Pick-A-Day

July 2005
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Prag

So I visited Prague again, but due to ignorance, it appears that Rui and I hit the city on a four day weekend—or maybe a five day weekend.

July 5th was “Den slovanských věrozvěstů Cyrila a Metoděje,” the official celebration of Christianity’s arrival, and today, the 6th, is “Den upálení mistra Jana Husa,” which marks the day that the religious reformer Jana Husa (English: Jan Hus) was burned at the stake. It seems a bit incongruous to have these two holidays on consecutive days, even if the events in question were more than 500 years apart. (See Czech Holidays.)

To kind of frame this trip to Prague, I am going to break it into two substantial parts. The first part will consider the “normal” tourist attractions that I visited in Prague—the word “normal” is used loosely here as it really means “non-gay,” since what I chose to visit on this trip isn’t really that “normal” for most tourists to visit. Using your imagination you’ve probably guessed that the second part will address the “gay” tourist attractions. For the prudes amongst you, skip the later, for the perverts, skip the former.

“Normal” Stuff

Because this was not the first or second time I’ve visited Prague, I am no longer visiting as many tourist attractions, rather I am just hanging out and visiting places that have been off my map before for whatever reason.

My top priority for this trip was to finally make it to the site of Stalin’s statute that was destroyed. The statue absolutely enormous as constructed—it had to be in order to have appropriate scale for its position. Unfortunately Stalin was denounced shortly after the construction was complete and, as was habit with communist governments, history was whitewashed—or in this case blown up. The statue was replaced with a large metronome, which doesn’t really do the job of filling up the space. Much of the area at the top is used by skateboarders. I wonder what Stalin would think of that development.

Beyond that I wandered the streets of Prague, making a point to cross the Charles Bridge and rub my hands on the appropriate plaques to ensure a return visit to Prague. I ate a small snack at a café near the bridge and wrote a postcard to the Designated Recipient, watched people, walked up to the TV tower. I also visited the Jewish Cemetary.

Food wise, Rui and I enjoyed a Brazilian style buffet dinner, which includes an all you can eat salad bar and waiters wandering amongst the tables with various meats for one to try—carved directly onto your plate. Apparently these types of restaurants are quite popular in Portugal, Brazil, and presumably other places. The food delivery was rather amusing with the guys walking around in a rush pausing at each table to offer whatever they were severing—salmon, beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, and more. We also had a dinner at a Czech Restaurant that was a bit tourist oriented—we probably should have hit one in the suburbs, but downtown Prague is a very inviting place to stay.

Friday night, after dinner, we looked at the movie schedule and discovered that “Válka světů” had just started, so we bought tickets and watched it—I mentioned this before in Life Sucks—in English it is “War of the Worlds,” shown in English with Czech subtitles. What a horrible movie—that Strait Actor should be banished from filmmaking.

I missed the funniest moment of the night, because we arrived at the movie 10 minutes after it started (e.g. the promos started). I was looking for our seats (assigned seats, but people were in our seats), and didn’t pay attention to the promo which was spoken in Czech and was for an upcoming animated feature. Rui later observed that while the Czech was being spoken, across the bottom of the screen in big letters it announced that the film would feature “the voice of Ian McKellen.”

“Gay” Stuff

The holiday weekend meant that Gejzee..r was dead Friday evening. Well, not completely dead, but mostly dead, and half the crowd that was there was from Boston—since 110 members of the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus were in town as part of a European Tour. I did not go to the concert since I had no idea that these guys were going to be in town before Wednesday. In fact, while they were performing, I was suffering through the aforementioned “Válka světů.”

The watch I use while clubbing managed to confuse me all night, especially since I’d left my mobile at the hotel. I got to the club at what I mentally thought was midnight, but my watch said was 11, and the lack of a substantial crowd made me think it was 11, but when there was still no crowd when my watch said 12, I decided it must have been right and that crowds would show up soon. I couldn’t find a single clock on the wall and I didn’t feel like asking anybody the time. It turns out that my watch was wrong, which I could only verify when I got back to the hotel at 4:30.

The moral of the story: check the watch before you go out: it was still set for the Scally Lads of London.

Saturday night, after dinner, I parted ways with Rui, he went to the bridge, and I wandered through Prague, aiming for Pinocchio, which is an escort bar. I was informed of this fact by Michael who is from Ostrava, the Czech Republic’s third city. I already knew this, and I have to say that he was very nice but that the idea of hiring an escort didn’t really appeal to me. He was cute, but at 2,000 (CZK) per hour, plus 600Kč for an hour long hotel room, plus the drinks, not only didn’t it appeal to me, I couldn’t afford it with the cash I had on hand. Even if I’d taken the 150Kč taxi back to my hotel option, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it.

I found the whole thing to be incredibly amusing and funny. Some of you may recall my most famous email—the experience was similar to that, but this was more civilized and humane: there wasn’t a menu.

Once I finally told the young man from Ostrava that I wasn’t interested, I paid for my drink (and his drinks), I headed for the door and walked over to Gejzee..r where I arrived a bit on the early side, told two gents (Ian and Martin, as I recall) from Manchester that they were leaving too early, that it didn’t generally get busy until after midnight.

And it did get busy after midnight—certainly not the crowds that were there last fall and winter, but enough people that it was fun. None of the music was really memorable, but it had a good beat and I got hot. Whenever I needed to cool off, I engaged in one of my favorite activities: watching people watch porn. The girls in the room found it fascinating, and one even got a guy to give her a tour of the dark rooms, where there is little light and much standing around. The girls enjoyed Gorge and Just for Fun. A few guys subtly masturbated.

I stayed until I was about to drop, which was pathetically early—something like 3 or 3:30.

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