PRAHA

Even two nights in Prague is a lot of nights in Prague. We took a 9 hour charter bus there with all the other Erasmus (study abroad) kids from France, Spain, Italy, and Finland, who take themselves too seriously and throw trash away in storm drains. A good omen welcomed us as soon as we stepped off the bus--the smell of marijuana. In fact, a group of homies was blazin it right in front of our hotel. If they hadn't been missing crucial teeth, or been Czech wiggas, we might have asked them for a puff, but we stuck to our senses and took it only as a good sign for the weekend to come.

One of our traveling friends from last weekend, Kyoo, an Army Ranger from San Jose who just finished his tour of duty in Iraq, told us we had to get to a place called Cross Club. He told us you could buy spliffs at the bar. When we looked it up online, it was said to resemble "the inside of a giant, robotic, sci-fi whale". Well, that's all you needed to tell us, we were determined to find this place. After crossing the Charles bridge, we stopped at the American Embassy, aka Starbucks, and asked the guy working there how to get to Cross Club. He told us that "people who work at Starbucks can't exactly go to places like that, if you know what I mean." We knew what he meant alright, and it was then that we pinky promised each other we would make it to Cross Club that night no matter what. But we started out by following Starbucky's directions to a bar called Shadow, nearby. Beer and alcohol are pretty cheap in Prague, or at least it seems like it when you can pay with 30 in coins. After drinking a bit, we once again smelled the aroma of DANK. Carolina, in a stunning display of No Shame '08, drew a weed leaf and a question mark on a piece of paper, and started walking around showing it to people until we came into possession of a roach. Extreme fun ensued. With more shmoozing, we got directions to Cross Club and the Czech words for "250" to tell any cab driver that would take us.

Cross Club was absolutely insane. We bought weed very quickly, then proceeded to move from awesome outdoor area to zen indoor area to crazy indoor area--what I would call the belly of the whale--smoking at every stop. There was a bumpin' concert going on so we decided to join it. I really don't know how to explain what was going on in there. Basically, crazy techno house beats while a guy rapped incredibly fast in Czech. He sounded like a digeridoo. All the while there are mechanical moving light machines and a generally outer-spacey atmosphere. It was awesome until we realized how fucking freaky it was. Then we were spit out of the whale, and left to wander the streets at 5:30am, realizing our hotel was in the red light district. (Later we got to see a homeless guy shooting up on the corner in broad daylight! It was beautiful).

Some sort of normalcy was restored the next day, as we wandered through the incredibly clean, disneyland-like tourist streets surrounding city center. It was definitely beautiful but (as there is a bit of a rivalry between Prague and Budapest), I would have to say the dirtiness of Budapest is much preferable to the tourist swarmed, souvenir shop studded streets of Prague. At the castle/church in the palace, there was about a 40 minute wait to go see a statue of baby jesus.

Carolina and I tried to meet up with our group, but ended up at the Museum of Medieval Torture alone. After more stumblings through the streets, and a newly purchased bottle of Jim Beam, we ended up on public transportation to our friends' hostel, following a 14 year old's directions, that he gave us in exchange for a swig of whiskey. Even in Europe, that kid looked to young to buy booze. Realizing 15 minutes later that we had no idea where we were, we deboarded the bus to find ourselves, once again, in front of Cross Club.
What followed was a sort of... I guess we'll go in again.... I guess we'll buy more weed... I guess we'll smoke out this ladybug... I guess we'll go dance again.... we should get the fuck out of here...
luckily, a friendly Prague coupled scooped us out of the hands of what looked to be a serial killer roaming the streets, and let us ride in their taxi to the hostel.

The bus ride home confirmed that all the foreign Erasmus kids think we're absolutely nuts.