Sometimes We Make Stupid Mistakes...

Unfortunately, I am going to have to bow out on my outlandish Facebook promise of posting once a day as I am off to Amsterdam tomorrow and can't guarantee that I will be anywhere near the internet nor in the right frame of mind to eloquently write anything...

In other news, sometimes we make stupid mistakes.

Sometimes we make stupid mistakes at inconvenient times...

At two am...the morning before I was scheduled to fly from Italy to London, I realized that my passport was not in its usual place.  I knew it had returned from Prague, where could it be?  I unpacked my bag, unrolling and unfolding the contents until I felt a strange bulge in the pocket of my freshly cleaned khaki pants.  My travel document, the one thing that can prove I am who I say I am in Europe, had been sent on a sudsy tumble through the washing machine.  

The mangled thing was a shadow of its formal self, and I panicked to say the least.  Ink was running, pages were separated from bindings, everything was in disarray, especially my 

Italian visa, which had essentially washed away and was now completely illegible.  I tried to dry it with a blow-dryer, which made things worse.

I got Mom and Dad on the phone and they called the U.S. State Department...apparently I might have some trouble, some unsympathetic woman claimed.

I fretted all morning on trains from Trieste to Venice, Venice to Treviso, and my friends got tired of reassuring me.  I pressed my passport in a book, which made it flatter, but not necessarily less "tampered with" in appearance.  After what seemed like an eternity, I finally made it to the Treviso airport and then fretted some through security.  Thankfully, I was not hassled or cavity searched.

I ate a sandwich and laughed at the ridiculousness of my previously worried state.

"We're going to London!" I shouted to my friends, sure that I was home free.

I continued toward my Ryanair gate, not more than a hole in a wall, when I realized that I had claimed victory prematurely, there was another line leading toward a fresh passport check.  I waited in the queue for non-EU citizens and held my breath.

Awaiting me inside a glass protected booth were two intensely uniformed Italian policemen, who looked like they meant business.  I slid my sorry looking document under the glass and waited to be hauled off to some dungeon.  The policeman reached my visa page, which looked like it had been purposefully scraped away, and gave me an appalled look.

"Ummm, when I was in Venice," I began nervously in Italian."

"Yes?"

"It was wet, and my passport became wet."

"It became wet?"  The more intense looking of the two officers asked me.

"Yes sir, it became wet."

"In the water?" he asked while making a gesture like I had dipped my passport into a cup of coffee, "like so?"

"Yes, like so," I answered, mimicking the dipping gesture which must have been a sight for the people in line behind me.  A pause.  I assumed it was dungeon time.

He took out some sort of drill-looking device and I prepared for him to slice my passport in half dramatically, but he did no such thing.  Instead, he started laughing.  He tapped his fellow officer to make sure he understood what was so funny.

"In the water.  Look at this, man.  In the water."  He repeated the Dunkin' Donuts move and stamped my passport multiple times with the drill.

"Enjoy London." 

Aspects of Alice/ Call me Hurricane

I awoke some time in the morning and dragged Sam out of bed for necessary sightseeing.  We entered the touristy street preceding the famous Charles Bridge, built by King Charles IV of the Holy Roman Empire.  After trying on communist hats and helmets of all shapes and sizes, we arrived at the entrance to the bridge where I saw possibly the only black men in the entire Czech Republic.  They were all dressed as sailers and solicited tourists for river boat rides.

"You want a nice boat man?  Free whole drink man.  Freewholedrink."

We crossed the Vltava river on foot, over the exquisitely designed bridge, which would have been undoubtedly more exquisite if not for the metal scaffolding all over this piece of history that must be constantly renovated. 

Winding through cobble-stoned street, we eventually reached the castle, which could have easily been classified as a district like in Budapest.  The St. Vitus Cathedral was over-the-top in the ornate department, and gave me an excuse to drop the term flying buttresses into conversation more than once.

We continued toward the Golden Lane, the big tourist attraction in the heart of the castle that I had heard so much about.  After purchasing an overpriced ticket, we entered a lane of medieval houses and shops.  After passing through, we entered a tower dedicated to showcasing torture equipment and penis armor, and then struggled to find anywhere else to go other than an exit.

"So where is this Golden Lane?" Sam asked.

"I think that was it dude."

"There's no way."  We asked a security guard and it turned out that we had in fact just passed through the most overrated tourist attraction on the face of the earth.

After a few beers and a few Becherovkas, we made out was to one of Prague's famous black light theaters for an Alice and Wonderland themed show.  The middle-of-winter, Sunday night crowd only took up about 10% of the theater's available seats, making me feel like I was about to sit through an elementary school piano recital.

Alice flipped and twirled through the air often, while black lights flashed in the pitch black abyss behind her.  Whether the lights of a candle jumped in the air spontaneously, white gloved hands attached to nothing played a magnificent symphony with mimed instruments, or clowns juggled neon green pins in slow motion, I felt like I was under some sort of influence to say the least.

At the end of this difficult to describe spectacle, we saw everything.  Alice emerged from backstage naked as a bird to meet another nude woman center stage.  The two caressed each other sensually while a confusing, out of focus video played behind them.

Inspired by our favorite aspects of Alice, Sam and I decided to venture to a strip club for some light entertainment.  Luckily for us, there was one a block away from our hostel on Wenceslas Square.

There was no cover charge to enter Peppers, unlike every other such fine institution I had frequented as an underage teenager in Montreal.  In the hallway, we passed a fully clothed middle-aged woman gyrating on top of a pedastol and as a giant bouncer thoroughly frisked me with his man-paws, I knew I was in for an interesting night.

It was Sunday and a week before Christmas, apparently not many people felt like going to Peppers for some costly teasing.  To say Sam and I got special treatment is an understatement. 

Every single dancer approached us multiple times for private dances or girl-on-girl shows, which we declined out of cheapness, and ill-conceived notions of self-respect.  Interestingly, the girls would begin their pitches with "per piacere," Italian for "if you please."  The first time, I responded in Italian and greatly confused Candy, who informed me that the girls are taught to approach people with this line because "it's very sexy."  Of course, thank you Candy.

The only dark-skinned stripper was dressed in jungle attire and seemed to be a great hit with the small crowd.  She shook her backside to the beats of '90s gangsta' rap songs or crawled around roaring like lion.  I wondered if any of the Peppers regulars had ever met a black person who was neither a tourist boat sailor nor a stripper.

Sam and I were shocked at what was presented to the audience without paying extra.  The lesbian show "preview" seemed to give away the entire plot, while the table dance next to us that we contributed no money for, featured a tattooed blonde Czech temptress whipping three Irishman who didn't bother to finish a beer before buying another.

Excited yet unfulfilled, we took our leave around four a.m.  Outside, the friendly bouncer wished us farewell.

"Did you like?"  He asked.

"Yeah very much, thank you."  As we spoke with him, another man approached us and stood silently, laughing when we laughed, but otherwise contributing nothing to the conversation.  He dressed like he made money, a long white scarf hung down to accentuate the dress shirt concealed underneath his formal coat.  He had a few wrinkles in his pale face, and I guessed that he was somewhere near sixty.

The bouncer bid us goodnight and descended back into the seedy club.  The well-dressed man opened his mouth for the first time, moving close to us and speaking quietly like he was being watched.

"You guys like the girls in there?"  He kept his hands in pockets, but flicked his head toward Peppers.

"Yeah of course," I replied.

"OK listen."  He moved even closer.  "You want one hour with one of my girls it's two thousand.  Two thousand Crown, one hour."  He flicked his head again toward the club and I knew that I had just been solicited for prostitution for the first time in my life.  There's another one I can cross off the list.

"No thanks man," said Sam laughing.  "We have early flights in the morning so-"

"Guys come on, these are spectacular girls.  Do you know who I am?"  he asked with eyebrows raised.  He removed his hands from his pockets as if to say, "well?"

"No I'm sorry, we don't know who you are," I replied.

"Guys come on.  I am Hurricane."  Years of acting and improvisation together immediately came flying back to Sam and me as the two of us began a chorus of oh my God's and No way's.

"You're Hurricane?  I asked intently.

"The one and only," he responded puffing out his chest.  

"Dude," Sam began, turning toward me.  "This guy's not Hurricane.  He might know Hurricane, maybe he works for Hurricane, but he aint no Hurricane."

"What?  No guys, I really am him, really."  He was crushed that we questioned his apparantly well-known street identity.  "Really guys, I'll prove it."

"How?"  I asked with a feigned skeptical expression.

"I do karaoke all over Wenceslas Square, everyone knows my karaoke.  Only Hurricane does the best Wenceslas Square karaoke."

"What do you sing then?  I asked.  He cleared his throat and wrapped the hanging scarf around his neck before beginning a spirited,

"Happy Blowjob to You

Happy Blowjob to You

Happy Blowjob, My Darling

Happy Blowjob, to you."  He bowed low and Sam and I lost it. We slapped our knees and wiped tears from our faces, laughing until our stomachs were in serious pain.  This reaction seemed to appease Hurricane.

"I like you guys," he confessed.  "Here."  He took out a business card, which really provided no information other than the fact that he was Hurricane in Prague.  He scribbled a phone number in black ink and told us to call him anytime we "needed it real bad."  I never gave him a ring, but bidding the Bohemian pimp farewell, I could not help but think that if I was ever going to pay for sex, I would ensure that Hurricane got the commission.

Miminka-Babies

Sam and I awoke at noon confused as to why we had both slept in our shoes.  

After showers and coffees, we made our way to Prague's famous TV Tower.  Despite being isolated away from the Old Town, the TV Tower is by far the tallest building in the city.  We approached the gray structure and became confused like we had woken up with our shoes on or something.

"Are those babies?"  Sam asked me, indicating toward the giant, naked, black, sculpted infants that seemed to be crawling up and down the tower.  They had no faces.  Rainwater dripped from their bald heads and asses and assaulted our cameras.

We paid for admission tickets with free money from Yellow Tooth, and flew up the elevator shaft at four meters per second to reach the observation deck, one hundred meters off the ground.  The view spanned every inch of the city of a thousand spires, tiled rooftops of many colors penetrated the gray fog.

I hoped an information pamphlet would shed some light on the babies, but alas,

"The architecture of this unique project was accentuated with a bizarre yet thought provoking series of huge black crawling infants which now adorn the facia of the magnificent tower adding to its mystery when shrouded in blue and red lights during the hours of darkness."

We descended and made our way to the national museum at the apex of Wenceslas Square.  The building itself is grand, covered in detailed sculpture and columns, it's lit in a way to make a person feel small.  We wandered through different exhibits, which were impressive, but often missing key information,

One caption would begin, "Before the war..." while the next would start with, "Years after the war," causing me to wonder what could have possibly taken place in between.  The entire visit became worth it when I saw the original documents from the 1938 Munich Agreement, or as the Czech's call it, the Munich Dictate, or the Munich Betrayal.  No Czechoslovakian delegation was invited to a conference during which 3.5 million of the country's citizens and 70% of its iron, steel, and electrical facilities were handed over to Hitler and his cohorts.

Britain's Neville Chamberlain decided to appease the Nazi's in hopes of avoiding a second world war, but by giving away the Sudetenland, he only delayed the inevitable.  This embarassing moment in Western history has become a bad precedent, a lesson in f what not to do for American foreign policy makers ever since, "No More Munichs."

Sam and I returned to the hostel with vodka and Red Bull, and got dressed up for Central Europe's largest club, impossible to tell, if not for giant blue neon letters announcing this very fact on the side of Karlovy Lozne.

We entered after paying the equivalent of a six-dollar cover and walking through metal detectors, only to be hand frisked by Neanderthal-like security guards on the other side.  I checked my coat in the lobby with a woman who asked me my name.  She wrote nothing down, nor did she had me any sort of ticket.  I assumed she had a photographic memory.

Sam and I wandered around the club's five paters (levels) and explored the various dance floors, each uniquely decorated and featuring a different type of American pop music.

Things escalated quickly, and after a number of cheap cocktails, we soon found ourselves dancing on either side of an old Asian woman, while her handlebar-mustached husband glared at us from a nearby bench.

Later we met a Turkish guy who might still be Sam's favorite person on Earth, as well as a depressed Russian who complained about the herpes on his face and apologized repeatedly for his "small" English.  We also met a sweet Czech bartender who loved Sam and I and repeatedly encouraged us to continue dancing with Yoko Ono.  I even think I caught her husband smiling once out of the corner of my eye.

When we crawled out of the club around five a.m. after receiving cheek kisses from Yoko, I had my jacket in hand and no longer questioned the coat-check girl's memory.

No, Fuck You

I woke up in a daze around ten a.m. the next day, with a post-it note stuck to my back containing Naveem's contact information, but no reimbursement for the money I had dropped on shots for sketchy Czech bartenders. Out the window, Prague was engulfed by a white sky depositing thick flakes of snow all over the city.  I worried my friend Sam's flight would be delayed.

He arrived on time, after struggling to understand the public transportation and assuming he had greatly overpaid for twenty-six Crown map of Prague.  We walked the city, both sleep deprived, as he had just returned from a bender in London and Ireland.  Exchanging stories with my best friend on earth was fantastic.  I had shenanigans to the east, he countered with canyon jumping in Switzerland, the biggest techno rave in Europe, and being limosined to a club opening in London where only "smart" people were allowed in (smart in dress rather than intelligence...fucking Brits).

We had lunch and a beer, handed to us by a waitress with reindeer antlers on her head, "Please Gentlemans," she told us and we laughed at her rudely.  After a much needed nap at the hostel, we were ready for a Sam and Noah pub crawl.  The goal:  Ten bars and stay on your feet.

After the first two places, I introduced Samuel to the Labrynth.  We sat at one of the bars with a younger crowd, a sixteen year old Czech kid asked us where we were from.

"America," answered Sam, making me realize that I always answer that question saying the United States, as not to offend Alberto, a fellow North American.

"Oh very nice.  Good place," replied the Czech student.  "I don't like here," he told us pointing to the floor.

"You don't like this bar, or you don't like the Czech Republic?  asked Sam to clarify.

"Czech Republic," he answered, shaking his head.

"Why not?"  I asked.  He put his arms up and I knew that he did not possess the English words to explain.  We settled for buying a round of beers and saying cheers together.

After the Labyrinth, we hit pubs four, five, and six for more cheap Pilsner and for Sam's introduction to Becherovka.

"It reminds me of Christmas.  Is there cinnamon in there?"

"We can't rule it out."

We made our way through the Old Town Square, still enchanting at night, toward an Irish pub to work on our accents.  Inside, the female Czech fifty somethings danced like they were playing imaginary pianos while their husbands watched them shake their backsides in tight pants.  I spotted a gorgeous blonde sitting at the bar alone, and after six pubs worth of alcohol, I possessed just the amount of courage to talk to her.

I ordered two beers for Sam and I and then asked if she was from Prague.

"No, I am from Slovakia," she replied in perfect English.

"Oh cool, like near Bratislava or?"  I assumed showing that I not only knew of her country, but also what the capital was would catapult me into her good graces. 

"Oh you know Slovakia!  Yes my family lives outside of Bratislava."

"So are you just in Prague for holidays?"

"Yeah I am here to visit my boyfriend.  He works here."  She indicated toward the tiny man spinning a cocktail bottle up in the air for a catch and pour move that every bartender in the history of showing off has performed.  He had a receding hairline and a pronounced gut and could have easily been thirty years older than her. When my beers arrived I wished her well in an Irish accent and Sam and I moved on.

Bar eight was down a set of stairs.  After a Pilsner and a much needed urinal visit, my clothes reeked of cigarettes, and I followed Sam outside.  Across the street lay a brown awning with the words, "Jack Lives Here," in a font reminiscent of the famous whiskey brand.

"JACK!"  yelled Sam and I stumbled after him.

Downstairs we found a couple of bars and a small dance floor.  After a Jack Daniels and Coke, a red-faced middle-aged man approached the bar and stepped awkwardly between us to order a drink.  When his whiskey on the rocks arrived, he did not move on, but began conversing with us in Czech.  The fact that we did not understand his language did not deter him in he least, and I was immediately reminded of the Bosnian cyclist from the train ride to Budapest.

"Da prosím shish-No, fuck you."  He laughed and clapped us each on the back, exposing a row of bright yellow teeth in the process.  He wore a hooded sweatshirt and seemed to be the most casually dressed person in the place.  After our drinks were finished, he ordered us each a whiskey on the rocks.

I took a sip and feared a vomit.  After focusing intensely on other things, I managed to choke a couple of gulps down, and by the time I placed the half empty drink on the bar, another had arrived.

"My mother, Vancouver-No, fuck you."  Another clap on the back and another new whiskey on the rocks.  Sam and I now each had three unfinished drinks in front of us.  The happy go lucky Czecker finished his beverages with lightning speed and continued buying rounds until the entire bar in front of us was a mess of glasses half full of amber liquid.

Buying drinks for us did not seem to satisfy him enough, as the opening rif to Smooth by Santana and Rob Thomas came on the speakers overhead, he handled a crumpled bill to Sam, who tried in vain to decline.

"No no, thank you, but you already bought us so many drinks."

"No fuck you."  He pushed the bill and closed Sam's hand around it before emerging from his pocket with another.  For some reason, Sam did not feel comfortable taking the money, and we began an awkward assembly line.  Yellow Tooth would hand a crumbled bill to Sam to his right, who would pass it around the Czech whiskey champion's back to me on the other side, while continuing with conversation so that he was none the wiser.  The crumpled bills would finish their journey in my coat pocket.

The walk home is a bit of a blur, but I remember successfully convincing Izor, who was out in the hostel kitchen so as not to disturb others with her incessant hacking cough, that Sam was from Ireland.  She did not question his nationality despite the fact that I had told her multiple times the day before that my friend from Vermont would be coming.

Milan the Butcher...as Recommended by Lonely Planet

I just made it to London after sending my passport through the wash and talking out of my ass to various passport authorities...empty your pockets before laundry people.

And Now, on with the Praga Saga...

After mastering the Czech language, I had a shower and returned to the dormitory room to find a girl munching on a snack and staring out the window.

"Where you from?" I asked after putting on a shirt.

"Texas," she replied with a breathy laugh like she had just remembered something hilarious, long ago forgotten.  I was convinced she was stoned.

"What are you eating? I asked, eyeing the little plastic bag in her hand.

"It's like this weird thing they have in Spain.  It's like bread...well stale bread I guess."  Another breathy laugh.  I tried a piece.

"Yeah that tastes exactly how you described it."  Another breathy laugh followed by a long exhale and "whoo" sound.  After she recovered she informed me that she was also waiting for a friend who would arriving tonight.

I went to the kitchen for a glass of water and when I returned there was another American wearing a sweater and a knitted hat.  Naveem made me completely nervous by bopping around the hostel and probing everyone with questions.  Apparently he had graduated from MIT pre-med and was currently working on a masters of public health at Cambridge.  He made sure I understood Cambridge, England, not Massachusetts.  He carried a Lonely Planet: Prague around like a bible.

"The book was talking about the Charles Bridge and the castle and shit so I checked all that out today."

"Yeah the book recommends a lot of different pubs so I want to check those out."

"The book mentions microbrews, what do you think of microbrews."

"Noah I started circling all the places we need to go to night.  While I'm in the shower, find some more sick pubs and shit and circle them with this pen."  He placed the travel guide and writing utensil on a table, ripped off his shirt like he was allergic to it and then sprinted off toward the shower.  I left the book exactly where it was.

"You didn't look at the book did you?"  He asked after emerging from the bathroom.

"No sorry I-"

"What have you got against the book?"  He said like I had just insulted his pet cat.

"I don't know I'm just not really a travel guide kind of guy."

"Dude it says everything we need to know.  How else would you find out about this shit."

"You could walk around, or ask someone who lives here."

"Good point, the book does say they speak good English in Prague for the most part."

I headed with Naveem and Izor for a frantic bar hop.  The book would end up taking a beating from the relentless cold rain that poured down on us.  Despite my anti-travel guide attitude, the book did lead us to my favorite bar, so far, in all of Europe.

Vinárna U Sudu looks like a cramped bar for elderly people upon first glance.  Thin enough for only one lane of human traffic, a few old Czechers, wise beyond their years, sipped beer and smoked constantly.  The parasitic Lonely Planet through its host, Naveem, insisted that we make our way toward the door in the back and I reluctantly followed.

A set of narrow wooden stairs led us to a crowded basement bar.  Alternative artwork adorned the walls and students milled about with giant Pilsners with hats of foam on top (this is how beer is purposely poured in Prague).  We continued through a brick archway into a small hallway that led to another bar.  Through another brick archway and another small hallway, a third bar greeted us.  The fourth bar was in a room full of fooseball tables, the fifth was down another set of stairs and seemed to be reserved only for kissing couples, while frequenters to the sixth bar all brought their family dogs along.  The seventh bar smelled distinctly like Marijuana, and the  eighth played rock music so we settled there for a drink.

"Told you man," said Naveem, closing the book for the first time all night to clink his mug with mine.

We enjoyed a couple of cheap delicious Pilsners, and then switched to shots of Becherovka, a liquor native to the Czech Republic (Lonely Planet recommended of course), that can only be described as spicy.  Before long, Naveem became restless and moved us along.

"We gotta' find a place with microbrews."  I followed through the continuous rain into Prague's Old Town Square, a beautifully cobble-stoned piazza full of lit-up Christmas trees and empty market tents and stalls.  The skyline was dominated by the spired Gothic Church of Our Lady Before Tyn, an intricate and intimidating structure that looks like it belongs in Tolkein's Mordor.

I followed Naveem into a trendy bar where they asked for my I.D. before entering (first time occurance in Europe) and drinks cost as much as they might in the middle of Manhatten.  We met an overly-friendly Dutch girl who claimed she could not only guess where each one of us was from, but also where we were studying.  She pointed at Naveem,

"You.  You are from India."

"My parents are from India."

"I knew it."  She continued,

"You are studying in England."  Naveem tapped his nose with a finger.

"I knew it."  She moved toward me to study my face.

"You are from the United States." I touched my nose like Naveem.

"You are studying in Europe."

"How did you guess?" I asked.

"I am very good."  I excused myself from the Dutch psychic, who insisted I come to Amsterdam and stay in her apartment, to get a better look at the scene going on behind me.

A group of forty something Czech woman seemed to think it was a good idea to wear plaid miniskirts and dance erotically together.  Men circled around to watch without embarrassment.  Naveem urged me to talk to some Indian looking girls with him, but I declined as they looked neither attractive nor over the age of eighteen.

We returned to the hostel briefly to grab Izur's friend Shane from Missouri, also studying for a semester in Seville.  I followed Naveem and his printed master to a small bar advertising microbrews, which were dark and delicious and served by two enormous gentlemen with shaved heads and black butchers' aprons.  They made me uneasy to say the least.

"Becherovka?" asked Naveem to the group.  Izor was suffering from a bit of a cough (maybe from too much pot smoking) and had stopped drinking, but Shane and I nodded, and Naveem approached the bar.  We watched him begin a conversation with the older and more menacing looking bald Czech man, and then proceed to order five shots of Becherovka instead of the necessary three.

"Nastrovya," said the butchers in unison as we all downed our spicy shots.

"The guy told me he hadn't slept in three days, so I bought him a drink," explained Naveem, "plus they only cost sixteen Crowns, that's like less than a dollar."

We continued rounds of shots with the bartenders, including a special peach flavored vodka that may have been mixed in a bathtub behind the bar.  When the older butcher left to deliver a round to another group, the younger one pulled us in close for a huddle.

"My name is Milan.  You have been very nice to me.  When my boss is not watching, I will bring you free drinks."  We thanked Milan and agreed to play it cool, continuing to order more and more sixteen Crown shots until my head was spinning.

Naveem asked Milan when the free drinks would arrive as he wanted to hit one more, book-recommended bar down the street.  Milan assured us that the other place would be closed, but if we insisted, he told us that when we returned the endless free drinks would begin.  He handed Naveem the bill and I heard a loud F-word.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Sixty."

"What?"

"He was saying sixty.  Sixty Crown shots, not sixteen."  About three dollars per shot.  The bill was quite lofty and Naveem did not have enough Czech Crowns on him to pay for it. Unfortunately I did, and out of fear of being butchered, I paid Milan and we made our way to the other bar, which was in fact closed.

We returned to Milan's bar and inquired about the free drinks, the place appeared to be empty.  "The boss is watching," whispered the younger butcher as he stacked a barstool.  "Next time.  Come back tomorrow.  Free drinks."

It seemed Milan the Butcher had gotten the better of us.

Some Useful Phrases

I was given a Czech language pamphlet at the hostel, here it is verbatim, translated into phonetical English for my convenience I suppose.  The comments in parenthesis are some of my initial reactions.

...Some Useful Phrases...

Yes=No (good start)

Thanks= Dick-y (ha)

Sweetheart= Mill-A-tch-kuu (aw)

Pen and paper= Pero a Papear (but what if I want a pen and big papers?)

Just let it flow != Neck to plaavat (way ahead of you)

Twin tailed lion= Dvo ott-sas-see Lev (symbol of Prague)

Toe nail clippers= Klesch tay na necktey (useful indeed)

The next few are best presented in pairs and read one after the other:

Have you got any availible sisters/brothers? Mash nay-yakkay voll knee sestrey/bratay (yes)

I'll have one of those= Damn say yeden to ho led ens to (damn indeed)

You have beautiful eyes= Mash motcz p-yeah-K-nee ott she (aw)

Have you washed your hands?= U-mill says ru-tc-say (a bit rude)

How do you do Madam?= Nazdarr ek Hol tchitch kaa?

Help yourself please= Po-slush say Sam Pro-seam (there you go Simmy)

Life goes on= Ten dzz-ievot poke-ratch-U-yeah (good advice)

Fish and eggs= Ribby ay VaY-tchkey (better advice)

Big Papers= Da-may shh-pekkA voll-ay, nebbo so? (finally)

I'm having a heart attack= Ran-E-min-yey, Mert vit-Say (chances are in this case I'm not going to have the composure to let everyone know in Czech)

Another Pair:

Are those teeth false?= So Tea-hLay zub-bey prr-avvy?

Make me a nice price= Dyel-eye me lep-she-ho senna, neigh

Please may I fondle your buttocks?= Pro seam vass, mou who phlad eat vashe Prr-del-kuu?(sure, go ahead)

How much you want for him/her/it?= KoLick ktchesh pro hoo/yee/toe (I will take two hers please, make me a nice price...I also really like hoo/yee/toe)

Do you like soul music?= Lee-bey say tay Soulova hud-bitch-ka? (yes)

My name is Sue.  How do you do?= Ya sem SuZko, Yak tea-duppo Krraleet-say? (my name is Noah, how's it go-ah?  Why doesn't it rhyme in Czech?)

Wine Red/White= Venno chervenny/beelay

Good Bye= Chago Baggo she-len-say (Chago Baggo: great name for a puppy)

Help me= Po mou dzesh Min-nay

Transport ticket= Yizz den Kuuu

Rude Word= KuRRvaa Par-eck (I was told that this is actually the offensive expression, not literally  how to say "Rude Word")

Shoe string= Tkahnn itch kaa (useful)

Tea pot= Kon vitcz-ay (useful)

Shots= Pan A tch key (more useful)

Condoms= Pre-searve-a-tivvy (safe)

Back Scrubber= Kar-tat-shh na zadd-Ahh  (most useful)

Bread= Klebba

Beer= Pivo (like in Slovenia)

A trio:

Garlic= Chess e neck

Nurses= Sess tritch key

I'm lost = Ya sem mee mou

(I am reminded of Wayne's World, "Garth, that was a Haiku")

Horse shoe= Pot-ko-vaa

Cheers !!= Nass sDrravvee (like in Poland)

Meat= Masso

No=Nay (I was hoping for yes)

Numbers:

1= Yeah-denn

2= D-vee-yeah

3= Trree (my favorite)

4= Stear-reeh

5= P-yett

6= Sh-est

100= Kilo

1000= Leet-rrr

69= She-does-that deviant (what??)

A note from the author:

I feel quite high= ya ass'm seat-him horny (him horny indeed)

Prague Part One (I think it's worse for me)

I just returned from five days in Prague, and this is the first post that includes a disclaimer. I definitely had an R-rated weekend, and please, if anyone is interested in keeping a wholesome image of me, for your sake, don't read the Prague posts.  If you are under 18 years old you should not continue.

Now that we've weeded out the prudes, lets do this...

If I had a nickel for every time I've watched a nude and tattooed Czech stripper crawl across a table to whip some horny Irishmen...Well, I think I know where she would want me to put it. But we are getting a little ahead of ourselves.  How did I get to Prague you ask?   Good Question.

I began by taking a quick commuter train north to Udine to catch my direct thirteen-hour sleeper car to Prague. The thing was an hour and a half late because of thunderstorms.  A bad omen.

An Austrian conductor in a red suit with a face like a weasel sprinted around the train showing me various things and making me extremely nervous.  He put me in a compartment with Gaetano, a thirty year-old portly Southern Italian on his way to a wedding in Prague. We became fast friends and I am confident that his two giant suitcases contained only candy. I fell asleep during the early morning hours, somewhere along the Austrian border.

My compartment door flew open and the light flicked on.  The weasely conductor stood there with papers flying all over the place.  He spoke rapid German into a cell phone and I noticed that the train was not moving, yet I saw no lights that would indicate we were at a station.

Snow was delaying us.  I looked out the window into a white-out, the first time I had seen the fluffy stuff on this side of the world.  The frantic conductor paced around and informed me that we were running too late, this train would not be able to continue to Prague.  "My boss is quite angry, so I think it's worse for me," the weasel said as he sucked his teeth and scribbled timetables on scraps of paper for Gaetano and I.  Once the tracks were cleared we would have to change trains in Austria.

And change trains we did.  

For those of you keeping score at home, I jumped on my third train in some podunk Austrian border town, trudging through knee-high snow to get to the platform, I had to help Gaetano with his candy bags so that he would not be blown over by the wind.

On this train, I learned that there had only been four passengers on the direct overnight to Prague. A Czech student with a certain fondness for Grappa (Italian grape alcohol), and an enormous, dark-featured Moldovian guy, who spoke no English or Italian rounded out the quartet.

The Prague Four arrived in Salzburg and then switched again to head toward Linz.  Weasel told us track eleven which appeared empty upon arrival.  I turned around and spotted him leaning his head out the window of a train across the platform, waving like there was a fire inside.  The train had given it's all aboard whistle, and without time to cross underground, we illegally ran across the tracks.

A professional looking man, who I assumed was Weasel's boss, yelled at us in German for a while. Gaetano and I munched on candy and listened politely.

Between Salzburg and Linz, the Weasel sat across from me and continued to tell us why it was worse for him.

"You know I haven't slept in a while so I think it's worse for me." He handed me a map of Prague. "You know I was supposed to bring my wife many presents from Czech Republic, but I don't think I am allowed to go now because you ran across the tracks, so I think it's worse for me."

"Hey can I keep this map?" I asked.

"No."

In Linz we parted ways with Weasel who was on his way home for a hot shower, but I would imagine he wasn't crazy about the smell of his soap and therefore it was worse for him.   He assured us there was a direct train from Linz to Prague and we would be a few hours late, but our tickets would be honored.

My traveling companions and I drank Grappa with coffee and got to know each other a bit.  We spoke in Italian with the Czech photography student translating for the Moldovian guy, who became a lot less scary when he smiled.

At Summerau, the last Austrian town before the border, we were told that the train did not continue to Prague.  We switched onto a Czech clunker, most-likely built between the World Wars.  Every window had to remain open, despite the snow, to balance the ninety degree temperature inside.

The Czech photography student had his camera out now.  "Lets be like tourists!" He told me laughing, insisting that the rest of us pose for photos with every single Czech train conductor, as well as an elderly woman traveling with no luggage except for a neon yellow sled.

At a station I can't pronounce, we switched to the seventh and final train.  The Czech landscape is more than depressing.  The only place I can compare it to is the drive between the Vermont border and Montreal.  Long fields of brown grass and dirty patches of snow are only accentuated by rusty farm equipment, one tree every ten minutes or so, and groups of deer huddling together and saying to each other, "seriously what the fuck are we doing here?"

I counted eight men walking alone through eight different fields in trench coats.

I arrived in Prague around 5:30, a twenty hour trip in total. Hlavni Nadrazi station is the seediest place I have ever been to, and terrified, I got the fuck out of there and checked into my hostel.

Dvanáct Piva Prosím

The title is Czech for "12 beers please"...I think.  Either that or gibberish, I should have a better grasp on the language after my trip to Prague next week.  It might be touch and go coming back, since I bought my ticket one way and the TrenItalia emplyee assured me that it would be impossible to return to Italy after December 13th.  She seemed personally offended that I wanted to know why there were no more trains returning from Prague, and refused to give me a reason, but no matter, I will most likely return through lovely Slovenia and have a dragon beer on the way home.

Here are some conservative estimates about what will happen during my four days in Prague with my childhood friend Samuel.

161-  The number of Czech beers that Sam and I will consume between us.

19-  The number of Czech beers that will be partially or entirely spilled.

84-  The number of times Sam or I will utter the words "We are...two wild and crazy guys!" or otherwise imitate Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd's depiction of the swinging Czech Festrunk brothers from Saturday Night Live. 

7-  The number of times I will try to convince Sam that we are walking in the wrong direction. 

14- The number of times Sam will give me shit about having a terrible sense of direction.

96- The number of times it will be undoubtedly clear that Sam is a better dance than I am.

1- The number of meals that I will not remember eating.

9-  The number of times we will be confused by the multiple incompatible district systems used simultaneously to label different parts of the city.

16- The number of trinkets I will buy at Christmas markets.

15- The number of trinkets that will either break or will not fit in my backpack and therefore will not make it back to Trieste.

4- The number of times one of us will be pushed into the middle of some dance circle when the song "American Boy" comes on at a club.

4- The number of times I will have to apologize to a hostel employee for one thing or another.

71- The number of times Sam and I will butcher the pronunciation of simple Czech expressions such as, "Máte tohle i v mé velikosti?" (Do you have this in my size) or "Potrebuji zubní pastu." (I need tooth paste).

Window Men

9:50 am: Two guys with rectangular heads who could be twins, burst into my room with a briefcase.

9:51:  It turns out the blockheads have brought tools of various kinds. Starting with hammers, they begin doctoring my window.  

9:52:  They are chirping back and forth to each other in some serious dialect and I can't understand a word of it.  They seem to be adding something important to the top of the frame.

9:54:  I can't go back to sleep as the window men have begun obnoxiously hammering different parts of the window arbitrarily like they are trying to find its knee so it will make a little reflexive kick. 

9:55:  The power drills are out now, they seem to be set on loud.

9:58: The preferred drill setting has been changed to really loud.

10:00: The window is open.  They are chasing a piece of paper around like a renegade butterfly, trying to prevent it from flying out into the street.

10:02:  One of them continues to drill while the other explains something to me, he keeps mentioning 17 like I don't know my room number...or maybe this is the amount of windows he has doctored this morning.

10:03:  The drills are finally returned to the briefcase, it seems the blockheads have replaced the metal rod-like thing that used to control my sci-fie movie window shade, with a dangly string apparatus.

10:05:  The Window Men demonstrate the dangly string apparatus.

10:11:  Still demonstrating.

10:14:  They take their leave, thanking me multiple times like I just allowed them to do something so important that now they can both die in peace.

Posted above is the only photo I could manage to discreetly snap with my computer.

10:16:  Unfortunately I can't fall back asleep...maybe I will go to class today.

I'm with Stupid

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi arrived in Trieste today, resulting in hundreds of policemen filling up Piazza Unitá d'Italia, buses being rerouted and making me late for class, as well as German and Italian flags flying everywhere. Berlusconi was here to attend the Italo-German summit, trying to forge a deal with Lufthansa to save Italy's debt-ridden, strike-prone disastrous airline AlIitalia.

My Italian friends kept complaining about him and I found myself asking questions like, "If nobody likes this guy, how come he keeps getting elected?"  "If he's so stupid and corrupt, how did he become Prime Minister?"  My friend Maria Laura reminded me of how short my memory has become, asking me, "Noah who still lives in the White House?" 

Fair point Maria.

Budapest...A Pest for the Rest of Us.

I just returned from four days in lovely Budapest, and unfortunately my Festivus joke hasn't really panned out the way I would like it to.  After a lot of champagne, imported Budweisers and chants with Spaniards of "Yes we can! Yes we can!" the eleven hour train ride left me trying to sleep next to a crazy old Bosnian man who rambled at me in his native language and broken Italian, mostly about his non-functioning bicycle, which was, in reality, nothing more than two spoked wheels wrapped in plastic. He would often wave the wheels in my face for emphasis, while baring his nine crooked teeth.  He told me I was a good amigo for listening, and presented me with a beer, an orange, and a kiss on the forehead before getting off the train in Zagreb...Don't worry, pictures will be on Facebook and Picasa shortly.

Budapest itself is quite the place.  My first departure from the Euro left me feeling like Bill Gates, walking around with 22,000 Hungarian Forints in my pocket, dropping two or three hundred on every beer (actually only about one or two dollars, Budapest is incredibly cheap).

We visited castles, churches, and synagogues, hiking up to the citadel to get the best view of both sides of the Danube.  The most moving thing I saw was the terror museum (www.terrorhaza.hu), located inside the old Nazi and then Soviet headquarters and prison.

Every young American should be forced to go to a place like this.  

Sure we learn about genocide and oppression in school, but I think it's difficult to relate until you find yourself inside a windowless prison cell, staring at real torture equipment that was actually used on everyone from political dissidents, to free-thinking journalists, to Catholic priests. It's remarkable how recent all these atrocities are, with the last Hungarian prisoner being returned from Siberia in the year 2000.  I used to think that America spreading democracy and being a beacon of hope for the world was sort of bullshit, but after seeing how much Hungarians love America and what our country represents, I'm not so sure anymore.

The highlight of the trip was of course the Sparty in the famous Rudas bath house (setting of a scene from 1988's Red Heat starring Governor Schwarzenegger and Jim Belushi, and featuring the fantastic tagline: Moscow's toughest detective.  Chicago's craziest cop.  There's only one thing more dangerous than making them mad: making them partners).  We waited in line outisde, receiving endless energy drinks from absurdly gorgeous Hungarian women.  Once we entered the party, which had a "dry disco" in the first room, we were handed sealable money pouches by yet more absurdly gorgeous Hungarian women.

The Sparty itself is where dreams come true.  Imagine a naturally hot pool filled with scantly clad Europeans dancing to techno music while surrounded by crazy lights and giant screens featuring trippy animation.  When water droplets splash into the air and mingle with the strobe lights, they seem to fall back down into the pool in slow motion.  The effect is amplified by the inflatable red balls dropping from the ceiling to be happily batted around by the spartiers.  It felt like a cross between an American pool party and a Flaming Lips concert...only with considerably more Spaniards.  They took over the place, many of them sporting Looney Tunes floaties and riding around on noodles, they led the entire place in rousing renditions of, "Yo soy Espanol, Espanol, Espanol! and "Campiones d'Europa, Campiones d'Europa!" the second song to the tune of Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, allowing everyone to join in and help celebrate their Euro 2008 soccer championship.

Drinks were insanely cheap, and when my money floated away in the pool, I didn't care. When my friend Keith told me that our clothes were gone, I didn't care.  I was having the time of my life.  Somewhere around 2 am, a team of synchronized swimmers gracefully dove into the pool to entertain us while bearded Hungarian performers majestically spun and tossed flaming sticks around like toothpicks.  

At some point, the Sparty began to take a serious turn for the orgy, drunk boys and girls making out all over the pool, with pruny hands diving into the water to find genitals.  To top it all off, when the thing ended, well after four in the morning, they had sandwiches...fucking sandwiches! It was as if they knew we would be hungry while partying in Hungry.  It turns out, my friend Alberto somehow found my clothes, and I was able to stumble back to the hostel, thankfully, with a shirt on.  My only fear is that I have peaked and will never be able to enjoy myself again...although on December 12th it looks like Sam Simon and Noah Nielsen will be reunited in Prague,  so I can't exactly give up hope yet, especially with the time melting away until an Obama administration takes over in Washington...yeah I think I like the sound of that.

Flotadores!

Yesterday, I played basketball with my close-talking friend Francesco and some other Italians. They don't check the ball, which makes the game continuous and much more like soccer.  After each point I would sort of relax for a second to catch my breath, losing track of the man I was guarding in the process.  The playground crew was pretty good, lots of pick and rolls, ball movement and solid fundamentals...my only complaint is that every time I blocked someone they would call foul, or FOULO!, and clutch at a random body part while grimacing and cursing under their breath, again the game has clearly been influenced by soccer.

The big news is that on November 5th I am going to Budapest.  If Obama wins the election, it will be a great excuse for a giant celebration, and if McCain wins, I will be appropriately moving farther away from the United States.  The trip itself sounds like the beginning of a terrible joke, "So two Americans, a Mexican, and 33 Spaniards take a twelve hour train to Budapest..."  The Spaniards organized the whole trip in search of an exotic festa, and the Hungarians have something called a sparty (Spa + Party = Sparty), a disco inside one of Budapest's famous Turkish bath houses.  "We will buy flotadores!"  My Spanish friend Charlie excitedly told me, and he's absolutely right...when dancing and drinking in a giant pool, I think it's imperative, for safety as much as anything, to have some floaties around.

With this aquatic party in mind, I am a bit concerned about the P-word...but I suppose if I get prune hands then everyone else will also get prune hands.  Copy the URL below and paste it into your web browser if you are interested in seeing what I am getting myself into.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-iHlbRV6rQ

The Gel Smells like Candy....

So after seeing all the pictures that I have tossed around the internet the last couple days, one might expect this post to be about my recent trips to Verona and Venice.  I will give you the Cliffs Notes since something far more hilarious has happened.  Verona-awesome. Horse meat-awesome.  I am sort of done with Venice-too many tourists.

Moving on...since I went to a terribly long six hours of class yesterday, I decided to skip my last one today and venture off in search of a haircut. As you can see, I found one.  Everything was going fine, the hair cutter, or stylist as I would find out, was very friendly and complimented me on my Italian skills, which is always a sure way to win me over.  After some shampoo and a thorough towling, I was ready to pay and return home, but she turned around with a container of gel in hand, clearly wanting more time with me and my American hair.

"Gel?"  She asked.  This Italian word I understood.

"No, grazie."  I explained to her that I was about to go home and take a shower.

"But it's free..." she told me in Italian and covered her fingers in the viscus yellow liquid.  "You shower later."  

She dove right in before I could protest and began sculpting my hair into some sort of Euro spectacle that made me laugh hysterically when I looked at myself in the "specchio."

I walked home with this monstrosity on my head, blasting daft punk on my Ipod. Unsurprisingly, I received more strange looks than I normally do.  

Oh there goes one of us, hair perpetually wet, tight sweatshirt, soccer shoes, listening to techno, what a nice young boy...

wait a minute...something is not right here...

I sort of felt like the equivalent of an Italian driving a Hummer down Main Street, wearing a John Wayne costume, with a football helmet on his head, singing, "Born in the USA! I was..."  

The pictures don't quite do the haircut justice, and it's also difficult to pick up on the fact that I hadn't shaved in a few days and was sporting a pretty solid bad-teenage-mustache, completing my creepy guy look.   

Unfortunately, I just got out of the shower, where I shampooed, rinsed, and repeated, and then shaved, ending my stint as a faux European. On the bright side...my hair still smells a bit like candy.

And Now for Something Completely Different...

I have been in Italy for one month, so I think it's time for a list of unrelated things:

In my dining hall, they serve cheeseburgers without a bun, on top of a bed of french fries.  It comes with Salsa Rosa (a sloppy mix of mayo and ketchup) if you ask for just plain ketchup, they will not give it to you.

If Spain and the United States had a fun contest, Spain would win.  I am confident that we could somehow cure depression by exporting Spaniards to all corners of the world.

There are creepy millipede-like insects that live in my dormitory and only come out at night.  I hope they all die when winter comes.

Explaining the ins and outs of the MLB playoffs is very difficult in broken Italian.

Italians cancel class like Americans watch TV.  I am supposed to have three classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  I have not attended three lessons in one day here...ever.  

I have signed up for a mandatory fire safety class on October 22nd.  It takes four hours, two of which are in a lecture hall, and rest of the time is at an undisclosed location.  I hope we get some real fire experience, because there is only so much you can learn inside the classroom.

In Verona, horse meat is a local delicacy.  I will find out if horse tastes more like chicken or glue this Saturday.

Little kids in Trieste are brilliant.  They are already fluent in Italian.

In Italy, the ratio of lingerie stores to fast food restaurants is a healthy 20:1.

A trio of Portuguese girls thinks I look like Ryan from The O.C.  I looked into it.  I don't see the resemblance.

Barcolananananana-na

I just finished celebrating the 40th Barcolana, and boy is my liver tired. The festival is centered around Europe's largest sailing regatta and is hosted annually in Trieste, providing us with beer and food tents, free concerts, Italian style revelry, and oh yeah, over 2,000 mahfuckin' sailboats, perfect ingredients for shenanigan stew.  

Friday night led me to my first ever European house party, thrown by my Spanish friend Adrian, which included home-made twister and of course American dance songs.  The theme of the party could be best described as "What Spanish people think the American '70s were about," although there were plenty of guests dressed as hippies and in '80s fitness gear, so I think they were just happy to represent an American decade..  Listening to Spaniards hum and deedeedee through the verses to songs in English like YMCA, We Will Rock You, and Mamma Mia is always a good time, especially when they finally reach the chorus and sing their little Spanish hearts out (See Video below for Spanish Summer Lovin').

Saturday involved walking around the harbor and observing intense Italian sailors, with steadfast expressions and awesome outfits.  The night brought visitors from all corners, including our abductee from Udine, Raf (originally from Togo), and my friend Sarah, from Vermont, who is currently studying abroad in Spain.  Sarah arrived just in time to have a Triestine 21st birthday, prompting many Europeans to sing to her in different languages and to shout things like "You can, you can!"  and "Hooray to you Sarah, drinking, drinking, you drink at home now!"  

We watched some fireworks and a free concert in Piazza Unitá, which included a performance by a strange Italian ensemble, which Keith aptly described as "reminiscent of a bunch of 7th grade parents trying to be hip."  One lyric, translated from the Italian, went something like this,

"My cousin, he is a bit worried...he is in prison."  I gave a puzzled look to my  friend Eric (from Trieste), who chose this moment to tell me,

"I do not prefer this band." 

After staying out all night, we snagged two hours of sleep, met at the supermarket to buy some supplies, and took the old streetcar up the mountain to Opicina to view the regatta.  We found a decent, albeit partially obscured view and had our picnic, with brie, wine, french bread, prosciutto, olives, and some cookies bearing the same name as Raf's home country.  After watching Lucas take his fill, Raf yelled down the line to him.

"Lucas if you have any more, I will have to invade Germany and eat your country."

We walked a few feet to the right and realized there was a much better view, with no trees in the way, we had been completely overzealous in choosing our picnic spot, laughter ensued.

Wine, heat, and sleep deprivation led to a very silly afternoon involving a lot of dancing and daydreaming.  At one point, my Polish friend Kamila and I had a quick foot race then sat on a concrete wall for a minute where we completely passed out, strewn all over each other.  I awoke some time later to the sound of an Italian family, complete with Grandparents, pointing and whispering about us, no doubt warning the wee ones about the consequences of having mountaintop picnics with international students.

Of course, the Poles came prepared for Sarah's birthday, providing Mickey Mouse birthday hats, and one balloon, which popped on the tram ride home, and I feared, surprised an old Italian  woman to death...thankfully she survived long enough to give us an awesome look of disapproval, I don't think she was into birthdays.

Thumbing My Way

My Polish friends invited me to hitchhike to Slovenia with them.  I was a bit intoxicated when this invitation was presented to me, so of course I gladly accepted.  However, when a follow-up phone call ensued the next day, surprisingly, I was still just as interested in going.  I justified the whole thing by reminding myself that I had only one more day before lessons began, and I really should go on another adventure before I had any real responsibilities.  The funniest part was that I wasn't exactly sure where we were going, I assumed that the Poles simply wanted to venture into Slovenia because they absolutely love the place.  They had raved to me about how they could understand all of the street signs and everything in the supermarket had the same name as in Poland.  I did notice when I was in Slovenia, how consonants seemed to be thrown around with reckless abandon just like Polish, and my friends confirmed my suspicions about how similar the two languages are.

I made my way down-town and met the five Poles, who's names I will not try to butcher at this point.  We took a bus up the mountain to Opicina, which is a suburb of Trieste, and even closer to the Slovenian border.  They assured me that this would be the best place to hitch and also informed me that we would be breaking up into teams of two, as the six of us would surely have a difficult time catching the same ride.  The plan was to meet up in Pistonja, a Slovenian town about forty kilometers away (I still have no idea how many miles that is), because apparently, "Pistonja Jama" is one of the largest caves in Europe.  Perfect, I thought, we at least have a common destination, now we just need a ride.

Kamila and I, being the youngest and least experienced hitchers, were to go first.  The other Poles hid a ways back from the road and the two of us got started.  I used the thumb out, big smile technique, while Kamila perfected the jumping up and down approach.  Many people returned our smiles and outstretched thumbs, but no offers for a ride.  After about twenty minutes, we heard a yell from the concealed Poles.  We turned to our right and saw that a small, blue Volvo had pulled over a few feet ahead of us.  We ran over with delight as we were greeted by two Italian men.

"Where are you going?" One asked, in decent English as he shuffled some of the car's contents into the trunk.  Kamila and I looked at each other, we had said the name Pistojna over and over so we would not forget.

"umm Pis- Pis-,"

"Pis-tojna Jama!" thank God she remembered.

"Oh belissima."  The Italians beckoned us into the car, where a small wooden ladder occupied the seat between us.  I asked them how to say ladder in Italian.

"Legno, diciamo legno."  I proceeded to ask them why they had a ladder in the car, and could not get a straight answer, they preferred to answer my questions with some of their own.  We told them about being exchange students in Trieste, and how I knew a bit of Italian and Kamila did not.  

As we crossed over the border into Slovenia, the driver (who spoke no English) told me that they could not bring us all the way to Pistonja, but that they would bring us about five kilometers in the right direction.  We thanked them and came to the unfortunate realization, that this would take more than one ride.  The mountains surrounding us had a bit more color than the last time I was in Slovenia, and again I was reminded of Vermont.  I listened to the Italians speak, picking out bits and pieces of their conversation. 

The passenger was complaining about someone smoking cigarettes in his house, the driver could not understand the problem since he claimed everyone smokes in the house.  The passenger added the fact that this was in the morning, when he first woke up, which seemed to make the driver understand his pain, and then there was a bit about running or chasing that I did not quite understand.

As time continued to pass, I got the feeling that we were going farther than the five kilometers we had been promised.  At one sign that showed a fork between Ljubljana and Pistonja, the passenger beckoned the driver to go toward our destination.  The Italians even drove the extra 2.5 kilometers from the town center and dropped us off at the cave itself.  We thanked them profusely, and had a coffee while we waited for the others, patting ourselves on the back for being professional hitchhikers.

After about half an hour, Voytek and his girlfriend Agata arrived (I have seized my opportunity to terribly misspell their names, I apologize).  Like us, they had only required one ride and considered themselves lucky rather than skilled.  We waited a while for the other duo, all female, who called at one point to let us know that they were waiting for their fourth ride, and had been propositioned for sex by two separate drivers.  We had let them go last because they were by far the most experienced, one of the girls had hitchhiked all the way from Poland to Spain.  Outside the cave entrance there was a skeleton of a prehistoric bear, which was mildly entertaining, but a better way to kill time lay beyond the extinct creature.  

Voytek and I dove into the giant blue and yellow legos and then began constructing man-sized robots.  When we were finished we had a father with no hands and very square features, standing next to a child with no neck.  We posed for some pictures with our creations until at about five minutes to two, the girls arrived and we hastily bought our tickets and hopped onto the tram to enter the cave.  The tram raced us through the beginning of the jama, with Voytek repeatedly turning around to tell me,

"Noah, there is no safety on this roller coaster!"  We all threw our arms into the air and then quickly pulled them down, the cave had very low ceilings.  

Kamila and I sat very close to each other to take advantage of body heat (only eight degrees celsius inside the cave, which means absolutely nothing to me).  After the tram ride took us through chambers past stalactites and mites, which were very impressive, and a few rounds of humming the theme music from Indiana Jones, the tram stopped inside the cave, and we were beckoned to get out and find a guide.

We stood in a vast chamber, and looked around at signs advertising tours in various languages. Since the Poles don't speak any Italian, and I am not yet fluent in Slovenian, we compromised on an English group, which included of the six of us and about forty Japanese tourists.

Our guide was a red haired Slovenian woman (reddish-purple to be more accurate, the Slovenians are very fond of dying their hair) who spoke completely broken English.  I am sure that her amazing sense of humor was lost on everyone but me.

"OK so it take ten sousand year for stalactite and stalagmite to meet and form a peelar, so we come back in ten sousand year with new haircut."  These hilarious one-liners were delivered in a spectacular monotone, making it impossible for anyone but me to realize when punch-lines arrived.  Our guide took us through various, impressive chambers, describing the history and geology of the cave.

As we walked, she repeatedly told the Japanese tourists not to take photographs.

"OK no pictures please, because you will disturb the animals.  We have over eighty-five specie of animal."

"What sort of animals?" I asked, curious because I had not yet seen any sign of non-human life down here.

"There are many animal.  Eighty-five specie.  They are below us, in the river.  They feed on spider."  As the Japanese tourists continued to snap pictures left and right, our guide became more forceful, which was impossible to tell as her tone never changed.

"OK if you do not respect nature, please respect me, because my eyes are accustomed to dark and the flash iz very bad."  After a while she gave up and returned to being hilarious.

We reached a small corridor where we were forced to walk single file.

"You want to see natural beauty of cave?"

"Yes,"  I replied alone.  Our guide walked over to a small breaker and shut off the lights around us.  The place became so dark that I could not even see Kamila's blonde hair in front of me.

"OK see you later," said the guide and I laughed hysterically.  

When the light returned, she showed us a small tunnel, blocked off by large, steel doors.  She explained how the military used to hide troops and supplies in these caves and how they had built this escape tunnel some years ago.

"OK, so if anything bad happen, we run through there.  Small problem, we lost key many years ago."  This time I could not contain myself.  I started crying I was laughing so hard, and had to steady myself by placing my hand on an old Japanese man's shoulder.  He paused from his prohibited picture taking to give me a look of disapproval.  I removed my hand from his shoulder.

Our tour ended in the concert hall, which was an enormous chamber, capable of holding eight thousand people.  There was a small stage on one side, and a tremendous echo to anyone who wished to shout, whistle, or clap.  The Japanese politely clapped in unison as if they were at a golf match, and then began a chorus of "Ahhhhs" when the sounds returned, pointing their cameras up toward the ceiling to snap pictures of the echos.  I tried to ask the guide to explain to me how flash photography bothered the mysterious animals below us, but loud concerts were not a problem, but I don't think she understood the question.  I could not even get her to tell me if the animals were birds or fish or bears or what.

After the enchanting jama, we had a kebab and prepared to hitch home.  Again, Kamila and I were to go first.  We tossed our thumbs out and again were greeted by honks and smiles, but no rides.  The most excited people to see us seemed to be Slovenian farmers, who drove their tractors past us and waved madly.  One such tractor, pulling a load of what looked to me like the wood chips found in the bottom of a hamster cage, stopped and beckoned us inside.

"Where you go?"  The driver asked, as his overall clad son looked on.

"Italy."

"No, no, not Italy, come I take you one kilometer."  We declined, although I sort of wanted to check out a Slovenian wood chip farm.  

Like clockwork, after about twenty minutes, a blue Volvo pulled over to the side of the road, and sure enough it was the two Italians again, this time with Voytek and Agata in the back seat. We squeezed in, forcing the guy in the passenger seat to hold the ladder between his legs.

We exclaimed for a while about the unlikelyhood of meeting twice and told them about how much we enjoyed the cave.  I asked them what they had done that day, and the Italians told me that they had some lunch somewhere in Slovenia and then walked somewhere else, they could not remember the name of the place.  When we reached the border, Kamila had to duck as there was one extra person in the car.  After avoiding trouble with the polizia, we returned to Trieste, discussing everything from the upcoming sailing regatta (the largest in the world) to the daily stress caused by Italian Wi-Fi, or lack thereof.  

Alessandro, the driver, dropped us off at the train station in Trieste, and we thanked him repeatedly, agreeing that this would not be the last time.  Maybe Croatia next?  As I exited the Volvo, I tried one more inquiry about the ladder.

"Perché il legno?" 

"Sí, legno...our legno."  We slapped hands and I was satisfied with his answer, the first English word I had heard from Alessandro all day.