The End of Uni Euro Trip had been in the works since long before Christmas. Amsterdam? Tallinn? Barcelona? Krakow? All possible destinations, but we finally settled on Prague after tales of it being a ‘lads city’ with beer as cheap as £1. Exactly what we were looking for!
8 brave young souls from Sunderland signed up, including myself, and we set out for a long weekend in the Czech capital.
The laughs strarted as soon as we were in the airport. In fact, before we were in the airport, with Mark opting to sit with two old ladies for his journey there instead of his mates.
The flight really set the tone for the holiday. We had a first time flyer amongst us, who must have been dreading it with seven ‘lad’s lads’ surrounding him, but he was fine. Lee went about ordering an apple juice on the flight out there, where everyone else had opted for alcohol to set the tone, so for the rest of the holiday he would hear the childish taunt of “can I have an apple juice please?”. Funny stuff I assure you.
We attempted to bus and metro it into the centre of Prague to find our hostel - which took a bloody long time - and we stumbled across the hostel because a friend of ours, who had flown out a day early, noticed Danny’s hair from a good 200m in almost pitch black whilst he was sat at the hostel bar. Danny, for those that don’t know, is a white guy with an afro. In his own words “not many people look like me”.
We dumped our stuff and headed straight out. We found the city’s very popular “Wencelas Square” which is supposed to be where the main night life is. However, all we could find were strip clubs. I’m serious - every single bar or club had strippers. Inside, outside, on the bar, on podiums, inside window displays. They were everywhere… and the guys on the street trying to talk us round seemed to think that all we cared about were strippers. I’m not being funny, but once you’ve seen one, you don’t need to see many more! We spent most of the night in an Irish bar (the only place we could find without strippers) drinking big pints that cost just over £1 (NICE!) .
Waking up Friday offered us the chance to look around and explore. We found ourselves a little bar on the river that runs through the city (I still don’t know what it’s called) which is adjacent to the main bridges and it overlooked the city’s Castle (one of the biggest in the world, apparently). This, I thought, was the life. Sat back, chilled, just watching the world go by with plenty of sun, cheap beers and mates.
Afterwards, we set about walking over the Princes’ Bridge (I think it’s called that) which is one of the main attractions in the city. It’s full of entertainers, artists, etc. which is kind of reminiscent of La Rambla in Barcelona for anybody that’s been. On the other side of the Bridge is Prague’s “old town” which, to be honest, had the feel of an English sea-side town like Scarborough, or Whitby, or Blackpool. Narrow streets filled with either bars or tourist shops selling nothing of interest. It became pretty clear to me at this point that Prague had been severely bitten by the tourist bug (hence so many strip clubs), and that maybe this place would have been absolute heaven four or five years ago before flights out there were so cheap, and before everyone was so wise to it.
After walking around much of the city, we set about our first REAL night out. What I haven’t mentioned thus far is that our hostel not only had a restaurant and 80p pints… but it had a bowling alley. Oh yes. Drinking and bowling? Very much so.
I came last in the bowling. So we won’t dwell on that. But after this we went back to Wencelas Square in the hope that we might be able to carve out some kind of route. But oh no, back to the Irish bar we went, then bothered aplenty by street touts trying to get us to see more strippers. By the end of the night we had to tell the touts that we were gay so that they wouldn’t show us to any more strip clubs. That’s how bad it got. We found a pretty decent ‘Sports Bar’ in which we dabbled with a bit of Karaoke (me and Danny took on “Easy Lover”, Ackers and Sleeps attempted “Beat It”). We spent a good while in this bar and I remember someone distinctly saying “wow, this is like the only bar without strippers in it” and then some guys disappeared upstairs with the doors locked behind them. I guess it wasn’t!
Me and Lee (of apple juice fame) were up early on the Saturday while everyone recovered. I forgot to mention that our hostel was situated on a main street and a tram line, so sleeping in simply wasn’t an option. Me and Lee set about finding the real bars and clubs in the city, because, quite frankly, we were sick of being shown to strip clubs. Using my phone, our wits and our feet we spent HOURS walking around Prague - both sides of the water, surpassing dozens of metro stations - and we found what was described on PragueExperience.com as “Prague’s all round favourite club/bar which offers a bit of everything” and also a 5-storey club which prides itself on being “The largest club in Central Europe”. And that was our night mapped out! I have to say it made such a difference planning in advance where we were going. I think everyone was a bit ratty about there being nothing but strip clubs, so me and Lee were pretty chuffed to have sorted this.
After this we met the rest of the boys for lunch, and then we headed to the main city square to watch the opening game of Euro 2008 (our Czech Republic against hosts Switzerland). I’ve always wanted to be at Canary Wharf when England play a game to watch it on the big screens, so I guess this is the Czech equivalent. It was full of football fans and the beer was only 65 or 70p and it was bloody lovely! The best pint in the city no doubt. Danny, pictured below, set about collecting empty cups. This sounded (and looked) a bit queer at first. But once the collection started to build everyone in the square was loving it and slam dunking their cups onto the top of the mountain. It is hard to describe why it was so popular, or why it was funny, perhaps because the game was awful! But Danny made a lot of people’s day with his cup collecting antics. See below.
The clubs and bars that we would go on to visit were brilliant. For those that are going to Prague, they are on the water front round the corner from the START of the Princes’ Bridge. In fact, you can see the back of the Super Club as you cross over. And the other bar is a stones throw away. Me, Lee, Andy and Ackers ventured into the 5 storey club - which was definitely an experience - with beer less than a quid although I was under the distinct impression that everyone in there was a tourist. This kind of detracted from the experience, coz it seemed less authentic by being full of British hen parties. We wanted some Czech clubbing! But we all got our Justin Timberlake game on, and me and Brennan weren’t back to the hostel until half 6 that morning. Then some Asian lass offered us the chance to come with her to an “after party” which was essentially a drug bar. We politely declined.
Sunday was a chillout day. More wandering around, followed by afternoon naps all round. More football in the main square, then more beer for the lovely sum of 60p or whatever it was. So good was the beer that we sat at vacant tables in the square until the early hours of the morning when the Staropraamen tents stopped serving. Then we stumbled home and sat in an ‘Ozzi’ bar until 4am. They had Hoegaarden \o/ so I was happy.
Everyone was a little ratty and bored on the Monday morning. I think everyone just wanted to be back home. We’d stumbled round the city centre for the umpteenth time doing nothing new. We were just killing time until we went home.
We bought a little football and found a little fake football pitch in the town square - obviously a promotional tool for Euro 2008. We spent a good hour having a kick about on here, and our antics attracted plenty of tourists and locals to watch. We had a cross bar challenge and a skills school ala soccer am. I was gutted because I was the only one to hit the cross bar challenge in practice (with my first go) and then Lee was the only one to do it in the actual thing (what a hero).
One thing we did have planned for the last day was go karting. An absolutely MASSIVE track that boasted near 20 corners and 5 straights (that’s atleast 2 or 3 times bigger than any track I’ve been on before).
Unfortunately, I ended up coming in at #2 out of 8. Andy was simply too fast, and nobody could match his 49 second laps (my fastest was 50.05) but Andy was consistently 49-51 seconds which was just unstoppable to be frank. Ackers earnt himself the nickname of Granny Ackers for laps that were over the minute mark haha. A great way to finish the holiday.
The holiday would end with a slightly souring experience for me, Andy and Lee who were caught on the metro system without a ticket. None of us had any Czech money left so we ALL decided to chance it but it was only me, Andy and Lee who were caught. The fine was a whopping 700k (about 30 quid) and while we tried to argue language barrier problems (the dude could barely speak English, he merely showed us his badge) he went to ring the police and then we knew it was time to pay up. The other boys quickly bought themselves tickets and made their way to the airport for 24k (about 80p) which had me, Andy and Lee a little angry for a while.
And that was that. Looking back, Prague really is a sleazy, stag’s kind of city. So sleazy in fact, that they have Erotic Supermarkets (called Erotic City) which are littered throughout the city - (there was one in the airport, one at go karting, one outside our hostel - everywhere!). Andy summed the city up very well by asking “where is the shame?” because there simply is none. I saw a mother hand in hand with a girl no older than 4 or 5 walking through a strip club - that’s not a good look in any city.
My advice to anybody planning or preparing a trip out there would be to plan your nights out in advance. And don’t expect there to be much to do during the day, so you might wanna plan an activity or two too. It’s a lovely city, a bit too touristy now me thinks, but I would recommend it as a good drinking city. In some places the beer can be as much as £3 (just as it is over here) but it is the less tasteful and grotty places that it will be less than £1. It worked for me anyway!
Can’t wait to do something similar next year.
