From workaholic to world traveler

I really enjoyed the first time that I went to Prague, but it was only for a day or so, and I’d always intended on returning. Prague is an ancient, beautiful city. Every street seems to have some ancient statue and buildings that belong in a museum. I’m told that while all of the other major cities were bombed in WW2, Hitler spared Prague because he thought it was beautiful. I tend not to agree with the man on most things, but this one would be the exception.

I was originally planning on booking a palace of an apartment, but a friend convinced me that it was wasteful, and that I should get something smaller and more economical…which I did. Shortly after booking the lesser apartment, I was chatting with my former roommate Milka, and she was only a train ride away in Slovakia, so it was decided that she’d join me in Prague. I’m kinda jealous of the Europeans that they can just pick up and travel to another European destination super easily and super inexpensively. We hadn’t hung out for years, so it was a great opportunity to catch up and a great excuse to upgrade to the castle of an apartment that I wanted.

For this post, I’m not going to go chronological, and I’m just going to talk about the highlights of this stop and my observations. 

The people of Prague seem to generally be rule-followers, particularly on public transportation. Riders are expected to pay for their transit fare, but nobody ever checks that you do. If they did this in NY, nobody would ever pay. Hell, we put deodorant behind some plexiglass and have security, but that doesn’t seem to stop the folks back home. I don’t think that I saw a single maskless local on public transportation either. Mind you, most of these folks have been vaccinated, and in other areas like farmer’s markets, they seem to pack themselves in like sardines, sans mask.

For each of the stops on this trip, from a culinary perspective, I have been trying to find the best local food market and the best local coffee. I don’t have any hard evidence, but my theory is that there is a direct correlation between the amount of tattoos on a barista, and the quality of the coffee. I suspect that this is because non-tattooed baristas are there for the paycheck, where as the hipster tattooed folks see themselves as artisans and pride themselves in making quality coffee with some complex image in the foam. They actually like their jobs and put some love into their craft.

I was able to sample 2 local markets in Prague, both of which I really dug. There was a French market that was open daily, and they had tons of wine, cheese, charcuterie, various food items…etc. I always tell people that it’s in their best interest to try new things, even if it seems gross, because it’s always nice to like more things and spitting something into a napkin is a small price to pay. When passing by a stand with frog legs, Milka challenged me using my own logic, and I had to submit to trying them, even though I was repulsed at the idea. Ultimately it was okay, tasting like some form of weird chicken. The place also had duck liver confit, and that was spectacular.

The other market that we went to was exclusively open on Saturdays and that one had a much more local feel. Being from a neighboring country, Milka was able to recommend some local treats and negotiate with the vendors to make up some off-menu plates of meats and cheeses that were excellent. Pretty girls always seem to meet the nicest people…reminds me of the friend that got tons of free services at Home Depot because the employees were ‘nice’.

Milka and I were walking around the ancient streets of Prague for hours every day, so when passing my a Thai massage place, I had to stop for a glorious foot massage. It was there that I met one of my obsessions from Prague, Lola. Lola is the house mannequin at the Thai massage place. I first encountered her sitting next to a grumpy-looking obese gent that was in the process of getting a fish pedicure. For those of you that are unfamiliar, a fish pedicure if when you dip your feet into a fish tank and allow some tiny fish to feast on the dead skin from your feet. I think that the practice had been outlawed in New York, but it seemed totally legal in Prague. Personally, having experienced it, I don’t think that it actually does anything, but the novelty of it is worth the price of admission. While Milka and I were getting our feet massaged, we debated why Lola was seated next to the disgruntled obese gentleman, why a spa would even need a mannequin, and whether the fish were teased by Lola’s fake feet. I smirked at the idea that the proprietor felt bad for the depressed looking solo customer, and thought that he would be comforted by Lola’s company. From what I understand, inanimate companionship is a big thing in Japan, so no hate from me. The foot massage was great, but the next night, Milka and I returned and did the fish pedicure, specifically asking for Lola to join us.

Another activity that was a highlight for me was going to this awesome sauna facility outside of Prague. It had multiple saunas with different temperatures, humidity and aromas. In between sauna sessions, you would relax on lounge chairs on their outdoor deck sipping on some type of delicious refreshments. The whole thing for us including admission, multiple drinks and other services was like $40, which I thought to be crazily cheap. Anyway, there were a couple of things that stood out at the spa. Firstly, there are some folks that are totally comfortable with nudity, more so than Milka and I. I saw more balls that day than I’d like to admit, with some customers just being naked, and others with poor towel positioning. For some reason it seems like only men or old women were ‘free’ in this regard, and it would have been redeeming if some female eye candy felt that way. Another highlight was their ‘Sauna Ceremony’, which was the final sauna that we tried. The ceremony was held in this huge circular spa. It was me, Milka and a bunch of nude men sitting Indian style. It was as hot as a sauna in there (insert drum sound) and in comes an athletic young woman with a partially shaved head. She began to drop spheres of scented ice on the coals to disperse an interesting aroma, turned on the music and began an acrobatic dance, swinging around her towel to the music in an impressive fashion. As she’d pass by, she’d aggressively fan you with her towel; you’d think that it would be refreshing, but it was quite the opposite. Every time she did it, it was like when you open the door to an oven and get blasted in the face by superheated vapor. By the end, I was covered in sweat and was desperate to get out of there. Milka was even worse, and red as a tomato. It was an interesting experience to say the least. I’d like to share a pic of this, sans testicles, but alas my phone was in my locker during this experience. That said, I’ll insert a generic, stock image.

Milka has a master’s degree in literature and mentioned something about Hemingway in passing, so I thought that it would be interesting to go to Hemingway bar, a cool bar with awesome tattooed bartenders. I specifically went there for the absinthe, which Prague is known for. We wanted to sit by the bar to allow for conversation with the bartender, but both times we tried, we were flatly rejected and sent to the back at a table. I’d always thought that absinthe would make you hallucinate, but I think that you’d need to drink so much of it that you’d die of alcohol poisoning before the hallucinogen would take effect. For fans of Jeopardy, our waiter was a James Holzhauer doppelgänger, and we theorized that he may kill prostitutes in his parents basement. There was just something off about him, and we both saw a case of the crazy eyes in ‘James’.

After visiting the most depressing ‘adult establishment’ of all time, we also went to another absinthe bar, and while I don’t think that it was blog-worthy, I have an awesome video of the bartender pouring out some flaming absinthe.

The nice thing was that the bartender referred us to another bar called Black Angels; with that name one may think that it was another type of establishment, but it was just a really cool underground cocktail bar, with an awesome bald pianist stroking away at a Steinway piano. We were sat right next to him, and got him to play some recommendations in return for a small tip. The bar apparently has a strict policy against pictures, but I got the below video before being chastised by both a patron and an employee.

Milka was a sport and when I spotted a ‘zorb’ on the water, even though she was in a nice dress and shoes, she was a trooper and joined me. A zorb is basically an industrial balloon that floats on the water, and you are supposed to walk in a synchronized fashion to traverse the water. In practice, we tried to gain some traction several times, but kept on falling, so we just treated it as a refreshing water bed.

Another fun activity was visiting a museum exhibit for Salvador Dali. I got the impression that he had to be gay, due to all of the homoerotic imagery in his work. When I went to the gift shop afterwards, I found the perfect coffee table book, a huge collection of art depicting penises in various human forms. I’m certain that it will be a fun conversation piece for anyone that visits my apartment in the future, so I decided that it was worth dragging across Europe on my travels.

On our last full day, we took a private tour with a bizarre but amusing Australian fellow that moved to Prague to escape perceived persecution for being an atheist. Apparently Prague is a hotbed of disbelievers…whatever. Anyway, at the end of the tour he told us about this tower that’s on top of a mountain, with the best views of Prague. Once at the tower, you have to climb approximately 300 stairs to get to the observation deck. It was the one activity that Milka ‘hard passed’ on, and their elevator was broken, so I went solo. There was a father with a very young child in front of me, and I figured that if this little girl could do it, I could too. I used that as motivation to get to the top, although I’m not gonna lie, my fear of heights was totally getting to me, and I was happy to be back on level ground where I wasn’t a minor slip to my death.

All in, I really appreciated Prague. In addition to being breathtakingly beautiful with tons of history, statues and awesome doors (I loved the intricate massive doors), it seems like its citizens seem to live good lives. I thought fondly of Prague the first time that I went there, and my position has only strengthened from this trip.

I will finish this post with some food porn and cool pics from my journey.