Prague
I was woken up by Graham's slightly stunned cleaning lady wandering into the spare room to find me splurged naked on the bed. A quick re-arrangement of bed linen later and we exchanged pleasantries: "No English." "I'm sorry, I don't speak Czech." But we did manage to hit onto a winner when she looked at me in desperation and said "Tu parles Français?" to which I replied positively and made sure she did Graham's ironing for him.
I flopped around for the morning reading and listening to music before heading out and doing some mail checking and Chatrix whoring. Arranged to meet up Peter for lunch tomorrow who I haven't seen for a while - not since he moved here years ago in fact.
Eventually, a guy called Jakob lured me into town for lunch which involved my first ever tram journey. After the initial bashfulness towards a public transport system in a country where I can't reconcile what I see on signs with what I'm hearing around me, I bought my 8Krc tram ticket, got on the tram at Jihíro Z Podebrad and headed out to eat.
Lunch was astonishing. I ordered what I thought would be a nice healthy chicken caesar salad. Oh no. My salad turned up smothered in a gorgeously overweight dressing with deep fried chicken breast strips in batter. Oh well. When in Rome...
There is a definite porn movie look in this city. Boys in shorts with check shirts and toned, tanned bodies. It's all very grry indeed.
It pissed in the evening but we made it to Club Stella again, a really intriguing bar with sofas and chairs which, were it in the UK, would be packed full of arses in berets reading poetry. Thankfully, there is no All Bar One equivalent here.
Graham and his friend ended up wandering to Friends and Gezjeer to send me texts about the wall to wall lovelies. I'd stayed in Stella because as I was leaving, I was stopped by some bloke's friend who suggested his friend would like me to go back. I went back and started chatting to this guy whose name I couldn't pronounce, let alone spell. He was doing his national service and - as was later revealed - had somehow managed to smuggle an R-101 into his pants.
- Meal for two with two drinks each: £8
- Light night out (four pints and a packet of fags): £5
- Use of public transport: 16p