Chippy's Musings

I could do that…

chippycd — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:27:04 +0000

And now kids, a break from the Europe travels. I’ve been unemployed now for 3 months. I’ve spent 1 month of that in Europe, doing a decent job of ignoring that my future was unclear. Still, there were many moments, and discussions, where I had no idea what I would do when I returned to the US, to real life.

In the past three months, while making no serious effort to get a job, I do feel the urge to work. I’m constantly thinking, “I could do that…” But the jobs I’m eying are obviously not ambitious. I see a man painting a door, “I could do that.” I see woman folding clothes in the store, “I could do that.” I see every Trader Joe’s employee pushing products to the front of shelves, “I could definitely do that.”

I feel the urge to work, but mindless work seems to be the theme. After spending a year and a half surrounded by geniuses, I’m tired of being the dumb one. In all my years of school, even at CMU, I never felt like the dumb one. Classes were hard or a lot of work, but nothing was impossible to understand. I was never the last one to figure things out until I got to HP. (I’ll make a note, there are dumber ones at HP, but no one I ever worked with.) And, I feel even dumber since I’m the one that got laid off.

Less than a week after getting back to Portland, alone at home, watching everyone go to work, I got very moody. I nitpicked at my photos until I decided they all sucked. My blog was boring. I felt like a crappy tiller (especially after that botched 2nd race). My cooking deserved no praise (seriously, I follow recipes, compliment the inventors of the recipes). I sucked. Apparently (according to Tara), I was behaving very insecure. Everything that I wanted to do, I wanted to do for free. When asked why, I said it was because I felt it was wrong for me to charge them money. I’m pretty sure I drove my house crazy with my mood.

People said I was being ridiculous, but I say getting laid off will do that to you. I’d like to end this post with, “Hey, all is good. My self-confidence is back so I’m not longer in a mood and I’m ready for brainy jobs again. I could do that.” But I’m not. So I’ll get back to you.

Waiting (Impatiently) for a Train

chippycd — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:25:08 +0000

Wednesday 29th of April

Day 5: Praha Day Two

Prague at Night

All roads lead to Old Town Center, Don Giovanni – Marionette Style, Waiting (Impatiently) for a Train

We got back to the hostel at 10:30pm, where the owner was no where in sight, checked our e-mail (J is having the same problems), and headed to the train station. The train station was sketch. While walking around trying to determine a place to camp out (they didn’t know what platform our train would be at) people kept offering us places to stay and rides and what not. There was a pair of security looking men walking around, except they didn’t wear an actual uniform. They had no labels or patches, but they were patrolling around with night sticks like they were security. I was skeptical.

One sketchy man, after offering us first a place to stay, and later a taxi, starting going on and on about thieves on the trains. He went on about how even though you can lock the door, they can go inside with their special key, and sit next to you and go through your stuff while you sleep. (We never figured out this locking and special key business) We said thank you for the warning, and T declared the man an expert on the thieving process from experience.

This is when we finally decided to use the tiny locks I had bought for our bag’s zippers. I switched all my important items into the large compartment, including Kayso. It was nice to have the bag locked up. Less worrying about pick pockets. Instead, we played cards. We played Qwitch where I quickly kicked ass. I let him play Bang but I kicked ass some more. I kept checking (obsessively) for our platform, but even as we got 10 minutes from departure, they still didn’t have information. Finally, they had the information, but the train was running late.

When it arrived, everyone rushed onto the train, but it became quickly obvious that there was only two cars going to Vienna, and they were both completely booked and full. The rest of the train was going to Budapest. That left about a dozen of us going to Vienna with no place to sit or sleep for the night!

Prague Day Two 3/3

Don Giovanni – Marionette Style

chippycd — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:58:12 +0000

Wednesday 29th of April

Day 5: Praha Day Two

Marionette Theater, where we saw Don Giovanni done with puppets!

All roads lead to Old Town Center, Don Giovanni – Marionette Style, Waiting (Impatiently) for a Train

The Marionette show, a cover of Don Giovanni with puppets, was at 9pm for a little over an hour, so we decided to do some more exploring before grabbing dinner and seeing the show. We did a bunch of walking, turning this way and that, until we came across… you guessed it, OTS! We couldn’t seem to get away from it.

Sitting Indoors for Dinner, I spent the better part of dinner trying to figure out what actor our waiter looked like.

We sat on the benches some more, to rest the weary feet and legs, as we debated what to do. We opted to get coffees, which were then followed by Pilsners. Then it started to rain, and I was getting too cold, so we headed to the indoor seating of the restaurant (which had cheaper prices indoors) and ordered dinner. T had beef cooked in red wine and I had Roast Turkey and dumplings. The roast turkey was deelish. The dumplings were dough.

At the marionette theater, we walked up a small staircase and ended up in an attic like theater. We were a little early, but there was already a group (of teenage looking boys) there. I couldn’t believe we were actually going to a puppet show of Don Giovanni. Honestly, I was worried this was a scam, it seemed too bizarre, and the theater did not match the photo (apparently nothing ever does). But, it had been around for nearly two decades, and lots of tourists started coming. Soon, this tiny little theater that seated about 40 was filled.

Then opera music started playing on the speaker, and it was amusingly goofy. They were definitely dramatizing the puppets for comedic reasons. Whenever a puppet had particularly powerful moment of singing opera, it would shake it’s chest. However, half way through, there became lots of solo puppet performances, which meant one puppet on stage, moving here and there, and shaking it’s chest. For a half hour. I started falling asleep, so I looked over at T, and sure enough, so was he. I poked him and he woke up. No sense in experiencing the pain alone.

In the end, as boring as the middle section may have been (in all fairness, they sat me in a dark room playing opera music while I was very very tired), it was still funny to see. The kids seemed amused, although I think by the middle they were also bored. I think it would’ve been nice to know the real opera. There was a very lame ending of a giant played by an actual human in costume. T was expecting a giant puppet. I was expecting a less awkward moment of puppeteer standing in front of us pretending to be a giant slow moving statue.

Walking back to the hostel, we were approached by two boys, teenagers perhaps, if not young 20′s. One was playing a harmonica, and the other was asking for money, on behalf of his harmonica playing friend. However, the one with the harmonica was literally moving the harmonica back and forth and blowing air. So, T, the musician, brushed him off saying we had no cash (we really didn’t, we spent our last cent on the Marionette show, go us!) and the guy responded by yelling in heavy accent, “Fucks you Americahn!” That phrase followed us all through Europe. We loved yelling it at each other, so I thank you random Czech boy for yelling at us.

Prague Day Two 2/3

All roads lead to Old Town Center

chippycd — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:29:22 +0000

Wednesday 29th of April

Day 5: Praha Day Two

All roads lead to Old Town Center, Don Giovanni – Marionette Style, Waiting (Impatiently) for a Train

All roads lead to Old Town Square

Day One we checked out Prague Castle, so Day Two we decided would be random exploration. But first, we spent some time in the morning on the computer to try and get our plane tickets working. Vueling was not accepting any credit card of Ts, and his credit card company was requesting that he call to authorize transactions. So, we sent an e-mail to J with the hopes that he could work the system. We left our bags in the hostel’s locker and headed to the train station to buy a ticket to Vienna. At the train station, tourist center was still closed, and buying a midnight ticket to Vienna was easy as pie! (And almost as cheap)

We headed towards Václavské Náměstí, Wenceslas Square, which is the place to go if you’re looking for a demonstration. We weren’t looking for one, and there wasn’t one, so there was very little to see of Wenceslas Square except a statue. And a KFC.

I love Coca Cola, especially the ones that come in glass bottles.

Afterwards we stopped for breakfast/lunch, where I had my most pointless meal of the Europe trip. Apparently, breakfast isn’t the thing to eat here, and even at 10am, everyone is drinking beers. Having had enough to drink the night before, and it being 10am, and us being mere weak Americans, we ordered Coca Cola, along with weird looks. T had pork, beef, and chicken kebabs doused with bacon fat… bacon fat, lucky bastard. I had french fries. Yeah, french fries. I hadn’t realized when ordering them that I was getting straight up American French Fries, but it was breakfast, and I wanted my fried potatoes.

Hebrew Clock in Josefov, the Jewish Quarter

After our breakfast/brunch/lunch, we headed to Old Town Square (now known as OTS), and tried to get lost in the surrounding streets, but ended right back in OTS. So, we headed to Josefov, the Jewish Quarter, to see what was there. Getting there was pretty boring, there were a lot of big name shops. The Josefov area looked pretty rebuilt, with various old buildings scattered, all surrounding the very old Staronová synagoga, Old New Synagogue, from the 13th century. We opted not to go inside and opted not to see the Old Jewish Cemetery. We did eavesdrop on someone’s tour. Didn’t learn anything new.

We came across OTS again and headed off with the intention of wandering the streets some more. At Havelská Market, T finally got his bracelets, and I debated for a ridiculously long time on buying a souvenir clock. I didn’t get one. They definitely weren’t worth the cost (15 Euros!) so I’m pretty happy about that. They were cute though. If you were a clock collector, I would’ve gotten you one.

Spotted! The Marionette theater on Karlova!

Afterwards, we realized we had a LOT of time left in the day, and were running out of things of interest. We decided to hunt down the Marionette theater we had passed the day before. The problem was, we didn’t know where it was. We had done a lot walking on random streets the day before, but due to my extreme awesomeness, I was determind it was on Karlova Street and, sans map, find the theater. This was when T declared that we had been in Prague for too long.

Prague Day Two 1/3

Na zdraví!

chippycd — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:57:07 +0000

Tuesday 28th of April

Day 4: Praha Day One

No part of getting to Prague can be easy, Prague Castle: St. Vitus Cathedral FTW, Strudel! Na zdraví!

After having pizza in Prague we headed back to Ace Hostel to ask about the pup crawl. Turns out, the hostel owner is friends with the pub crawl organizer. He even had a binder with FAQ, and sold us the tickets. The tickets cost something like 20 euros, and we argued that 3 drinks in NYC would cost that much, so we could probably drink at least 20 euros worth. (Clearly, this logic works only on foreigners since 20 euros could buy you 3 times that in Prague). So we bought them there, then checked out the free internet were we learned that our plane tickets for Barcelona and Athens didn’t go through. Crap on that! T decided that since the pub crawl had already started, and we were losing our money’s worth on “all you can drink”, that we should head out. I managed to convince him to stop worrying about it for the entire night (although I’m not sure he truely let go of the issue until many drinks in).

Upon arriving at the pub crawl, they check our names off the list (apparently our Hostel guy called ahead about our arrival), took a drink order for us, (gave me a free T shirt for being a girl) and gave us a shot of absinthe to go along with it. Gag! We washed it down with beer…

While at Bar 1, we met James, the Scottish who’d been living in Prague for a couple months and hates on the Irish. He was the one taking our group around for the night. James left us to go greet people, and the waitresses continued to bring us shots of something that we didn’t order (they were “complimentary” at an all you drink venue…?) T and I finally acknowledged that I was going to be the only girl coming on the bar crawl. Story of my life at CMU. Poop on that.

They had us tap these bottles upside down. I took a photo instead.
Before we left Pub 1, they had us take a shot of what I call Red Bull and what T claimed to be “B12″. Whatever that is. They made us go through a silly procedure of flipping the bottles upside down and tapping them on the tables before drinking. Unless it’s got some purpose for activating some agent in the drink, I find it silly.

At Pub 2 we met a Black Artist from NYC who was moving to Berlin. I named him “Blart” because even after talking to him for most of the entire evening, we still couldn’t remember his name. He and T got into some pretty dorky, funny, going-nowhere discussions about his art projects. One of his art projects was to make a boat out of basketballs, and T went bonkers trying to mechanical engineer it out. Imagine an art major and a Mech E major going into serious debate about constructing a boat out of basketballs. Yeah. That silly.

Meanwhile, these jerks failed to noticed that this Thai guy, who clearly can’t hold his alcohol, starts talking to me. He comes over and says, and I quote, “You only girl here. You hot.”
Here’s how our conversation continues:
Me: “There’s girls right over there.”
Him: “No, you only girl here. You hot.”
Me: “There’s girls right over there.”
Him: “They gay. You only girl here. You hot.”
Lame come on.

At Pub 3 they gave us the shot of Red Bull again. This bar was called Coyotes, because it was basically a rip off of the bar in the film “Coyotes Ugly” where girls dressed as cowgirls dance on the bar top every now and then. T and Blart and I agreed, it was quite lame. They did this stupid bit with a fake 20′s microphone. Uber lame. While there, T got harassed by (German?) guys in our pub crawl. That had to be the most random thing ever. Blart tried getting the Aussie guys (whom he had several drinks with in “celebration” of the sausage fest that was the pup crawl) to pick a fight. I think he was a little beyond toasted to realize that the Germans were part of our group.

On our way to the club, T got to chat it up with an Aussie banker on a 6 week holiday looking for crack. Nice. I chatted it up with Blart, except he was a little too artist for me to follow.

At final destination, the club patted everyone down, declaring no glass bottles allowed. I was thinking, that’s unfortunate since I kept one of those “B12″ bottles as a souvenir. But, score, I’m a girl. They give me a free pass. Remember that if you want to smuggle something in.

We were the first of our group to go inside, along with drunk Thai guy. T and I quickly realized this wasn’t our scene so we peaced out after 2 minutes and headed back to Ace Hostel (a little difficult since we didn’t know exactly where the club was).

Praha Day One 4/4

Strudel!

chippycd — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:47:28 +0000

Tuesday 28th of April

Day 4: Praha Day One

No part of getting to Prague can be easy, Prague Castle: St. Vitus Cathedral FTW, Strudel! Na zdraví!

Watching for Strudels
We headed back towards Charles Bridge and Old Town Center, but not before stopping along the way at a coffee shop for an espresso pick me up (due to the little sleep either of us got). It was here we coined the codeword “strudel”.

Since everyone speaks English, we figured that yelling out the phrase “hot girl” over and over might not go by subtly enough. So, T left it up to me to pick out the codeword, and I, having been obsessed with the word strudel since eating beef goulash, said the first thing that came to mind. And then I ordered some.

Horse & Carriages in Old Town Square
In Staroměstské Náměstí, Old Town Square, we came upon it without realizing it. They say all roads (in Prague) lead to Old Town Square, and they weren’t kidding. We walked around a building (which happened to be Kostel sv Mikuláš, St. Nicholas Church, and out popped the square. It’s a pretty cute square, and it definitely has the Baroque architecture thing going on.

Pražský Orloj, Prague Astronomical Clock
We took a look around (with very little feet movement thanks to the pavement). We tossed a glance towards the large Gothic clock tower, thinking that the Prague Astronomical Clock wasn’t very impressive. It wasn’t until we walked further and saw a huge gathering around the corner of the tower. Then we saw Pražský Orloj, 2 minutes before the hour struck where a “spectacle” would take place. From our angle, we didn’t see much going on, and it doesn’t look like the people front and center were much impressed either. It’s still cool as a clock though.

It was here we were approached by a guy about Prague’s “coolest pub crawl”. There’s four locations. At the first bar, you get 2 hours of all you can drink. At the 2nd and 3rd bar, they give you a free entry shot. Then they take you to a night club and release the reigns on you. Having heard about scams in Eastern Europe, we were hesitant at first, but we let the guy do his thing, selling a shpeel about how it’s a way for foreigners to find each other and hang out, and eventually took an ad (with Strudels pictured) with the plan to ask our hostel guy about it.

Prague Day One 3/4

Prague Castle: St. Vitus Cathedral FTW

chippycd — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:42:07 +0000

Tuesday 28th of April

Day 4: Praha Day One

No part of getting to Prague can be easy, Prague Castle: St. Vitus Cathedral FTW, Strudel! Na zdraví!

Me & Kayso and St. Vitus Cathedral

At Pražský Hrad we got a limited ticket. Since the Royal Palace was closed, they let us see the History of Prague Castle. It wasn’t that uninteresting. I liked seeing the sculpted evolutions of Prague Hill & Castle. Back in the day, Prague was a pretty tiny city, when comparing it to today’s Prague.

We went inside Bazilika svatého Jiří, St. George’s Basilica, where I got yelled at by a woman for taking pictures, even though everyone around me was. I even asked another woman and she was OK with it, as long as there was no flash. The first woman claimed that I needed a special pass to take photos. I call shenanigans. She was singling me out quite much. I think it was because my camera was an SLR, not a P&S. Still not over it.

T & the short doors of Golden Lane
Afterwards we headed over to Zlatá Ulička, The Golden Lane, and Daliborka, a tower where they kept prisoners and tortured them. Lovely. Golden lane was pretty cute, all the building were tiny! There were shops in there, (there was one with lots and lots of old violins). I found the shops strange, because unless you paid to enter, you wouldn’t be able to shop there. Daliborka was weird and creepy and I’ll leave it at that. We went to one of the gardens that was free for anyone. No wonder, there was nothing to see, and it was ridiculously windy. Even if things weren’t growing yet, there was still nothing to see. Except maybe the view.

Impressive Organ inside St. Vitus Cathedral
But finally, we finished our tour of Pražský Hrad with a visit to Katedrála svatého Víta, St. Vitus Cathedral (free admission!). This was a very beautiful Gothic church and totally worth going to over St. George’s Basilica (no, still not over it).

Overall, Prague Castle was cool to go see, even without doing the full pass ticket. Wear comfy shoes though, because those cobblestone killed us (I also got rope burn on my neck from my camera bag). T and I suspected that the Royal Palace would have been more interesting than the history of Prague Castle. Bummer.

Prague Day One 2/4

No part of getting to Prague can be easy

chippycd — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:36:06 +0000

Tuesday 28th of April

Day 4: Praha Day One

No part of getting to Prague can be easy, Prague Castle: St. Vitus Cathedral FTW, Strudel! Na zdraví!

Prague Castle, a ways to walk before getting there

@Chomutov Station, thinking that the train ride was done.
After barely catching the train in Cheb, thinking I forgot the train ticket in the hotel, and having a near heart attack in Chomutov, we were finally nearing Prague. But the train confusions weren’t over. As we arrived at a train station called Hlavní Nádraží, I woke T up in a panic, thinking we arrived at our train station. I asked passengers getting on the train or off the train if we were in Prague, and I got multiple answers. I’m standing there, holding all my stuff pointing out the door saying “Praha?” and I’m getting nods and shakes and people pointing outside saying Praha and people pointing inside saying Praha. No, not confusing at all… Finally the conductor (who confirmed earlier that they weren’t ditching me in Chomutov) said the train was going to Praha, and another man (dressed and ready for work) said the next stop was Praha. Good enough. Too bad in all the confusion I dropped my Czech/Slovak/(Hungarian)/English translation book in the train tracks (I didn’t tell T).

I'm so worried about missing the Prague train station, I park myself at the exit for an hour.
So, we sit by the exit, unwilling to miss the next stop, and we STILL get off at the wrong Praha station! Here’s the notes from my journal:
Almost got off before Praha
Sitting at exit
Got off at wrong Praha Station

We find the metro/tourist info center, which also hooks us up with a free map (score!) and we take the C metro to the main station, Hlavní Nádraží. (At this point I begin to suspect that “Hlavní Nádraží” means “train station”). At the main train station we observe that the tourist info desk is closed (score 1 for us, we wouldn’t have been able to get a free map!). We decide to buy our tickets to Vienna tomorrow and head to Ace Hostel.

At Ace Hostel, the guy at the reception desk is super awesome. He gives us a (better) free map and directs us to places to see and (cheap) places to eat. As we leave I say “prosim!” (please) thinking I’m saying thank you, and he goes to tell me “Ahoj!” which apparently means hello and goodbye. He compliments my pronunciation of prosim/proseem (even though there’s no skill to pronouncing it) and gives us a phrase sheet! Score 1 for Ace Hostel! This was especially nice since I had lost my phrasebook (even at this point, I still don’t tell T that I lost it).

Shopping at Havelská Market
We head to Havelská Market for some tourist shopping and 10am lunch at Havelská Koruna Česká Kuchyně (we’re still not quite sure which was part of the restaurant’s name). It was good, I had a coca cola with it, instead of beer like everyone else. The coca cola was delicious. The Beef Goulash was good too.

Karlův Most, Charles Bridge
After lunch (and after buying a necklace for Tara at Havelská Market), we headed along Karlova street towards Charles Bridge & Hradcany aka Castle Hill. Sadly, Charles Bridge was under construction so there was lots of scaffolding blocking the view. Poop on that! And, thanks to the crazy wind and the construction, we kept getting sand/dirt in our eyes. Poop on that!

From the bridge, we can see Prague Castle, far and uphill. Oi with the cobblestone.

Prage Castle, seen from Charles Bridge

Prague Day One 1/4

Anglicky? Anyone? Anglicky???

chippycd — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:16:34 +0000

Monday 27th of April

Day 3 Continued: Cheb

Stuck in Nowheresville, Czech Republic, Anglicky? Anyone? Anglicky???

After consulting the Book, and discovering it had an entry on Cheb, including a hotel (supposedly very close to the station and city center), we decide our new plan is to check into the hotel, and get some sleep for a couple hours. Problem is: we have no map, and I have no idea how to pronounce anything in my phrasebook. So, I write down the phrase “Where is this” in Czech, along with the address, and hand it to Vietnamese man. He has no idea. Darn. Then, the guy cleaning the station finally takes notice of me, and looks at the address and proceeds to say a whole bunch of stuff to me that I don’t understand.

While this is going down, T is sitting on a bench with all our bags watching a fight go down. Something about a crazy woman and two crazy man. One of the crazy men gets his face beat up without putting any fight or resistance. This prompts a woman to come out of nowhere to investigate.

That woman happens to work the taxi calling service right on the outside of station. The cleaning guy takes me to the taxi woman, and they say a bunch of stuff to me, and I look at them and smile sadly with no understanding. I still have no idea what they were saying, but I think they were saying something about calling a taxi to take me there. I look in my phrasebook to ask for confirmation that the taxi can take me back in the morning, but getting a standard yes or no is not possible. They still give me a flood of words that sound like gibberish. The cleaning guy laughs at my sad phrasebook, while hoping to find something in Slovak. Who knows what, because then the police arrive.

The police arrive to handle the fight, thanks to a call from the taxi woman. The cleaning guy talks to one of the police officers, gesturing to me, most likely saying something like, “This sad little American girl is stuck at this sketchy station with no way to communicate.” And guess what! That police officer speaks English! I gotta say, my heart leapt right through my chest to hear him say “Hello.” The police officer says to the cleaning guy something along the lines of, let me take care of the fight first, then we’ll help her out. I assume this because the cleaning guy gestures (along with a lot more words in Slovak) to wait and that the police officer will help me.

The police officer comes back with a (plain-closed police officer?) guy (very well dressed actually, and pretty) who speaks better English. He asks what’s going on, we tell him we want to stay at a hotel until our train to Prague at 3am. He fumbles with the name of a hotel, which happens to be the same hotel we’re looking for, so I supply the name along with the address. He also confirms that it’s 24-hour reception (phew!). He talks to the taxi woman, and after much discussion about calling taxis to the station (I think they were done for the night) and about taxis taking me to the hotel and to the station in the morning, he mentions that the hotel is half a kilometer away.

0.5 Km!! At this point, I cancel the taxi (pissing off the taxi woman) and say I’ll just walk. I just need directions. Here are the directions: Walk straight out of the station onto the (one) main street heading straight from the station for 0.5 km. Pass two other streets and it’ll be on my right.

Seriously? A half hour of trying to find this street, and it’s right outside the train station?? O.M.G. So, I thank him, give T the good news, and we head out. Although, I’m reluctant to leave the English speaker because he’s our only source of communication. I wanted him to come along with us! Once he leaves our grasp we’re all on our own! I get over it quick.

So, an hour after arriving, we’re heading out on the abandoned streets of Cheb. The main road we’re walking out turns out to be completely demolished and dug up (for repavement?). The streets are empty except for one car driving by at an intersection, and 1 guy some distance away. T and I feel like we should feel uncomfortable walking the streets of Cheb at night, but it’s so empty and dead. Not to mention, we saw way more sketchyness while staying at the station.

We arrive at the hotel, and check in. The woman gives us directions to our room upstairs, but we still circle the upstairs at least twice since the rooms are slightly out of order. In our room, we find no clock but I find an outlet (hooray!). While T takes a shower (stinking since running in Munich), I charge the phone, and set the timer, hooray! I also take a shower, which turns out to be the shower with the best shower pressure ever.

I go to sleep, but in my anxiety about missing the train to Prague and being suck in Cheb, I wake up before the alarm goes off. We get to the train station no problem (town is still dead and empty), but can’t figure out which platform we should go to. There’s two trains leaving for Prague, one labeled Prague leaving 1 hr later, and another going to Chomutov leaving very soon. However, the Chomutov train matches the product number for Prague train I had found online. We rush to the Chomutov train and the woman confirms that the train is going to Prague. We get on.

Despite what a confusing and difficult experience Cheb was, I’m so glad I had that experience. Now that it’s over, the memory never ceases to amuse me. It’s not often you find yourself in stuck in RandomAssTownOfCzechRepublic. Cheb holds a very special place in my heart.

Cheb 2/2

Cheb in the middle of the night

Stuck in Nowheresville, Czech Republic

chippycd — Thu, 28 May 2009 23:45:11 +0000

Monday 27th of April

Day 3 Continued: Cheb

Stuck in Nowheresville, Czech Republic; Anglicky? Anyone? Anglicky???

Ah Cheb… no words will ever be able to properly describe how I felt about Cheb. In T’s words, it’s like the West Virginia of the Czech Republic. But, Cheb was so much more than that, I hope this entry can give you a little glimpse of our taste of Cheb’s atmosphere.

Before going into our experience at Cheb, I need to make a few statements:
1. We were going to stay in the middle of the night for four hours at the train station. I mentioned before that I was ready to carry the night shift for the sake of our adventure.
2. Everywhere we’d been hearing about how sketchy Eastern Europe was, this is why we bought the cable and locks.
3. All we had for English translation for Czech or Slovak was a small phrasebook I had picked up.

So, we arrive at Cheb at 21:00. With one look at the platform area, I realize there’s no why in hell I’ll feel comfortable staying there. My insecurities about Eastern Europe were getting to me, coupled with the fact that this was a tiny crappy train station. So, we head towards the building, where it continues to look rundown and abandoned. It takes T very little time to realize that it’s not 11pm, like I thought we would arrive, but actually 9pm, 21:00. Yeah that’s right. I’m a dumb American who didn’t read the military time correctly (I like to blame stress & fatigue). At this point, we declare T in charge of all time calculations. So, there we are, in a (mostly) empty train station at 9pm, and not leaving until 3am.

The train station is tiny, it’s almost like a metro station. It’s hard to believe that it’s only 9pm since it’s absolutely pitch black outside, and there’s absolutely nothing open at this station. There’s a woman with her child just hanging around, waiting for someone to arrive I suppose. There’s another guy, our age-ish, cleaning the place. There were two girls hanging out in the tunnel connecting the platforms and the station, I have no idea what they were doing, or where they ended up. And then, there was us, in Cheb.

There’s not even a map on the wall. There’s schedules of trains departing and leaving, but because we have no dictionary, we have no idea what those signs say. There’s one to/from Prague that leaves/arrives in 30 minutes. I’m pretty sure it’s arriving from, but I can’t confirm because I can’t read the signs. A bunch of people arrive, and walk swiftly out of the station, and it breaks my heart to see them leave. An Asian man and woman arrive, arguing about something, and calling someone, possibly to come pick them up. It takes me a long time of eavesdropping to confirm that they are Vietnamese (apparently there’s a large Vietnamese community in Cheb). At this point, I try to ask them for help with the train schedule, but I quickly realize I cannot communicate with them at all. This quickly annoys the woman, who I believe said something along the lines of “Stupid girl doesn’t know Vietnamese, what’s the point in talking to her” and probably thinking, “What the hell is she doing in Cheb not able to speak Czech” and other possibly annoyed feelings. The guy is still trying to help, but after another minute of gesturing and crappy communication (verbal and written), I begin to suspect he doesn’t know Slovak or Czech either.

Since they can’t confirm the train to/from Prague, I go with the 99% certainty that that train is not going to Prague. Time for a Plan B.

Cheb 1/2