When it comes to getting lost, I’m a natural. On the ground, that is… in the air it’s another story. For the most part being lost, when I’m traveling, is a self-induced condition. I have no purpose here, nowhere to be by any particular time, and nothing I want to do so urgently that it can’t wait to be stumbled upon. My pleasure is in turning each corner not based on what I might believe lies ahead, but based purely on which way looks the most appealing, confident that, with a good map, I will always be able to find the way back to my hotel.
Unfortunately, when I arrived in Prague, all I had was a bad map.
Ideally, of course, the whole getting lost thing doesn’t start until after I’ve checked into a hotel and dropped off my stuff. Getting lost with three months of necessities strapped to my back is rarely intentional. I did try to buy a good map but… Well, let me back up.
I have to admit that I broke a cardinal rule of traveling. Avoid arriving in a new country on national holidays, strike days or early Sunday mornings. My bus from Paris arrived at 5:45 am on Sunday. In my defense, I’ll add that this was the only option. There were no other times.
The only employee on duty at that hour was a middle aged blind man behind the information desk. Blind! Without hand signals I am useless, but maybe I wouldn’t need him. I walked over to the window that sells maps and changes money. Open at 7:00 am, it seemed to say. Sundays, too? I couldn’t tell. Maybe the blind man spoke English. “Hello,” I said.
“Dbredh.”
“Uh, do you speak English?”
“Dbredivolskimanyetsovashe.”
At least he answered my question. Now what? I didn’t have a koruna to my name and I wasn’t about to offer a random taxi driver a $100 bill and hope for reasonable change, if they would take it at all, so I waited. Nothing else to do before sunrise on a Sunday morning anyway. I figured I would just wait until 7:00 and see what happened.
I spent part of the time learning important new words like muzi and zeny (men and women) which were written in plain black letters on a pair of doors without the benefit of illustrations.
It was also entertaining to watch other foreign travelers arrive from various places and try to talk to get information at the information desk. The blind man seemed to say the same thing to everybody, and from the laughter of the locals nearby it was almost certainly at our expense. Did I mention that the blind man was protected by a thick glass window so the only way you could speak to each other was through a microphone? Of course, the volume was turned up sufficiently high that absolutely everyone in the station could hear each awkward conversation in excruciating detail.
Eventually, most of the other foreign travelers did what I did… sat down and stared hopefully at the window they wanted.
I waited until 7:00, then 7:15 in case punctuality was not a national strong point, then I gave up and started walking. The hotel I wanted to try was not far from the bus station. Less than half a mile along what looked like a fairly large street. If I didn’t take any turns I should find it easily. Right. The map I had wasn’t really bad, it just wasn’t very detailed. It lacked things like, for example, the name of the street my hotel was on… but based on the way the curves were drawn I thought…
Forty five minutes later I saw a sign for the Musketyr hotel. Success! Along the way I had succombed to the first gouging of the day, a Sunday morning exchange rate that cost me $30 more than I would have paid at the place next door that opened an hour later. After checking in I wandered over to the center for the second gouging, a tasteless $8 cappuchino in Stare Mesto (Old Town). And my first day in Prague wouldn’t be complete without the third gouging, a $30 ticket to a concert that turned out to be a stale performance of classical music “greatest hits” for a tourist-only audience who were unfamiliar with the pieces and didn’t know when to clap. As a rule, if you’re not sure when to clap, it’s best to wait until someone who is sure begins clapping or until the performers put their instruments down to their sides and make any kind of a bow. That’s true for anyone – even people who hold season tickets for their local symphony orchestra haven’t heard everything, and sometimes they don’t know when to clap either. The rule is… if in doubt, wait it out.
Anyway, this concert was about as satisfying as it would be for a jazz fan to listen to someone play a dozen measures of highlights from each of 30 different and disconnected jazz hits with people stopping to clap between each segment. But I learned. By my third day in Prague I’ve found my bearings. I’ve figured out who makes a good $3 cappuchino. I’ve figured out where to go for real Czech food (not the kind advertised in English as “Real Czech Food”) at real Czech prices. I know where to go when I need to change more money, which will be soon, and I found the concert hall for the Prague Symphony Orchestra where they play full length works at half the price of the greatest-hits version. What else could I ask for?
It’s funny what you take pride in when you’re living out of a backpack for three months, especially when you’re traveling to where, literally, the Siberian winds blow in from the East. And, of course, February is the coldest month of the year at the edge of Siberia. Think plenty of loft layers. At such times, a pack job well done is truly a work of art. It’s not an overstatement to say that I was in awe when I saw what came out of my green backpack when I emptied it for the first time in Prague. Topping the list is the backpack itself, which can apparently endure a huge amount of pressure without splitting its seams. Then there is the down parka I bought a day before leaving Palo Alto, which is so warm I can only wear it at night (but I’m not in Poland yet) and rolls up into nothing when it comes time to be packed. The thick green scarf my mom knitted me for Christmas. The warm beanie Robert rescued and sent to me in Paris. SmartWool socks from Catherine, and toasty gloves from my student Carrie. Do I buy nothing for myself? Ah yes, my Alpine Design hiking boots… forget all the new high-tech materials the REI crowd raves about; give me flexible, waterproof leather any day.
What’s not so practical are my pretty black boots with the stiletto heels. What was I thinking! Stilettos and cobblestones just don’t mix. But they are taking up precious space in my backpack, and they really are pretty, so wear them I will. First, though, they need a new set of heels. I wander away from the tourist center a little bit, thinking I might find a cobbler. Along Revolucni Street, pass Kralodvorska, then… Dlouha Street. I have a good feeling about this one. It looks like the kind of street where people might go to get their shoes fixed. I walk into a shop full of old tools… can’t tell whether it’s a workshop or an old tool shop but I see pieces of shoe leather in the window so it’s as good a place to start as any.
“Dobri den,” I say to the old man behind the counter. I’ve learned how to say good morning, but that’s about it.
“Dobri den. Bahzhursherotskiyou?”
Uh, I lift up my boot and point to the heel, then make a hammering motion.
“Ne,” he says. Then something else. He walks me to the door and points to the next block. Puts his hands together up in the air and moves them out, then down, miming a building. Then “ein, zwei, trei,” he points. Then swooshes his right hand under his left to indicate going through some kind of a tunnel or overpass.
“Thank you,” I say in English. I learned it in Czech this morning but I can’t remember. Learning languages was so much easier when I was in my 20s. I walk to the next block… one, two, three buildings on the left and under a stone entryway into a courtyard. Not much there. Two signs. One has a violin on it. The other, just writing. Maybe I didn’t understand. Then I see a murky window behind a shrub. There’s a man inside… and an old Singer sewing machine. Could it be? I lift my boot up, point to the heel and make a hammering motion.
He nods yes. Success!
I point right, then left. Where is the entrance?
He points to my left, and I find the door.
“Dobri den,” I say.
“Dobri den. Grengazheevoitbeshkayakuandonandon and on and on…”
This is not going to be easy. The boots I’m wearing are not the ones that need to be repaired. He keeps talking. What could he possibly be saying for so long to someone who just showed up randomly in his shop and hasn’t even said what she wanted yet? We make no progress at all, but there are several pairs of shoes on the counter and soles and heels hanging from the wall. This is definitely the right place. I point to myself. I point to my boots. “In hotel,” I say. Hotel is just hotel in pretty much any language.
He goes on some more. Gosh, maybe he thinks I’ve invited him to my hotel to do something with my boots. “I come back,” I say. It doesn’t matter that he can’t understand. I have to say something. I write “12:00?” in my notebook and point to the place where we’re standing.
He nods yes. He’ll be in at twelve. When I come back with my boots at twelve, there is a short line. The lady behind me is holding a belt that looks like it needs a few more holes in it in order to fit her… that’s quick, and I will probably take a while, so I motion for her to go ahead of me. It turns out that she speaks English. Through her, I find out that he cannot replace my stiletto heels with wider ones that would be more practical on cobblestone streets, but he can at least fix the ends, which have worn through. Ten minutes and six dollars later I’m good to go.
Before I leave, I ask if I can take a picture of his shop. Like the bus driver who didn’t know which way was up, the cobbler seemed completely uninterested in my camera. He didn’t seem to mind being photographed – didn’t shake his head, wave his hand, step aside or anything like that – but he didn’t look at the camera either. He just shrugged his shoulders and went on about his business.
I snapped a quick photo and opened the door. “Bye bye,” I said.
“Bye bye,” he replied. I think I saw the faintest hint of a smile. But maybe he was just glad to be rid of me.
Unfortunately, when I arrived in Prague, all I had was a bad map.
Ideally, of course, the whole getting lost thing doesn’t start until after I’ve checked into a hotel and dropped off my stuff. Getting lost with three months of necessities strapped to my back is rarely intentional. I did try to buy a good map but… Well, let me back up.
I have to admit that I broke a cardinal rule of traveling. Avoid arriving in a new country on national holidays, strike days or early Sunday mornings. My bus from Paris arrived at 5:45 am on Sunday. In my defense, I’ll add that this was the only option. There were no other times.
The only employee on duty at that hour was a middle aged blind man behind the information desk. Blind! Without hand signals I am useless, but maybe I wouldn’t need him. I walked over to the window that sells maps and changes money. Open at 7:00 am, it seemed to say. Sundays, too? I couldn’t tell. Maybe the blind man spoke English. “Hello,” I said.
“Dbredh.”
“Uh, do you speak English?”
“Dbredivolskimanyetsovashe.”
At least he answered my question. Now what? I didn’t have a koruna to my name and I wasn’t about to offer a random taxi driver a $100 bill and hope for reasonable change, if they would take it at all, so I waited. Nothing else to do before sunrise on a Sunday morning anyway. I figured I would just wait until 7:00 and see what happened.
I spent part of the time learning important new words like muzi and zeny (men and women) which were written in plain black letters on a pair of doors without the benefit of illustrations.
It was also entertaining to watch other foreign travelers arrive from various places and try to talk to get information at the information desk. The blind man seemed to say the same thing to everybody, and from the laughter of the locals nearby it was almost certainly at our expense. Did I mention that the blind man was protected by a thick glass window so the only way you could speak to each other was through a microphone? Of course, the volume was turned up sufficiently high that absolutely everyone in the station could hear each awkward conversation in excruciating detail.
Eventually, most of the other foreign travelers did what I did… sat down and stared hopefully at the window they wanted.
I waited until 7:00, then 7:15 in case punctuality was not a national strong point, then I gave up and started walking. The hotel I wanted to try was not far from the bus station. Less than half a mile along what looked like a fairly large street. If I didn’t take any turns I should find it easily. Right. The map I had wasn’t really bad, it just wasn’t very detailed. It lacked things like, for example, the name of the street my hotel was on… but based on the way the curves were drawn I thought…
Forty five minutes later I saw a sign for the Musketyr hotel. Success! Along the way I had succombed to the first gouging of the day, a Sunday morning exchange rate that cost me $30 more than I would have paid at the place next door that opened an hour later. After checking in I wandered over to the center for the second gouging, a tasteless $8 cappuchino in Stare Mesto (Old Town). And my first day in Prague wouldn’t be complete without the third gouging, a $30 ticket to a concert that turned out to be a stale performance of classical music “greatest hits” for a tourist-only audience who were unfamiliar with the pieces and didn’t know when to clap. As a rule, if you’re not sure when to clap, it’s best to wait until someone who is sure begins clapping or until the performers put their instruments down to their sides and make any kind of a bow. That’s true for anyone – even people who hold season tickets for their local symphony orchestra haven’t heard everything, and sometimes they don’t know when to clap either. The rule is… if in doubt, wait it out.
Anyway, this concert was about as satisfying as it would be for a jazz fan to listen to someone play a dozen measures of highlights from each of 30 different and disconnected jazz hits with people stopping to clap between each segment. But I learned. By my third day in Prague I’ve found my bearings. I’ve figured out who makes a good $3 cappuchino. I’ve figured out where to go for real Czech food (not the kind advertised in English as “Real Czech Food”) at real Czech prices. I know where to go when I need to change more money, which will be soon, and I found the concert hall for the Prague Symphony Orchestra where they play full length works at half the price of the greatest-hits version. What else could I ask for?
It’s funny what you take pride in when you’re living out of a backpack for three months, especially when you’re traveling to where, literally, the Siberian winds blow in from the East. And, of course, February is the coldest month of the year at the edge of Siberia. Think plenty of loft layers. At such times, a pack job well done is truly a work of art. It’s not an overstatement to say that I was in awe when I saw what came out of my green backpack when I emptied it for the first time in Prague. Topping the list is the backpack itself, which can apparently endure a huge amount of pressure without splitting its seams. Then there is the down parka I bought a day before leaving Palo Alto, which is so warm I can only wear it at night (but I’m not in Poland yet) and rolls up into nothing when it comes time to be packed. The thick green scarf my mom knitted me for Christmas. The warm beanie Robert rescued and sent to me in Paris. SmartWool socks from Catherine, and toasty gloves from my student Carrie. Do I buy nothing for myself? Ah yes, my Alpine Design hiking boots… forget all the new high-tech materials the REI crowd raves about; give me flexible, waterproof leather any day.
What’s not so practical are my pretty black boots with the stiletto heels. What was I thinking! Stilettos and cobblestones just don’t mix. But they are taking up precious space in my backpack, and they really are pretty, so wear them I will. First, though, they need a new set of heels. I wander away from the tourist center a little bit, thinking I might find a cobbler. Along Revolucni Street, pass Kralodvorska, then… Dlouha Street. I have a good feeling about this one. It looks like the kind of street where people might go to get their shoes fixed. I walk into a shop full of old tools… can’t tell whether it’s a workshop or an old tool shop but I see pieces of shoe leather in the window so it’s as good a place to start as any.
“Dobri den,” I say to the old man behind the counter. I’ve learned how to say good morning, but that’s about it.
“Dobri den. Bahzhursherotskiyou?”
Uh, I lift up my boot and point to the heel, then make a hammering motion.
“Ne,” he says. Then something else. He walks me to the door and points to the next block. Puts his hands together up in the air and moves them out, then down, miming a building. Then “ein, zwei, trei,” he points. Then swooshes his right hand under his left to indicate going through some kind of a tunnel or overpass.
“Thank you,” I say in English. I learned it in Czech this morning but I can’t remember. Learning languages was so much easier when I was in my 20s. I walk to the next block… one, two, three buildings on the left and under a stone entryway into a courtyard. Not much there. Two signs. One has a violin on it. The other, just writing. Maybe I didn’t understand. Then I see a murky window behind a shrub. There’s a man inside… and an old Singer sewing machine. Could it be? I lift my boot up, point to the heel and make a hammering motion.
He nods yes. Success!
I point right, then left. Where is the entrance?
He points to my left, and I find the door.
“Dobri den,” I say.
“Dobri den. Grengazheevoitbeshkayakuandonandon and on and on…”
This is not going to be easy. The boots I’m wearing are not the ones that need to be repaired. He keeps talking. What could he possibly be saying for so long to someone who just showed up randomly in his shop and hasn’t even said what she wanted yet? We make no progress at all, but there are several pairs of shoes on the counter and soles and heels hanging from the wall. This is definitely the right place. I point to myself. I point to my boots. “In hotel,” I say. Hotel is just hotel in pretty much any language.
He goes on some more. Gosh, maybe he thinks I’ve invited him to my hotel to do something with my boots. “I come back,” I say. It doesn’t matter that he can’t understand. I have to say something. I write “12:00?” in my notebook and point to the place where we’re standing.
He nods yes. He’ll be in at twelve. When I come back with my boots at twelve, there is a short line. The lady behind me is holding a belt that looks like it needs a few more holes in it in order to fit her… that’s quick, and I will probably take a while, so I motion for her to go ahead of me. It turns out that she speaks English. Through her, I find out that he cannot replace my stiletto heels with wider ones that would be more practical on cobblestone streets, but he can at least fix the ends, which have worn through. Ten minutes and six dollars later I’m good to go.
Before I leave, I ask if I can take a picture of his shop. Like the bus driver who didn’t know which way was up, the cobbler seemed completely uninterested in my camera. He didn’t seem to mind being photographed – didn’t shake his head, wave his hand, step aside or anything like that – but he didn’t look at the camera either. He just shrugged his shoulders and went on about his business.
I snapped a quick photo and opened the door. “Bye bye,” I said.
“Bye bye,” he replied. I think I saw the faintest hint of a smile. But maybe he was just glad to be rid of me.
No comments:
Post a Comment