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.