The thing about the Czech Republic is that the only history I ever knew about it was the story of the Defenestration Of Prague, which made me think it must be the coolest place in the world. After having spent the last week there, I know that there probably is more history to the place, but the Defenestration Of Prague is really the only bit that matters.

(In case you don’t know [which you may not, since I only know because of an AP class I took from the coolest teacher in the world in high school], the Defenestration Of Prague is what sparked the 30Years’ War in what was then part of the Hapsburg Empire. Some of the details are missing, since I haven’t really studied this since 11th grade, but the important part is this: the peasants were mad about something [probably lack of food/feudalism/the church], as peasants are wont to be, so they chased an Important Government Official into a tower in the palace in Prague, backed him into a wall, and basically he was left with no choice but to jump out the window. It’s about a two-and-a-half story drop. He did it, and landed in a wagonload of horse poop, which was being used as fertilizer. The peasants were quelled, for the moment, thinking that perhaps it was enough to just throw someone into horse manure, but alas, he didn’t learn his lesson, and eventually they had to go to war over it.)

The other important thing to understand about the Czech Republic is that... well, it’s not really a developed country. I guess, perhaps, in the grand scale of things, it MIGHT count as "developed" on the UN’s scale, maybe, but it’s definitely as close to "developing" as any country I’ve ever spent significant time in.

I mean, there are definitely countries that are worse off than the Czech Republic: Croatia, for example, Nicaragua, and pretty much all of Africa with the probable exception of Egypt.
But it’s not the same as being in France, or England, or really anywhere else. I mean, come on, it’s not even been a country for MY entire lifetime, and I am really not that old.
But since history classes never get past World War II, my knowledge of the Cold War comes completely from Hollywood, and since I generally avoid movies set between 1950 and 1980, I really know next to nothing about the Cold War/Soviet Bloc/Velvet Revolution. A lot of the important recent events of the Czech Republic (like the fact that it became a country at all) happened within my lifetime, which makes it really kind of dumb that I don’t know anything about it, but I was too young at the time to remember it, and it’s still too current to be taught in school.

Other than the Defenestration Of Prague, the only other bit of Czech knowledge that I had prior to going was how to spell Czechoslovakia, which I learned in 1st grade when a kid I beat in the spelling bee asked me if I knew how to spell it. I remember looking at him and saying "I don’t even know what it MEANS." Being able to spell it, however, is a slightly obsolete skill, given that it hasn’t existed since about the time I was IN first grade.

All that said, I spent the last week in the Czech Republic, which was a lot of fun, a little bit scary, and quite an experience. First of all, NO ONE in that country speaks Russian– everyone my age and above knows how to (they were forced to learn it when they were under Communist control) but speaking it is completely taboo– signs are written first in Czech, then German, then English, then any other random European languages, usually Italian, Spanish, and Greek, in that order, but never ever Russian. Furthermore, I had this mistaken idea that crime in Prague/the Czech Republic is significantly worse than everywhere else in Europe– it’s probably about the same as all other big cities in Europe (though the size of Prague as compared to Paris is unbelievably small), but somehow Prague is a city where, no matter how much fun you are having, you never feel quite... safe. I’m not asking for Cathedral Domain safe, but it would be nice if one could just feel as comfortable there as in any other European city. Maybe it’s because not only is everything in a different language, but they even use different letters than us. Maybe it’s because I was raised with this Western idea that Eastern Europe is a place not quite civilized, a step above China if you are going on vacation, but a definite step below Western Europe/Hawaii.

So I was excited to go, to see what it was like, to buy things cheaply (they aren’t on the Euro yet, they still use Koruna [crowns], and I went through about 2500 of them while I was there, which is to say about $125 US dollars), and to see my friend Shoshana from Emory, who I haven’t seen since May.

But then this is what happened: my flight was supposed to get in at 23h10, which meant I had 50 minutes to make it to the hostel before public transportation shut down. So I was going to rush (cabs, obviously, being for the faint of heart). But then the luggage got delayed and I wasn’t leaving the airport until 23h40, and I knew I wouldn’t make it, given that I had to take a bus, then switch to a subway, then switch to a tram. Plus I still, at this point, was feeling not 100% safe in a country which has only been a country for as long as I’ve been a vegetarian, and used to be ruled by the KGB and people who wear furry hats with earflaps. So I gave in, and walked to the cab stand. I had been warned (from multiple guidebooks and the more reliable firsthand accounts of friends) that Czech cabbies are extremely unreliable/dishonest, don’t run the meter, take roundabout long ways of getting places, etc., so I knew to ask how much it would be before I got in. I pointed to the address I had written down, and the guy told me, in a voice copied straight from the Russian space station hero in Armageddon, that it would be "five, no six, yes maybe seex hawn-tred crown" to get me to the hostel. Fine. Whatever. At this point I still wasn’t completely sure how much they were worth (for the record, there is between 20 and 25 Koruna to a dollar). What I hadn’t been warned about was the fact that Czech buildings all have two addresses– one is the normal street address, like we would have in the US, or France, or ANYWHERE ELSE in the world, and the other is a completely random number that has something to do with the order in which the building was incorporated into the city, or made official, or something. One set of these numbers (I was never sure which) is on red signs in white letters, the other is on white signs with blue letters. I gave the guy the address, and we took off, listening to really old-school Celine Dion all the way.
And I hadn’t changed any money over yet. And Czech cabs (proof this is a developing country) do not have credit card machines.

We got over that glitch, and he dropped me off at what appeared to be an empty store front, perhaps an old hardware store, now empty, with no buzzer and no hostel sign.
But the address I had was "7/19" written like that, and the only address sign I saw on this building was 19, so I thought, illogically, "Maybe I should be at 7... I’ll walk down a few buildings." I got to 7 and it was a bar. A bar that had just kicked out the last patrons. Nothing else on the street was open. I wouldn’t say it was a bad neighborhood, but it was not a part of the former Soviet bloc that I relished being abandoned and alone in at 00h15 at night, with a large beat-up yellow duffel bag marking me from a mile away as a tourist. Armed with an address I couldn’t pronounce in a language I had never seen, I walked into the bar, the bartender tried to kick me out, and I somehow made it clear I needed directions, and he said, "Hostel, yes, plus two that way" and pointed the opposite direction down the street. "Ok," I thought to myself, no big deal, got it. "Plus two that way" turned out to be a closed grocery store with a [locked] church next to it. I began to get nervous. I walked to the end of the street, which was a pinwheel of 5 streets, and took the one next to where I was, terrified I would get confused and not be able to figure out where I was at all. I wandered down that street, trying to act like I knew where I was going, but despite the fact that each building has two addresses, they are also not placed systematically, so I could only find them on about every fourth building. And I didn’t know about this two-address system yet, so I couldn’t find any direction that seemed to be appropriate for me finding "7/19." I walked back onto the street where the cab had left me and wandered to the OTHER end of it, checking every buzzer for anything that looked like "ht haus," the name of the hostel. (Hostels here tend to be not like hotels– they don’t usually take up an entire building, just a few floors, so you find the buzzer and buzz up, just like an apartment.) I found nothing, but on my way back toward the direction I had come, I saw a sign for a church pension. I followed the sign and buzzed, but no one answered (it may have been the sign for the church pension fund office, and not a place to stay for all I know). By this time I was starting to get worried. I kept telling myself not to panic, but I knew if I didn’t get to the hostel to find the girl I was meeting right then, I wouldn’t find her (neither of our phones worked there). And there was no taxis in sight, no hotels, it was after midnight, I was alone, and suddenly I was really quite uneasy. Especially when I heard a large group of guys behind me, who started yelling something at each other (or perhaps me, who knows?) in Czech. I wouldn’t say I panicked, exactly, because there was no hyperventilating and I didn’t cry, but my new European "take-it-into-stride-and-it-will-be-a-great-story-later-on" mentality left me, along with my cool.

But I was still thinking clearly. The thought process, at that point, was something like this:
"Ok, B, you are 21 years old, you can handle this... You may be in the former USSR, but they have to have hotels, right? Ok, just start walking... this direction... because there are more lights this way. And more sketchy people. Yeah, but what are sketchy people going to do to you in the light? And there are probably strangers the other direction too, you just can’t see them because it is dark. Ok, this way. Dang it, that bar is closed, now nothing is open... and it’s really dark. And I’m cold, shivering... Alright, if you were an Eagle Scout, what would you do? What kind of a hypothermia-induced question is that? If you were an Eagle Scout you wouldn’t be in this situation because you wouldn’t be staying at a hostel, you’d be building yourself a shelter out of palm fronds and Q-tips. I don’t think they have palm fronds this far North... WAIT, FOCUS, B: you’re not an Eagle Scout. But you are FRIENDS with logical people, so what would THEY do in this situation? Think, think, who do I know that is logical... intelligent... Eagle-Scoutish... street-smart... NO ONE. STOP WALKING, THINK, YOU MUST HANG OUT WITH PEOPLE WHO WOULD KNOW HOW TO GET OUT OF THIS EASILY. Yeah, if they had me with them– if we were in a group. But it’s not nearly so glamourous/adventuresome when you are alone. Why don’t I have more friends in the Boy Scouts? Oh, because I’m 21. Boy Scouts expire sometime before college, I think... I should really get to know some, they could probably teach me some things... like, how to start a fire with a stick and a leaf, or how to tie a Windsor knot. No, that’s not Boy Scouts, that’s prep school boys. Ok. I got it. I’m going to the end of this street, by the lights, and I’m walking toward the light until I find a hotel or a cab, and then I am going to get a room at the hotel or a ride to the nearest one, and go to bed. I got this... just find a... taxi... in this abandoned forsaken country... Maybe I should get some food too... did I eat dinner?" By this time I had been wandering for quite awhile, though it was probably only 20 minutes or so, it seemed like hours.

I checked the doorway where I had been dropped off for the third time, but this time I saw, low down in the corner of the buzzer, a marker-ed in word over the scratched metal. Barely readable, almost scratched over, something-something HAUS. But there was not a button next to it. HAUS! THIS HAS GOT TO BE IT! (Never mind that it’s one of the most common words in the Czech language, or that I couldn’t read the letters before it, I was convinced.) I began frantically pushing every button on the panel until I heard a low static noise just as a car drove by blasting the bass so thumpingly loud that I couldn’t hear anything. I didn’t realize just HOW MUCH of my cool I had lost until I heard my voice after the car passed.
"Hello? Hello? Hi, I have a reservation, for tonight? I am very late, this is the HT Haus, right? Do you have any vacancies tonight? Hello? Can you hear me?"
Nothing. I keep pushing the button again, refusing to let this chance get away. Finally a light inside came on, and someone opened the door a tiny crack. "I think I have a reservation for tonight? Is this is HT Haus?"

"Uh, yeah, yeah..." said the voice on the other side, and I would soon learn that this was about all the English the owner of the hostel knew. But no matter, I was there, and I was safe. And when I made it to the room I was going to share with Shoshana, someone had already made my bed, and there were two bars of Israeli chocolate waiting for me on the pillow from Shoshana, since that is where she is studying this semester.
Chasing liberty across Europe,
B