The transfer in Frankfurt was easy, independently it was the first time I was in a country whose language I did not understand at all. Three Czech guys who had travelled with me from London and who spoke English became my occasional travel mates. The bus we took was really small, which in Argentina we would call “combi”, and I think the driver was Czech. He turned out to be a very quiet and kind man. Of the first I realized because he had to return to the station after we had travelled for some kilometers: a passenger had arrived a little later and he had to pick him up. That he was kind I learned once we got to Prague, for reason I will later reveal.
The “combi” was hotter than hell. The AC was not working well (if it was working) and the sun burnt not only the Earth but mainly the roof of our little transport. I talked a lot with my new travel mates, youth in their twenties, and we exchanged almost burning water and smoked together when the van stopped. They told me they had been working in London to earn some money to sightsee Great Britain. They had been taking care of horses in stables somewhere in the English countryside. They also made a list for me of the places I should see in Prague, besides the famous Charles Bridge and the Castle.
Knowing Prague had been one of my greatest dreams so far. I had read Kafka while I was studying to become a translator, I had searched about his life and work, and had always wanted to be in the city where Franz had certainly walked to go to his monotonous job. On the other hand, it had been the place that Larisa, an old friend of mine, and me had chosen to meet. Our original idea, somewhat romantic, had been to meet at Charles Bridge. Then, when we were both already travelling, realizing it was going to be a little difficult to set time and date and coincide and that we would probably get lost among the crowd, Larisa told me she would meet me at the bus station to then go together to the hostel (she had arrived in Prague some days before, together with people from a work camp from an NGO).
We got to the bus station on time, a very hot evening. I laid down my backpack, said goodbye to the kind driver and, with the three Czech guys, I started to look for a place where I could exchange some money. The first sensation I got from the place was that of weirdness and obscurity, beyond the fact that it was almost 8 p.m. and the Sun was already down. In contrast to the usual tidiness of Western Europe stations, the sidewalks here were covered by a kind of greasy layer not only due to the soot and oil of buses but also to the lack of a daily sweeping. Although my travel mates were Czech, they seemed to be so shy that they were not able to ask anyone whether there was any exchanging house so I asked at the only open ticket office inside the station. I do not remember what the assistant told me, what I do have in mind is the image of four people walking around the building to finally find out that the exchanging house was closed and that one of these people was beginning to feel the effects of the communication barrier. The guys had to take a bus that would take them to their hometown and they decided to cut in line on the Metro to the other terminal. I said goodbye to them and darkness got even more black. I waited for Larisa, who was delayed, and I began to ask anyone I met where I could find Czech crowns. There were two tobacco stands on the sides of the exit door and they were assisted by two Czech women with stiff features, resolved not to smile at all when they replied to me in their own language with words that sounded harsh and totally incomprehensible to me.
I began to feel a little worried and decided to just wait for my friend´s arrival. Paradox: worry obviously excludes being quiet. Many minutes had passed since the time we were supposed to meet and I did not even have the hostel´s info, nor a map, nor money and no chance to access emails.
Outside the station, there were stands that sold many products, at a very low price, whose sellers were mostly Vietnamese. The insistent and anxious sellers were finishing their working day and they passed by me with sidelong glances and speaking a strange language too (which did not seem to be Czech). Minutes went by and Larisa did not show up and I got a little more worried. The backpack began to feel like a mountain of stones on my back and the only places where I could sit down were in darkness, inside the station. I suddenly saw the driver who had taken me from Frankfurt closing the van’s hood and about to step onto the seat. I went to him and asked where I could exchange some money. Very kindly and calmly, he told me that at that time of the day all would be closed. I smiled at him and said goodbye. I turned around and a guy and two girls were coming my way. I stood in front of them and, smiling nervously, I asked the same question to them. With the typical American light gesture, the guy told me there was an ATM just behind me. Wow! Those were the effects of being worried in extreme: blind to the core of my being!
I went to the ATM and took some money to get to downtown and look for a cyber-bar. Two Chilean girls sitting outside the ATM guided me and a pretty Czech woman went with me to the city center. Larisa had not arrived and I finally found a place to check emails in the city center. The place was assisted by a very kind guy who told me the PC`s were on the first floor: I had to climb the steps with the two backpacks on! (I now realize I could have asked the guy to leave them downstairs!)
I found Larisa’s email with the hostel´s info and I went straight to the area where I thought it would be. I arrived at a sort of highway, with few houses, and at the traffic lights there was a Mexican couple who, thank God, were staying at a hostel just next door to mine. They took me through an open land area where they were building something until we got to ELF, the hostel were I was supposed to meet Larisa.
I climbed some steps that had no roof and that led to a small patio with trees, which served as natural ceiling. Through the patio I got to the reception. Yes, Larisa had certainly booked a bed for me too so, after checking-in, being shown the facilities and listening twice or three times the Metro passing literally by the hostel´s patio, I took a shower and laid down in one of the bunk beds of the room I would share with my friend and six other people.
Half awake, I listened to someone coming in, turning on the light and walking some steps inside the room. Without opening my eyes, I felt the presence of someone watching me. It was Larisa, to whom I almost jumped from the bed, shouting those stupid things that only Argentinians shout when they are happy. We went to the ground floor to take a cold drink and catch up for lost time (four months). It was really very nice to see her again. The idea of being in a foreign land, with foreign people speaking foreign languages, was really funny.
Charles Bridge turned out to be less picturesque but more anachronistic than what can be seen in touristic materials. The statutes that stand on both sides have not been cleaned for years so a thick black soot layer and spider webs covers them, seemingly overcoming the passing of years, wind and rain. Being there, if you are able to get up early and then avoid the crowds of people that pass through it every day, gives the feeling of going back in time immediately, where you can hear secret stories that, escaping in whispers among the gestures of the statutes, invisibly wrap the 500-metre long construction. The two towers that delimit the bridge in the city center, one at the beginning and the other at the end of it, are simple and yet, essentially baroque, as are the churches´ vaults that characterize the city. The river Vltava runs below Karluv Moist serenely and loosely, embracing hundreds of touristic boats and canoes that for a few Czech crowns allow you to see Prague from another perspective.
With my friend we walked many kilometers a day. The first day, we had a picnic on the riverside with her work camp mates: tomato sandwiches, bread and cheese, juices and biscuits. Some fruit. We visited Kafka´s museum, took a million photos, attended a pantomime show in a beautiful gallery in the old town, talked about everything, shared a beer under the darkness of Tyn Church… And thanks to the thick bittersweet feeling of a friends´ argument for reasons that do not go beyond one´s physical exhaustion and the other´s impatience, we played the fools in the pedestrian street, sitting below toilets that were supposed to represent trees in some postmodern art, we smoke Moon cigarettes, the cheapest we were able to find, shared pasta with tomato sauce and tuna fish, argued with the hostel´s owners for having been moved of room without our consent and one day, when we arrived, our backpacks were spread on the corridor. And one of Larisa’s briefs was shining bright on the top of the luggage mountain. We knew each other better. We learnt to accept each other and talk a similar language that, some days ago when we were back in Argentina, turned out to be a sort of Pentecost that redeemed me from a Babel isolation with almost everybody in my hometown when I returned from the trip.
We went to the Castle, a huge baroque building standing one a kind of plateau where you can see Prague almost entirely. We laughed at a Czech who did not want Larisa to take a photo of him and, like a child, stopped playing the violin and hit the bow against his leg, angrily, as and additional and free show for the astonished tourists. We were thirsty under the scorching heat of Czech noons, we sat to eat tomato sandwiches in two parks, we talked to travellers at the hostel. We laughed a lot of silly things, like when Larisa, in the dark night of the hostel´s patio, wanted to move a chair and failed to see that two of its legs had no floor to stand on and then fell noisily over the neighbor table where other backpackers were having dinner.
The last night we were in Prague we met an Argentinian while we were smoking a Moon in a square. The guy had been at the football world cup and had travelled around Europe with the Eurail Pass. He was returning to Argentina the next day and wanted to sleep at the station. We convinced him of staying at our hostel, which was cheap and would be much safer than the bus station. We talked for a while with him and then on our way to the hostel. He was an actor in cruises in Ushuaia. A real bohemian, very nice. Finally there was no availability at our hostel but he managed to find a bed in the hostel next door, at even a cheaper price.
Larisa had bought tickets to go to Budapest by bus. A cloudy evening, after having to pay a dollar to the guy that put the luggage on the bus compartment (or otherwise our bags would not be carried), we sat in a comfortable bus, the cheapest, I think, I ever paid in Europe.
To read about my second visit to this Eternal City ten years later, click here.
The Ways of Infinity 