Prague is beautiful and historic. The history is quite tragic. You would not know it from the way it looks. Unfortunately, in recent years, it has become a destination for bachelor and bachelorette parties from all over Europe. Thanks to the discount airlines, groups of 20-30 friends descend upon the old town of Prague, arguably the most beautiful part, and ransack it nightly.
I can’t believe I have to say this but if I did not, I would not be expressing my truest feelings: I fucking hated Prague as a city. Luckily the neighborhood that my friends were living in was outside of the old town and had cool bars and restaurants around. It was considered the hipster Williamsburg area. It was not so easily accessible. I walked way too much in Prague and I felt like I did not really see much. The first two nights, the guys wanted to go out in the old town and it was just a total disaster. The old town crowds during the day are massive and unmanageable. People are bumping into each other everywhere. I did manage to find a quiet coffee shop in a hidden corner one day. I spent a few hours there drinking iced lemonade with “forest fruit”. These are also called “berries”. My walking tour of the old city had one of the wordt guides I’ve ever experienced. He just lectured us for 20-30 minutes at a time at each stop. We only made it to two stops before I left and lost an hour of my life. Just super long history lessons from an American. The old city is also randomly haunted by African migrants who are looking to start trouble. One guy walked passed me and made a motion to punch me in the face and then laughed as he kept walking on. They are looking to start fights. One guy said to me as I walked by “you gay, right?” He wasn’t flirting. Then there were the countless Africans selling drugs. What the hell is going on here? Sometimes it was right across from a police car. I also saw active police officers on duty walking by these guys while they were bothering people. It just seemed like no one in Prague cared about the quality of life of tourists.
The biggest disappointments were the shit food and the nightlife scene. Indeed Prague is an international scene… for tourists. I could not find any locals. The one decent dance club was a mishmosh of Eurotrash tourists (drinking all day from stag parties) refusing to have conversations or make eye contact with each other. The huge crowd by the bar was being served by two attractive but incompetent bartenders and the line made no progress in the fifteen minutes I dedicated to trying this out. I tried two nights in a row and it never got better.
The best part of Prague was the hike I did to the pool in the forest. I took the tram out to the end of the line and found a beautiful trail with a pool of cold natural spring water nestled in the mountains. There were zero tourists there and it was absolutely lovely. I found the place using a Google Search for pools and hikes in Prague.
There was another guest in the apartment, an Indian-Canadian guy who was over focused on lifting weights. His ass popped out like J-Lo. I told him he needed to take a break from squats because his ass is going to make gay dudes flirt with him. I later found out he was a pro-Brexit, Trump-supporter. He said he felt that if Poland doesn’t want Muslims, it should be up to Poland to disallow them. I told him in respect that Poland is part of the EU and it’s not that simple. He didn’t understand anything about the EU or the EU Parliament. He kept saying that the people of Poland are being told what to do by people they didn’t vote for. I had to explain to him what the EU Parliament was and how Poland exists in the EU in an effort to avoid yet another century of European wars with Poland in the middle. While Poland might not have triggered these wars, the hatred and fear stoked in Polish culture of those that are not Polish certainly helped provoke war. Polish nobility certainly profited when they were on the right side. Poland didn’t attack and colonize the Middle East directly, but there is a price to pay for European solidarity now after centuries of European colonization. More research needs to be done on how Poland, like every European country, benefited from European dominance in the Middle East pre-war.
In any case, I am so glad I had this conversation with this fucking idiot who was arguing for Brexit but did not even understand how the EU worked. I said to him that his argument regarding Poland’s rights only make sense if you ignore the entire history of war in Europe. Europe must absorb immigrants to survive without war. Keeping immigrants out and continuing to live off of its racist ideals of the past will certainly lead to more war, as it consistently has. He didn’t understand me. I realized that maybe people are looking at Poland with a very small lens and neglecting the entire history of Europe. I do not think you can judge anything Poland does without looking at its history for examples of what NOT to do. The narrow minded want to view Poland as if it has only existed for ten years. That is not fair to all of those that died in the name of Poland, including my ancestors and extended family who held onto Polish citizenship even as the people around them rejected their culture and differences. I have their birth certificates now. I need to research the names of Bieguns in the Pinsk ghetto, there were over 100. They were certainly Polish and stayed in Poland, to their demise.
I decided to take the overnight bus from Prague back to Poland to go to Kraków. This is one of the super-hyped cities of Poland, for years already. I remember even Robin told me to go there. The highway from Prague to Kraków is the most dangerous highway I’ve been on in my life. They have been in the middle of a modernization project for a while now, adding shoulders mostly. In order to do this, they close one entire side of the highway and direct two lanes of traffic onto the opposite side of the highway. There are no warning signs. The highway suddenly ends and there is a 75 degrees angle left curve onto the wrong side of the road. The bus is going full 60mph and suddenly you are making a super hard left. It’s terrifying and happened at least three times on this overnight ride. We saw a big accident as well.
