by Kyle James
We had to part ways with Berlin the next day—already our fifth day. We had fallen in love with the city. Every city had been beautiful, each country unique, but Berlin—Berlin made me feel like we’d conquered something. If Seattle and Brooklyn had a tatted-up toddler in a leather jacket who’d been expelled from preschool for selling cigarettes on the playground … that would be Berlin. She was just clean enough to avoid being dirty, the people and temperature just warm enough to avoid being cold, and the history just recent enough to avoid being forgettable.
6/26/15
Berlin, Germany → Prague, Czech Republic
We were on the road again. We walked through our neighborhood toward the Hallesches Tor metro station. It is remarkable how our familiarity and perception of the neighborhood had changed since our arrival. We had eaten at almost every restaurant on our block, and knew the faces of the bike repair shop and market owners. We smiled and waved at them as we left. We reached our station and flew through the ticket machine process without breaking our stride.
After departing the metro station, we found our bus. We were the first ones on, and we took front seats in the double-decker Mercedes. Once we were settled, I left the bus to grab some breakfast from a bistro near the station. We were nearing the noon mark in a few hours, and Ash was closing in on Hangry Hulkess. I pulled the trigger on some croissants and blueberry muffins. I also got some German chocolate. (This was ammo in case Ash got angry with me later. No matter what I did wrong … chocolate solved everything.)
As the bus smoothly hummed, I dozed in and out in that purgatory zone—the sleep zone where you’re awake enough to hear the conversations around you, but not awake enough to respond and defend yourself if someone talks shit about you because they thought you were asleep. Before falling asleep, I kept thinking about getting kidnapped. Then I finally dozed off for good.
I must have been in a deep enough sleep to feel … at home. I passed a large amount of gas, loud enough that it actually woke me up. The bus was full of strangers and was completely silent prior to this event—everyone had heard it. I quickly ran my crisis-management analysis and had to decide whether to play it off and continue sleeping (I had not yet opened my eyes), or wake up and act casual, like it wasn’t me. I tried to move in my chair and replicate the sound of the fart; unfortunately, no movement in my chair mimicked the noise of a bowel explosion. I tried to kick casually at the footrest—that wasn’t going to cut it either.
My curiosity about the passengers’ reaction to the trumpet sound was too strong, and I opened my eyes and immediately glanced at Ash, hoping at least she had slept through it. She was staring at me, holding her shirt up to her nose to create a safety tent, not too pleased that the cannon had been aimed in her direction. I stared at her apologetically and slowly pulled the chocolate out of my backpack. She perked up and excitedly began eating the chocolate. Unfortunately, I did not have enough chocolate for the rest of the bus.
We arrived in Prague and were reminded that our euros would not work in a country that used Czech crowns. Idiots. We would be here for four days, so we got eight thousand crowns out, which equated to about three hundred dollars. We had four bills total, each worth two thousand crowns. Unfortunately, the train tickets were forty-five crowns each, and the machine wouldn’t take our two-thousand crown bills.
It took us going into four shops before someone understood English and our dilemma, and agreed to give us change for a two-thousand-crown bill. We finally got our tickets, and it took two trains to get to our stop.
Eager to see the city of Praha, we unpacked everything we could into the empty drawers of our simple Airbnb setup, then hit the city. We put “Prague City Center” into our maps and started the mile-long walk. This was usually a good way to see things. Start at the nucleus. We came to the top of a hill about halfway to the city center, and there she was in all her beauty … Ash. And behind Ash, was Prague.
We stopped in our tracks and looked down hundreds of feet at the elegant city made up of castles, churches, Gothic buildings, and bridges that connected the two sides of the Vltava River. There must have been a second or two of silence before Ash blurted out, “Shut the fuck up.” I’d only only heard her blurt this out once before, when we first saw the view of a beautiful Costa Rican bay from the porch of our hotel years ago.
The surprise aerial view of the city had distracted us from all the people to our right enjoying the view of the city over their large beers. It dawned on us that we had stumbled upon the beer garden we had read about: Letná Beer Garden, a beer-drinker-and-hillto p-view-lover’s dream.
We entered the city center, and it truly was a fairy-tale landscape, replete with horse-drawn carriages click-clacking through the mazes of cobblestone roads sheltered by neoclassic architecture and Gothic buildings. The Old Town Square was humming with happy people dining and laughing. It’s impossible to be in a bad mood here. What I truly loved about the vibe in this square was that it seemed like everyone acknowledged how lucky he or she was to be in Prague at that particular moment.
We wanted to try genuine Czech food at some point. Tonight, however, we were in the mood for Mexican.
The margaritas made the meal a blur, and food quickly came and disappeared. We grimaced as our waitress brought us the bill for an order of nachos, two chicken burritos, and four margaritas. I did the conversion math and found our bill was the equivalent to only eighteen dollars. “We are spoiled forever,” we joked, dishing out crowns like a dentist in the seventies.
Ash and I raced back to the Old Town Square, reenergized by tequila. I noticed a large crowd of people with their iPhones and selfie sticks handy, surrounding a large clock tower. As the clock struck midnight, ancient-looking skeletons emerged from doors around the clock and began dancing. This was the Prague orloj, the oldest working astronomical clock in the world (it was built in 1410).
We wrapped up our first night in Prague by sitting in the middle of the square enjoying coffee and dessert. The lit-up towers and soft music had Ash’s romance meter soaring. She continued to talk about how romantic this place was, and we held hands as we ate dessert. We had been on the move so much in the last few weeks and trying to see so much that I felt like I hadn’t adequately shown Ash how thankful I was that she pushed us to do this.
Before our walk home, I pulled out the K necklace from Berlin. That morning when I’d gone to get breakfast, I had snuck back into the store and bought it for her. It wasn’t much, and maybe only cost seventy-five dollars, but the look on her face when I brought it out of my pocket was worth every dime. I had planned to save it for a romantic night in Italy, but I couldn’t imagine a night more romantic than this. Ash wore Prague well; I took it as a by-product of our not only falling in love with each other all over again, but also falling in love with our journey. We kissed under the Prague moon as the orloj struck one.
6/27/15
Prague, Czech Republic
We consumed our morning double espressos in the beer garden overlooking the city. It turned out that the coffee shop up here already served double espressos as their “espresso.” So when we’d ordered a double, we’d actually received four shots of the good stuff.
By the end of breakfast I had the shakes. I felt like I was going through heroin withdrawal. The amount of coffee we had just consumed was unhealthy. Now that I think about it, we had been drinking nothing but coffee, beer, and wine since we’d arrived in Europe. I am usually good about hydrating, but when water cost the same amount as beer, water rarely won that fight.
We left the coffee shop and made our way toward the Vltava River to roam the New Town. We were trying to decide if we liked Prague or Berlin better, and whether we liked Berlin better than Amsterdam. Then it dawned on me: by ranking these cities, we were quantifying them. We shouldn’t try to quantify our experiences; we had loved every city we’d been to thus far, so there was no point in ranking them. Paris may be the prettiest city, but the beer in Belgium, the people in Netherlands, and
the energy in Berlin were just as special in their own ways.
We strolled aimlessly and joyfully down the old, pristine roads and wrapped up our first full day in Prague by drinking a bottle of wine at dinner and watching a pub crawl of college kids stamp drunkenly through the streets. They seemed so childish to us as we elegantly sipped our wine, but we realized we were only four years removed from those college days.
Here we were, four years later in the dreaded so-called real world that every adult in our lives had warned us about. I think Ash’s and my generation is trapped in a tough period between the perceived lifestyle of the last two generations (the Boomers and Gen Xers) and the technological advancements and worldwide globalization of the last two decades, which has dramatically altered the landscape of the new normal workforce. This has created the paradox wherein so many people in their thirties, forties, and fifties are now taking the jobs that Millennials need in their late twenties. I was starting to realize that traveling the world and taking a step off the ladder for four months may help me find the elevator—that is, the elevator to happiness, which contrary to what I had believed (and had drilled into my head) growing up, may not necessarily be a high-paying job with a great title.
As we walked back across the bridge and started the steep ascent, it turned out to be a tougher climb up—four hundred steps—to get to the beer garden that we’d thought, but the view was worth the work.
6/28/15
Prague, Czech Republic
Today served as a workday for us, and we found a coffee shop with outdoor seating in the bustling city center. We needed to figure out our transportation for the next city and where to stay in Krakow and Budapest.
We finished up the day of work, mapping out a plan. Then we followed the main promenade that brought us back through the Old Town on the way home. We swam through a swarm of selfie stick savages and street performers. The smell of Vietnamese food filled our nostrils. We approached a pho restaurant that made my mouth water like a dog waiting for its dinner. After a few minutes of debating whether we should eat Czech food, we caved. Spring rolls and three different types of pho were brought to the table less than an hour later. This wasn’t the first and surely wouldn’t be the last time where our eyes would be bigger than our stomachs.
We took our leftovers up to the beer garden to watch the sunset over the city and drink a nightcap. The cool evening air turned into a chilly breeze, and we walked home hand in hand to rest our heads before our final day in Prague.
6/29/15
Prague, Czech Republic
For our last day in Prague, we decided to go to the zoo. I’ll save my speech about how we were torn. Prague Zoo was ranked number seven in the world; this was a no-brainer. It was three miles northwest of our Airbnb, but we needed the exercise. We had failed to hit our goal of twenty thousand steps on Ash’s step tracker yesterday.
It was nearing noon. We had to get food soon. We passed a crepe place, but let’s be honest: crepes don’t fill you up. We expected to find something soon after, but the route to the zoo led us to the middle of nowhere. Ash started mentioning how we should have just gotten crepes, and I could see her skin start to turn a hint of green. I am running out of time. We walked through a gorgeous park and then crossed over a bridge that looked like it took us into a new country. We went from the busy vehicle-covered roads of Prague, surrounded by parks and trees, to an arid farmland with animals roaming flora-less pastures.
I double-checked the map to make sure this was right, and sure enough, the zoo was still ahead. We approached a hut on the side of the road that had a beer sign lit up. There was a slim chance they had food, but I couldn’t afford to miss an opportunity to avoid the Hangry Hulkess. We entered and asked the guy if they had any food. He didn’t speak English and just kept repeating “Beer?” Well, what the hell? It’s better than nothing. We left the hut with two big beers for a total of two dollars, the breakfast of champions.
Finally we spotted the only restaurant north of the river, and we didn’t even care if they only served crepes at this point.
The zoo may have been in the middle of nowhere, but it did have a bar attached to the outside. I love the Czechs’ style; they pregamed for the zoo. It was now 1:00 p.m., and my daily consumption consisted of two gargantuan beers and one panini. I needed to start questioning my dieting habits at this point in the trip if I wanted to make it to Thailand in September.
We entered the zoo with a good buzz and grabbed maps. I immediately became overwhelmed with how nonuniform and scattered the layout of the zoo was. The map was a huge rectangle but with routes going every which way. How the hell were we supposed to see every animal in an organized manner? That is what I love about the Denver Zoo: it’s set up in a large circle, so we can walk around and see all the animals.
We made the best game plan we could and started up the path. It only took five minutes before both Ash and I were extremely annoyed by all the people surrounding the exhibits. Particularly annoying were the kids, screaming in different languages. Hearing a six-year-old say, “Mommy, look, the gorilla is sniffing his own poop!” is normally cute, but when you can’t understand the language, the sounds just become piercing high-pitched screaming.
At last we arrived at the best exhibit in the whole zoo—the beer tent. As we took a break and drank our Czech beers, we both Instagrammed pictures of animals. We were in a heated competition at this point for who could get the most likes. I was absolutely getting my ass handed to me.
Now laughing as we walked past exhibits, we’d admittedly drunk a bit too much to truly enjoy the animals. By drinking the breakfast beer, we had pregamed for the pregame for the zoo.
We left the zoo after attempting to see as many animals as we could before the chaos of the layout got to me. It seemed like a good idea to grab another travel beer at the hut on the way home, and this time the guy didn’t need to ask; he knew what we wanted.
The long afternoon had wiped us out, and back at our Airbnb we decided to lie down to rest. Ash was struggling with a mean bout of hiccups, and I tried to scare her by yelling, “Zara is going out of business!” She was far from amused and hiccupped again shortly after. As I climbed into bed, I realized I was suffering from two things … a hangover and sunburn. (These are two of the most obnoxious pains on earth because of how avoidable they are. Day drinking is a blast until you stop.)
6/30/15
Prague, Czech Republic → Kraków, Poland
The last few days I had been having trouble sleeping, and it seemed my best hours were in the very early mornings. Night was becoming a long period where I stared aimlessly at the ceiling in the hot apartment, worrying about nothing. It felt like I had just fallen asleep when Ash shook me awake to catch our bus to Kraków, Poland. I had even slept through her frantic bag-packing episode.
We were visiting Kraków for the sole reason that it was the closest big city to the Auschwitz concentration camp. I’d been obsessed with learning about World War II and the Holocaust as a kid, and I’d read tons of books on the death camp. I remember being intrigued by how horrifying the world could be. The fact that these stories of murder camps and one man convincing a whole country to commit genocide were true was actually unbelievable to me. I was drawn to the stories of survival in particular.
When we decided to visit, we decided there was only one Airbnb in the small town of Oświȩcim. Not only did the Airbnb not match any of our requirements, Oświȩcim was also directly outside of Auschwitz. Something told me we would want to get as far away as we could after experiencing the evil of the camp. We didn’t know much about Kraków, but we did know that there was only one bus that went there from Prague.
The bus station where we would catch said bus was two miles from our Prague Airbnb, a cakewalk. This trip had already drastically changed the way we looked at a few miles. Back in Denver, a two-mile distance was surely an Uber ride. Now time would be the only reason we wouldn’t walk when we saw two miles on the map. On the way out, it was
nice to say good-bye to the city in person. Taking the metro would have been like breaking up with someone over text message.
We always built in about an hour of “mistake time” in case we took a wrong turn somewhere or couldn’t find the entrance. Our trek was mistake free, and we sat down at gate number 9 and watched as super charter bus after super charter bus, similar to our FlixBus vehicles, drove by. Unfortunately, FlixBus did not go to Kraków from Prague, and we had to venture elsewhere in the world of European buses.
We laughed at the sight of a raggedy-looking bus that entered the station. The pink-and-purple-striped vehicle had clearly been born in the nineties. (It should have died there.) All of a sudden the pink murder mobile banked a hard left and started approaching us. Oh God … please no, I thought as the driver parked the wretched vehicle at our gate.
“You go to Kraków?” the driver asked as he stepped off the creaking bus. He was a prototypical middle-aged Polish man. Bald, bold, and blunt. Two other Polish men were on the bus with him.
“Uhhh, yeah, but you know, our bus is probably coming soon,” I responded, still in denial that one, this bus was running, and two, that he expected anyone to get on it. I turned slowly and shot a quick glance at my ticket to check the name of our bus. When I looked at the cardboard sign hanging by a single piece of Scotch tape on the windshield of the Polish man’s bus, my stomach hit my throat. The letters match up.
The Polish driver looked at my ticket that I was trying to hide and said, “Yes. This bus,” and ushered us on.
Ash and I looked at each other as if to say, This is our only option, shrugged, and boarded the putrid-smelling bus for our journey into the heart of Poland. We knew this wouldn’t be a luxury ride, but there was no way to predict the awfulness of our next nine hours.
