So we'd thoroughly nailed Berlin and now it was time to move on. But before leaving Berlin, Em and I visited Checkpoint Charlie, despairing at the huge McDonald's situated right on the spot of the historic landmark... and then guilt-eating away our own hypocrisy with Twix Mcflurrys.
Then it was time for the 12:46 train to Prague! Us, and the rest of the interrailing peasants were herded into the stuffy train corridors with no room to move and no room to breathe. But me and Em pride ourselves on being problem solvers so it wasn't long before we were sneaking into an air-conditioned and oasis-like reserved compartment where we immediately made friends with a group of Irish girls who were doing the same thing. Sadly this peace ended abruptly when we were sternly ousted from the compartment by an angry 8 year old Asian boy and his apologetic mother.
We rejoined the rest of our kind in the crammed corridor as people tried in vain to find friends and seat reservations. A particularly memorable moment for me was when an angry, determined, large German man who, despite the lack of feasible passage, went on to barge, prod, shove and swear his way through our ranks. I genuinely had to hold my breath as he elbowed me in the stomach to increase his momentum. Very pleasant.
But before long all this was forgotten as we nestled into our sweaty corridor amongst our fellow interrailers who WERE ALL IRISH. I think that the whole of the Irish youth must have planned a mass exodus to central Europe during summer 2013 because they were EVERYWHERE. One guy from Dublin, who was incredibly difficult to understand, talked about the beauty of post-it notes but soon left us at the sight of an empty chair. Yet all in all, the time passed fairly quickly, especially when we got talking to a group of people from Belfast. And as the train pulled into Prague Station, we were exchanging email addresses with the intention of going out together that night.
Passing absintherie after absintherie, we made it to our hostel and were shown to our 10 bed dorm. We must have delved 2 storeys below ground level (accompanied by a severe temperature drop) before we finally found our freezing, bare-bricked, windowless and doorless (there was a curtain) room. It reminded me of a winery, except that fine and aged wine was replaced by less fine and less aged travellers. For example, the two Swedish guys in our room who looked about 15 and sat in the room THE WHOLE TIME listening to Euro-trash and playing chess on their phones. They really needed to get
Em drew a WONDERFUL map to the Belfastians' hostel and we headed out. Their hostel was amazing, cheap, and the owners were lovely. Once we told them the hostel we were staying in, the owner replied "yes your hostel is bad." We bought in wonderfully cheap pre-drinks and food and cracked out the card games in their fabulous and luxurious and pleasant (we weren't envious at all...) hostel.
Our first night out in Prague began with 3 of us desperate for the toilet whilst we all roamed around looking for a club and arguing over the factors of safety and proximity. Proximity won the day as we hurried past a scary-looking scantily-dressed woman dancing on a podium by a club door. We then got in a dubious lift (I don't know it just was) which took us up to the actual club.
It was our first night out in central Europe and we quickly ascertained: good DJs, decent enough music... and horrific dancing. Here's a quick list of the people we interacted with:
- Wannabe Channing Tatum: this guy honestly thought he was in Step Up and writhed around the floor a lot.
- Sandy at the end of Grease: she had come to the club alone in what looked like a black swimming costume.
- Romeo and Juliet: they thought that if they stopped dry humping for even a second, they'd die. EW.
- The Dad Dancer: you know the one - tall, bald and flailing. Except this one also wore sunglasses.. at night.. inside.
And all these people were drawn to us like moths to a flame because we were CLEARLY the best dancers in da house. After feeling we'd represented Britain fantastically, we proudly made the obligatory 3am trip to McDonald's and walked back to the hostel, marvelling at the ease of flat shoes.
