What a Night

After a much-needed nap, I took a stroll looking for the Museum of Communism to no avail. It's ironically located next to a McDonald's and a Casino, just a block east of Wenceslas Square, but I simply couldn't find it. I decided to console my disappointment with one of the many delicious looking klobasas (hot dogs) found at street vendors all over the square. Apparently, you can't judge a book by its cover. While it wasn't awful, the greasy tube of lips and assholes wasn't nearly as delicious or satisfying as it looked, and the bun was even more disappointing. I ate maybe half of the offending dog and chugged my nearly flat cup of Coke and walked home sullenly.

I met a few more of my roommates, three very sweet girls from the US and Canada who are on spring break from their school in Lancashire, UK. Unfortunately, it's a bible school, so I don't think they're going to be up for much trouble. My other two roomies are a pair of very soft-spoken students from NYU, and judging by their voices I'm guessing they're castrati. They don't seem to be up for much fun, either.

Luckily, the Danish dudes came back, and there's an expression here that basically means "to drink like a Dane." Excellent. We decided a pub crawl was in order, and so we made our way into the Old Town for pub #1, a small basement affair with cheap beer on tap, 80's music videos on the screen, and - asynchronously - hardcore punk rock on the speakers. The place was mostly filled with students, which is always a good sign, and we toasted our Pilsners to the start of a great night out in Prague. To get the juices flowing, a couple of the guys also ordered Red Bull and the local knockoff, Semtex. Yeah, like the explosive. Cool name, huh?

On to bar #2! Just the other day, while looking for a record store, the girls and I had stumbled upon a dark cave of a bar, situated well underground by means of an extremely steep staircase. Alternatiff, it's called, and the music and atmosphere fit the name, with posters from the likes of KMFDM on the wall and a clientele dressed in black and smoking Gauloises to no end. Just the atmosphere I dig. The boys went for some cheap but potent mojitos, while I opted for the original Budweiser (aka Budvar), a brew that puts the globally-dominating American piss to shame. We toasted yet again to a killer night out. This was the making of an epic bar crawl.

Getting up to head for bar #3, Mikkel realized his wallet was missing. Sure, Prague is known for pickpocketry and other unsavory crimes targeting tourists, but this was ridiculous. It was in the zipped inner chest pocket of his snowboarding shell. Panic ensued. Was it at the bar? No. On the floor? No. Did he drop it in the bathroom? No. The bar staff, in a typically Czech manner, was unhelpful. We scouered every square inch of every part of the bar we'd been in and fuond nothing. We went back to bar #1 and found nothing. We even went all the way back to the hostel and found nothing. How could a heavy, easy-to-feel wallet just disappear like that? He'd used it and put it back in his jacket pocket, he swore 100%. Just how good are these pickpockets here? We were dismayed, disappointed, and ultimately mystified.

Back at the hostel, we sat around and expressed frustration in both losing the wallet and having our big night cut short. My half-a-hot-dog-filled stomach was also growling, so while the boys talked of the logistics of canceling Danish bank cards and filing reports, I ran out to the local 24-hour Arab stand and picked up some sort of chicken shawarma platter at around the cost of $4. Not bad for late night eats, but not very tasty either.

Disappointed by street food and robbed of a great pub crawl experience, this evening has NOT been what I wanted, so I'm still looking for that quintessential night out in Prague. It'll have to wait. Hopefully the boys will have luck with the wallet troubles, and we'll be able to put all this behind us. For the time being, that chicken shawarma's asking to get out of my belly. Good night.