We get up quite late, have some breakfast and then don the kilts. We had so much fun last weekend, that I've brought my kilt along for this adventure.
Today has very few plans other than wandering around Prague and seeing the place a little. As we exit the house, we realise that it's been snowing during the night and that it's even colder today than it was last night - and we are wearing kilts. We're crazy.
We don't wear the kilts in the complete traditional method - we aim more for a grunge style kilt. We wear them with Converse trainers to the confusion of several people:
We walk down the hill to the metro station and head into town, as soon as I enter the station, I remember why we wear the kilts. It puts a smile on everyone's face, and many people stop and talk to you. It's a good ice breaker for meeting people when you're out and about in a strange city.
Once on Wenceslas square, we've decided that there are two objectives for today. Buy gloves and buy a Lonely Planet of prague for my collection. Buying gloves is a tricky endeavour, cos we really need grunge gloves, and having no idea what this means, it takes us a while. We'd really like a Jeff Ament hat, but my ongoing search doesn't end in Prague:
Other than that, all we are doing is wandering around, speaking to people and generally letting me get a feeling for the city.
Eventually, I come across a book shop in order to make one of my only purchases of the holiday outside of beer - a lonely planet. The lonely planet's are over priced, but I like them as a memory of the holiday, and they are a good way to gen up on a bit of local knowledge, history and to get a little bit of honest information about what you're seeing. I opt for a lonely planet of the Czech and Slovak republics, in the hope it will come in useful on future trips:
We stop for a well needed heat and lunhc in a little traditional Czech bar, it's my first Czech lunch and pretty much my first experience of Czech food. I have goulash with potato dumplings washed down with Pilsner. The goulash is delicious and is great winter food. It's just spicey enough to warm you up, and the dumplings weigh you down just enough to ensure that you can keep on going for the rest of the day.
Mowgli makes sure he shows me all the little nooks and cranies, all the different squares, buildings and old churches.
When we get to the main square, we literally spend about 30 minutes posing for photos with various tourists who have never seen kilted scotsmen. We get to see the Astronmical clock on old town square chiming:
There is a huge crowd of tourists for this, and I'm pretty glad I'm getting to see Prague outside of the tourist season.
After this, it's about 6pm. After all my train travel, and wandering, I'm tempted by a flyer we get for a Thai Massage. I return to the man and ask the prices. It works out at about €12 for a 30 minute genuine Thai massage. We follow the map and head in:
The place is wonderful. It's very peaceful, and the Thai's are genuinely Thai, and they seem genuinely impressed by the Thai Bhudda I wear around my neck.
After a complimentary tea, we head back out on the streets and walk aimlessly, while enjoying the relaxation provided by the massage.
We've decided that since we don't have any baggage(Except a lonely planet and some gloves), we will just stay in town until it's time to go clubbing. We head into a bar for a quiet beer to kill some time. From here, Mowgli gets a phone call which lets us know where some of his friends are meeting.
We head on to a sports bar which is the designated meeting place. It's a horrible american style sports bar, but it does let us get some food in our bellies, as everyone knows the chemical equation:
pasta + red bull = dancing(with beer as a catalyst to the equation)
The club for the night is Karlovy Lázně. It boasts that it's the largest club in central europe. We are told that if we get there before 9pm, that we don't have to pay entrance. As a result, we have to Queue for about an hour before we get in. It's freezing, so Mowlgi and I do our best to entertain the troops with various jokes.
Theres a group of girls behind us drinking a 2 litre bottle of cola between them. They don't really understand english, but I sniff the bottle and catch the aroma of so many memories - flat cola and stale vodka. It seems 15 yr old Czech girls aren't that far away from 15 yr old Scottish girls(well the czech ones probably have less kids)
The girls claim to be a mixture of 20 and 21, but I'm not even convinced they are 15.
When we finally get in, we have to climb to the overflow cloakroom to decant some of our wooly bits. I get to explore on my way up. There's a pop/cheese floor which looks pretty good, above that a hard core techno and druggie music floor, then hip hop floor and then a clubby house floor and then at the top is a chill out floor. Also on each floor is a sit down bar. This truly is a huge club. If you get bored with one brand of music you move to a different floor:
They seem to have forgotten the grunge floor, the 70's rock floor, the punk floor, and the classical and jazz chill out zones, but you can't have everything.
As soon as our jackets are in we head down for some cheese. We get some beers in plastic pint glasses and then head to a drinking place near the podium. Before long our feet are tapping, and we're boogying about - we develop quite a following due to the novelty of both our drunken dancing style. Honed during many a glaswegian clubing night, we basically dance badly and drunk. It was the only thing you could do when night clubs were the only places open after 11pm when we were students. The rock clubs had become to pretentious, the real dance clubs were not our thing, so the student clubs seemed to cater for this market and play something called cheese - this is basically anything that's feelgood dancey when you are drunk. A perfect cheese playlist involves:
A little Abba
Anything from The Blues Brothers
80's bad pop
The Village people
Popier Guns and Roses and Bon Jovi
You get the idea...
The DJ is not very good. I count Rhythm is a dancer five times, and I was nipping in and out of this floor.
Before long something which is perfect enough convinces us to take to the podium. We then dance in unison to the hilarity of most of the crowd. This then continues with only a few rests to refuel on cheap pints until we need a rest. We are quite confused by the other clubbers who are here, some of them are VERY young. Theres even two 6 year olds in with their parents. It's quite bizarre...
We head up to the chill out zone and take a seat. They have big comfy couches, and it could be really difficult to convince yourself to get back to the dancefloor, but we meet some Ukranians and after about an hour, we head back down to the dancefloor. By now, it's into the early hours and it's past the bedtime of the young crowd, we get a lot more people joining us on the podium, and it turns into a photo session as everyone takes their oppurtunity to dance with the two freaks in skirts.
By 6am, we seem to have used up the last of our pasta, and we walk off via a hotdog stall for the night tram. We walk two Belarussians to the tram, attempting to exchange national anthems.... Eventually Mowgli and I just sing Flower of Scotland at the top of our lungs, as our language skills don't seem to be to hot at this hour.
Dawn of the dead is meagre tonight, it must be too late for them.
Beddie Byes.....
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