So my phone at some point decided that the correct time for San Francisco is nineteen and a half hours behind Prague time (it should be nine hours straight) and I kept looking at Frank's phone for the real time and it finally started demanding a password, which I had been told so I could get time put on it. But I couldn't find the enter button and it decided I was a notorious criminal trying to steal Frank's phone and shut it down so now we have to go brave the Czech mobile people.
This happened while i was locked out of my hostel room because I couldn't get the keypad lock to agree with me as to what the passcode was. Eventually I decided that since I couldn't sleep in the unheated hallway anyway, I would systematically run through every combination of 4 numbers until I got the right one. The fact that I had potentially ten thousand variants to run through was only made more amusing by the fact that the keypad would lock down for a while after every seventh try. But fortunately the correct combination was a very close to what I remembered and b) a low number so I got in before 2 in the morning.
I have by now explored Andel, a shopping area near the hostel (and near Frank), successfully bought meals and found bathrooms, walked around Vaclavske Namesti and Karlovy Namesti (the guidebooks call them Wenceslas and Charles square respectively -- they hardly use any Czech for the names of places, which is annoying and puzzling when you set out to actually find them), been to the Botanical Garden and the Museum of Decorative Arts. Still haven't seen the Astronomical Clock, but I'm going to a bar with Frank and Amiruth tonight and they seem to have tacked that on to the trip.
I have succeeded in buying a CD of "Plastic People of the Universe" for Zac, and I now know what the Czech words for fabric and lace are -- latka and krajka respectively - so I can look for stuff for Emma. The word "textil," by the way, seems to indicate leather goods, though Frank insists it actually means fabric as you would expect.
The weather, which was apparently bitter cold a week ago, has become quite mild -- about 0 C/ 32 F, cold but manageable -- and I've had no problem dealing with it. I actually feel less cold here than I had been at home, a fact I attribute to moving around a lot. My clothes, which were a bit snug before I left, are already too roomy again. I seriously have been walking steadily four or five hours a day. I get really tired but not very hungry.
I don't know all the numbers but I can recognize a bunch and say a few of them. I can say please, thank you, excuse me, how much, and where's the bathroom? I know the difference between yes and no, But mostly I have to point and act embarrassed.
Thankfully the transportation system in Prague is excellent, comprehensible, prompt, and inexpensive. It really makes my day. Five-day passes that you don't have to haul out and show unless you're asked makes loading the tramvaj quick and easy, and also means you don't lose the pass from handling it too much.
Ate at a Czech restaurant last night and the food was good, but the Czechs really do put ham and cheese on almost everything.
So at the airport I was supposed to meet the Gray Line driver at the Dvorak taxi stand by terminal 1. I never found it. Nobody seemed to know what I was talking about. I finally just bought a metro ticket so I could take the bus. The nice guy at the metro information stand who had never heard of the Dvorak stand did give me a map with bus numbers on it, which was generally easy to follow.
Except at Devlicke A, which is a transportation hub west of central Prague. At night it looks like a location in Frank's Shadowrun-Arkham Horror crossover game. There are about eight streets that come together there with a blighted wasteland (or maybe just open space badly lit) in the middle. There are metal traffic barriers scattered around to keep you from crossing the streets. You are supposed to go underground and come out the other side but once underground the egresses are not labelled with what bus number they lead to, just "Bus," "Tram," etc. And at this point I know how to say "Prosim," and "kde je" and just enough numbers to say, "Prosim? Kde je autobus dva jeden sedm?" (excuse me? Where is autobus 217?) Again, nobody knows. One person went so far as to say "Ne autobus!" (there is no such thing as autobuses!) But a cheerful young man with golden curls walked me to the spot, so I got there, just in time to be lectured at length on the phone by the driver who could not comprehend, despite being Czech himself, that I could get lost at the airport and not find anyone who would help me.
So the next night I saw Frank and Amiruth who are really quite a matched pair, and I took Frank's phone tobecause I was going to the phone place the next day anyway (I didn't get there). My phone was never activated for international travel because AT&T was pretty well convinced I am a fraud and a criminal. So my phone at some point decided that the correct time for San Francisco is nineteen and a half hours behind Prague time (it should be nine hours straight) and I kept looking at Frank's phone for the real time and it finally started demanding a password, which I had been told so I could get time put on it. But I couldn't find the enter button and it decided I was a notorious criminal trying to steal Frank's phone and shut it down so now we have to go brave the Czech mobile people.
This happened while i was locked out of my hostel room because I couldn't get the keypad lock to agree with me as to what the passcode was. Eventually I decided that since I couldn't sleep in the unheated hallway anyway, I would systematically run through every combination of 4 numbers until I got the right one. The fact that I had potentially ten thousand variants to run through was only made more amusing by the fact that the keypad would lock down for a while after every seventh try. But fortunately the correct combination was a very close to what I remembered and b) a low number so I got in before 2 in the morning.
I have by now explored Andel, a shopping area near the hostel (and near Frank), successfully bought meals and found bathrooms, walked around Vaclavske Namesti and Karlovy Namesti (the guidebooks call them Wenceslas and Charles square respectively -- they hardly use any Czech for the names of places, which is annoying and puzzling when you set out to actually find them), been to the Botanical Garden and the Museum of Decorative Arts. Still haven't seen the Astronomical Clock, but I'm going to a bar with Frank and Amiruth tonight and they seem to have tacked that on to the trip.
I have succeeded in buying a CD of "Plastic People of the Universe" for Zac, and I now know what the Czech words for fabric and lace are -- latka and krajka respectively - so I can look for stuff for Emma. The word "textil," by the way, seems to indicate leather goods, though Frank insists it actually means fabric as you would expect.
The weather, which was apparently bitter cold a week ago, has become quite mild -- about 0 C/ 32 F, cold but manageable -- and I've had no problem dealing with it. I actually feel less cold here than I had been at home, a fact I attribute to moving around a lot. My clothes, which were a bit snug before I left, are already too roomy again. I seriously have been walking steadily four or five hours a day. I get really tired but not very hungry.
I don't know all the numbers but I can recognize a bunch and say a few of them. I can say please, thank you, excuse me, how much, and where's the bathroom? I know the difference between yes and no, But mostly I have to point and act embarrassed.
Thankfully the transportation system in Prague is excellent, comprehensible, prompt, and inexpensive. It really makes my day. Five-day passes that you don't have to haul out and show unless you're asked makes loading the tramvaj quick and easy, and also means you don't lose the pass from handling it too much.
Ate at a Czech restaurant last night and the food was good, but the Czechs really do put ham and cheese on almost everything.
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