“Yeah, Jim is good with the ladies…”

Prague, or Praha for the learned, was a beautiful city for sure. There is not one building in Gainesville, or any surrounding city for that matter, that matches up to the lowliest of buildings in Prague. As our [crazy] tour guide mentioned, “Prague has more statues than anywhere else in the world. Not per capita or per city…just more.” He was right. Buildings have statues, roads have statues, light posts have statues, and statues have statues.
Our hostel in Prague was nice but the roommates were not the best so far. We had three different pairs during our two days there. The first were two nice guys from Holland. No problemo. The second pair were two more guys (as you stay in more hostel you gradually realize that girls are much better roommates, as much as I don’t like to admit this), one from the New England area and his friend from the Netherlands. They were smelly and their clothes were smelly and they made the room stink for two days. OK, we can deal with that, they were nice guys nevertheless. The third pair, that took the Holland Guy’s beds, was disgusting. They were from some Scandinavian country, apparently one with no standard of living. They smelled too, but they offered so much more. They stole our key card (by an obvious accident- but still), they had dirty…stuff…scattered everywhere. The final straw was when we woke up to check out; one of them had vomited in the only sink. Whatever, lets hit the streets of Prague...
Prague was awesome. We had entered the part of Europe where everyone was starting to look like a supermodel (the more east/south we go the more this seems to be true). We left our hostel to find a good place to eat. We decide to stop at a pizza place with some nice tables by the road. Incredible pizza. They are cheap and described as 10 inches across. I decide 10 inches is (measures with hands) this big so we each order our own pizza. Turns out I am not a reliable measurer without a ruler. We shortly receive two enormous pizzas. Mine has four miraculously melty cheeses and is eight times delicious. Ronak’s vegetarian pizza is stacked with brick oven veggies and smoldering cheese and would make anyone happy to be vegetarian. So far, we like this city. On our way back to the hostel to relax and sleep we spot a place to eat for breakfast the next morning. Enter Bohemian Bagel: a simply, classy “bagel” shop that serves genuine American breakfast. Ronak devoured a thick, heterogeneous mixture (omelet) of fluffy egg and chopped veggies. My eyes, and stomach, were full with a fat, phat pancake curled around two sausage links with butter and warm syrup that comes standard with café and a bubbly mimosa. At this point we are ready to move here, and we haven’t even been to the real city yet.
As I inferred earlier, the architecture is just amazing. Prague, uniquely, had only one building destroyed during WWII. This makes it one of the very few cities that did not have to rebuild in Europe. In other words, everything is OLD. A 200-year-old building is not impressive in this city. The “old town square” is filled with tourists and restaurant promoters. Ronak and I decided to hop onto a free tour (the same company we used in Berlin) and soon discovered our crazy guide. He spoke at least 4 languages. He was from Los Angeles and English is his native language, we heard him speak Czech (he has lived in Prague for eight years and is a fluent speaker). We heard him speaking fluent Spanish to some Chilean kids. Some Slovakian people walked by and he spoke with them for a couple of minutes (he said his college roommates were Slovakian and so he just picked it up). While we impressed with this, Isaac, our guide, was funny, offensive, loud, absent-minded, oh, and did I mention offensive? Luckily, he offended everybody equally, so it was hard to get mad. The city has a very rich history and it really, really cool. I, however, do not remember most of the history so you’ll have to check Wikipedia for that because this blog is already too long. So lets skip to the nightlife.
Ronak and I join up on a bar crawl. We did it in Berlin and it seems like the best way to get an idea of the nightlife as it visits 4 bars and one club. As we are waiting for the ‘crawl’ to start we bump into three American guys and we cling with them because the other people are sketchy and we are mildly xenophobic. It seems that we had met three people more nerdy than ourselves. One guy was about to begin a computer job with Amazon.com. Another was a music major and made awkward jokes. The last was the least nerdy (including Ronak and I in the group) he was an econ major and his name was Jim. We start the parade to the bars with our group of 5 guys and we meet lots of different people. It turns out, the nerdy guys like to party. The three guys we meet start pounding beers and are quite the socialites. The night starts to fly by and before we know we are in quite a cool club with four large underground rooms. There are flashing lights but you can’t see anything. The music is blaring but you can’t hear anything. We find our American friends and regroup. These three nerdy guys have started quite the party. They met a group of Brazilian girls and have managed to keep them interested. Ronak and I are thoroughly impressed with this. The Brazilians are pretty nice and they have a very hilarious French friend who helps Ronak and I with our Paris trip a little. By next bar we can tell our makeshift group of Americans and Brazilians is starting to fall apart. The girls seemed bored and annoyed and suddenly we realize why they were hanging out with our nerdy friends in the first place. In a dark corner, on a couch, I spot Jim (the less nerdy one). He is with one of the Brazilian girls, for lack of a more accurate description, necking with a side of tonsil hockey. Very amused I grab the musician’s shoulder and shout, “Hey! Check out Jim with that Brazilian, I can’t believe it.” The Musician-nerd loses his smile and says with a hint of emotional pain, “yeah, JIM is good with the ladies.”

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