Prague, Part 2

Remnants of "socialism with a human face" still exist everywhere in Prague - sort of like those "Believe" stickers in Baltimore, except the Prague version would be more akin to "Please don't be so sad". Untouched for the most part by war, the influence of Moscow on the city is clear: spires and domes, heroic Lenin-like statues striking poses, and those fuzzy souvenir KGB hats (imported from China, amusingly). One can only wonder what Praha would look like if Patton had liberated Prague instead of the Red Army. Wandering through the downtown maze of passageways is like walking through your high school during summertime: clean, quiet and echo-y, you can almost hear the chattering voices of ghosts still wandering the buffed-floor halls. It reminded me a lot of the Chicago underground (literal) shopping culture.

I crossed one of the major bridges across the Vltava river and traipsed through Nove Mesto, Stare Mesto, and down the Vaclavske namesti, or the equivalent of the Champs-Elysées for Prague. The goofy souvenir shop : nice shop ratio climbs to astronomical levels as one gets closer to this, the major shopping district of the city. The street was jammed with tourists and I spent the first few minutes becoming accustomed and claustrophic with 5000 of my closest friends as we all jockeyed for the best picture position.

I impulsively walked the streets of Prague past sunset, into the night, and found myself on a narrow street where the clear "ka-chink" of typewriter keys could be heard. I moved closer to the sound and found it was coming from the open window of a brightly-lit, second-story building: the police station. No Microsoft Vista upgrade problems for these guys! I turned the corner and literally ran into three teenagers smoking a small bong and eating FRIED McDonalds pies (they apparently still fry them here). I laughed out loud and drew very paranoid looks from the kids who scattered like cockroaches when the lights come on.

Hungry and tired, I wandered into a small restaurant that had a tiny door and loud jazz emanating from its cavernous depths. I stumbled past the bar and sat down at a tiny, 10-table venue called Red, Hot, and Blues - not anything like it's American counterpart, it is a hangout for struggling artists trying to get enough gigs that will pay for their dinner. A band called Fency was belting out versions of rockabilly and jazz classics in broken English, all while trying to pick up on a table of British tourist girls in the front. I inhaled my pork tenderloin, potatoes, and Stella Artois, listened to a few more songs, then made my way out into the light rain that started to come down. On the way back across the bridge to my hotel, I stumbled across an outdoor film festival that was playing a Bollywood film at ridiculous audio levels. I jammed out for a few minutes, then took my tired ass home.

A few recommendations to the Prague Tourist Council:

1. Get better cabaret promoters. Walking past one of the random cabarets at the end of the Vaclavske namesti near St. Wenceslas square, a promoter said "Come on in. It's sort of a nice place." Wow. Remind me never to get a marketing guy from Prague. In a city where operas and symphony orchestra concerts are promoted as aggressively as cabarets, it's important that you send the right message to win market share!
   
2. Sell out, but don't do it with KFC! Freaking KFCs everywhere! I never thought I would see Czechs swallowing the greasy-ass (but oh so delicious) chicken skins off of a Colonel Sander's breast.
   
3. Only you can prevent horrible t-shirts. I believe that Prague may be single-handedly responsible for the proliferation of tshirts with bad english. Most involve the f*ck word or funny (and nonsensical) uses of English. Where's the industry that sells random Czech slogans to Americans? Why isn't this industry bigger?
   
4. Get better casinos. I walked into a casino and amazed at how it sucked. Our casino nights during rush week at Pi Kappa Alpha were better. The sullen tourists dumped money onto the 3 roulette tables, 4 slot machines, and 2 poker tables. When I wandered through, there must have been around 6 people in the entire place. Sad, sad, sad.
   
5. Cities with a history of espionage are cool. If DC can put together an okay-version of the Spy Museum, I'm sure Prague could do better - especially since it's REALLY a hub for espionage.
   

Ideas of the Day:

• T-shirt shop for Czechs (or other nationalities) to create random t-shirts and sell them to willing Americans who like to see random foreign words on their shirts. Cafepress - time to start mirroring in .cz!
• Ipod-based currency exchanger. Trying to figure out dollar prices from koruna is a bitch. Hey Apple, give us an "Extra" on the Ipod where you can set the exchange rate, thumbroll up to a price, and see the relative value.
  

Flickr set is here.