How My Prague Day Looks

Prague in the winter is cold. I am greeted each morning by a chilling wind that cuts through me like a knife. I walk towards the tram stop cursing myself for staying out too late the night before and lamenting the tequilas that I drank. Why can I not go for just a few beers I ask myself? Things always get messy and tequilas always end up on the table. I will be stronger the next time I tell myself. When asked if I want tequila I will stand up and say, no thank you Pablo, not for me this time. But this never works; the bastard always buys them anyway.

As I arrive at the tram stop my tram is always just pulling away. I stand around in the cold looking at all the other sad, tired faces. I think about calling in sick and going back to bed. Oh my nice warm bed. I could hop into bed with my clothes still on, maybe even my jacket still on, boy would I be warm. I could fall back to sleep and dream of distant lands. Then I realize that I am in a distant land and I change my mind about what I would dream about. Maybe I could dream of home, but then I realize that I don’t want to dream about being at home at all and I decide that the best thing to do is to probably go to work.

When I get on the tram, I am lucky if I can find a seat. Whenever I do find a seat, I always have to give it up to some old person that gets on at the next stop. There are so many old people using trams in Prague it is unbelievable. They always use the trams at 9 in the morning. I wonder to myself where all these old people come from and why they have to get up so early. Could they not stay in bed a little longer and get a later tram and leave me in peace with my seat on the tram, no, they cannot. Sometimes I think that I will follow the old person who I give my seat up for and see what he or she is getting up to and see if it is worth a seat on the tram, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

When I give my seat up to the old people I always look around to see if any beautiful women have seen my act of generosity and humanity. I see that there are beautiful women, but none of them care that I’ve given my seat up for the old people. One day I was so annoyed that the beautiful women weren’t noticing how great I was, so I tapped one on the shoulder and asked her if she saw what I had just done and did she have any thoughts on it at all, but she just said that she didn’t understand the question and turned away from me.

Occasionally I will offer my seat to a beautiful woman rather than an old person, but when I do this everyone seems to notice and I get the evil eye off all the people on the tram. When this happens I get off the tram at the next stop and walk to work because of the shame. I notice that people also give up their seats for people with crutches and I decide that the best thing to do is to buy some crutches and see if that will help get me a seat on the tram in the morning.

When I get to work and see the amount of emails that I have received during the night I feel like going back to bed again until I remember the trouble I have with deciding what I will dream about. I get lots of work these days. It seems the more I learn about the job the more work I get. I am beginning to question the value of learning altogether.

At noon I meet the lads in front of the office and we stand around and argue about where we will eat. This is often just a waste of time as we usually eat in the same place everyday. During lunch we discuss the fact that we are underappreciated and underpaid. We all wish we were getting more money. At lunch we also talk about how hung-over we are and how we are definitely not going drinking that evening.

In the afternoon I usually have meetings about projects that I am working on. More often than not when the time gets to five O’clock one of the lads will ask if we want to go for a quite pint or two when work is finished. Because we are all weak willed we end up in the pub most days at around 6 or 7.

The pub that we drink in is called hoopla. But because we thought that this was a bad name for the bar we renamed it Downstairs. This has turned out to be a great name for the place and now all the other regulars and the bar ladies call it Downstairs also. We asked the owner to change the name on the sign outside the bar but he said no, that it was his bar and if we wanted a bar called Downstairs then we should open up our own bar. And we said fair enough.

We talk about the worlds problems as we drink and it is therefore very important to stay up to date with all the goings on in the world if you are to have any say at all. We argue about the best ways to kill zombies and how many midgets could Pablo beat up if they were all coming at him at the same time. We haven’t yet reached a consensus on either of these subjects yet. We also argue about how we come to the same bar every evening and that we should find somewhere else to go. But then we look around us and see what an awesome place it is, and we know that we made the right choice.

The bar ladies in Downstairs are lovely looking and very friendly and this makes a nice change from the other places that we sometimes go to. But sometimes they do not realize the trouble they cause us. They ask us if we are not having tequilas tonight and when we say no, they look so sad that we have to go ahead and order some tequila. After this happens the night usually becomes a bit hazy and I am grateful when I wake up in my apartment the next morning.