A Truly Bolshevik Experience

The most truly Bolshevik I have ever felt came this past weekend in Prague, Czech Republic, where the street signs look like this:

And the locals party by candlelight and in Cold War nuclear bomb bunkers. No joke. Read on, comrades:

So, stuffed absolutely full of delicious coffee and dessert and general revelry, we had quite a trek in front of us to reach the Zizkov district, where there were a large number of authentically Czech bars. I am a large fan of walking as far as possible, and on this particular occasion Abby was as enthusiastic of a walker as me, so our voyage past the train station and through various back streets and past Place Winston Churchill was quite nice, brisk, and cheesily happy. Passing some drunk Praguians (?) on the street, opening their beers on street signs was comforting. We had to be going in somewhat of the right direction! So we climbed another street and saw right in front of us the invisible entrance to Blind Eye bar (the best possible recommendation, Juliet, I felt right at home immediately, THANK YOU). The bar was almost jet-black and cheap beyond belief and we plopped down across from two native Czechians chatting in their indecipherable tongue to smoke cigarettes (indoors!) and look at pictures on Abby's camera. After a bit of exploring in the bar, we realized that there were a bunch of rooms that were hardly lit at all (and pretty much exclusively by candles). I got a drink called a Zizkov Liberator, which was enormous and tasted kind of like cream soda, but was too sweet for me to finish. The beer was Czech Budweiser, which I was into, and the very cute bartender was from Prague but spoke better English than me. Embarrassing.

I met a couple of guys at the bar who were happy to hear that I loved Prague and thought that South and North Carolina were the same place (I corrected them) and they told me that the Prague train station (where we had traversed to find this bar) was "the sketchiest part of the entire country." I told them I didn't find it sketchy in the slightest and they said exactly, the whole country is safe and it must be hard for me to understand coming from America. I said yeah, but it's mainly fear tactics and racism. They laughed. They were in the vein of all of the Czech people I had the pleasure of meeting, very very sweet and friendly and didn't hate me because I was American. I wanted to come to the Czech Republic after all!

Abby and I had agreed that we were both pretty tired and we did have a long walk home, so we weren't going to stay out too late, especially considering our obscenely early flight (9:30, but I am NOT a morning person). However, this was quickly reassessed when we met this group of Germans and Canadians who invited us to play foosball (thank god for all my years at afterschool programs) and swiftly to finish our drinks and accompany them to a secret techno club in a Cold War-era nuclear bomb bunker somewhere on this side of Prague. We had a map but their Czech friends had abandoned us, so we pretty much just had the instincts of one of the Germans (named Arne, but he said it would be easier for us to call him Bob, so we did) and this vague vague map. So we walked even farther, past a church, a grocery store, a TV tower covered with metal babies (weird, Juliet, I thought you were kidding but wtf) and chatted with the Germans and one boy from Austria wearing an Amsterdam t-shirt and the Canadians, who had been friends since they were young and were seeing one another for the first time in years, deciding to meet randomly in Prague.

We found the club, completely nondescript except for a bit of graffiti outside, under an overpass and a park. Walking in, the graffiti grew and filled all of the small, empty concrete rooms of the entrance to this club. After descending a long metal staircase past a climbing wall (?) we made in to the bottom and since I don't speak any Czech and the people at the door didn't seem to speak English, I illogically switched to French, asking how much the cover was and asking the pierced girls if they were having fun. Of course they didn't know what I was talking about but the cover was 30 Crowns (a little over 1 Euro) and huge beers 26 crowns (1 Euro). The club was almost empty, but I was just awed by the fact that I was actually in a Cold War nuclear bomb bunker where there was now very bad techno music and graffiti and people partying. The very few people that were there were very Czech and smoking what looked like crack, and later large amounts of hash and weed. My ability to dance to techno music without a beat (which you might think is oxymoronical - it's not) is pretty hard to harness, so I just sat with one of the Canadian boys and smoked cigarettes/drank beer and talked about lots and lots of things, including tattoos, traveling, the internet, cooking, beer, and in short, almost all of my favorite subjects, while Abby and the other Canadian danced. I have no earthly idea what time it was when they turned on all of the lights in the club, but we had been there for a couple of hours probably and decided to get out of there.

Luckily, in all of Europe they do a thing called "Non-Stop," which means 24-hours. This includes some grocery stores, sex shops, but the best of all is that it includes bars. So leaving the techno club and waving goodbye and (me still stupidly saying "bonsoir") we began to trudge back in the direction of Greater Prague in pairs. We stopped at a bar near Old Town and got a couple of beers and watched VH1 with the bartender, who did not speak English but for whatever reason, let us in for drinks and refused to let in anyone else. He was very funny and reading the paper/smoking cigarettes, and the four of us got personal and made fun of the Culture Club and David Bowie videos, along with the very bad version of classic Beatles that Paul did solo. After a while, we decided to continue to walk to the hostel where Abby and I were staying, since it was now very late and foggy and we weren't actually very far away anymore.

I was once again in charge of getting everyone to where they were going, my favorite thing to do at 5AM drunk and tired, taking advantage of the time change at 2AM (fall back! An extra hour in Prague!). We found it, stayed up for a while talking, and fell into a fitful sleep on the couch in the "Fun Room" of the hostel at about 6AM. At about this time, the Canadians awoke and decided to get back to their hostel for some real sleep. Lucky bastards, we had to meet our driver at 8, so our night was pretty much done. They were really wonderful and funny, and I am disappointed that life works the way it does, i.e. being extremely unlikely that we will ever meet either of them again. Oh well, now I know something about the geography of Canada, which, as an American, I had never ever been taught.

Planning on probably moving to Prague one day, to become a real post-Soviet kind of gal.

Proletarian Love from Lenin