nomadic tendencies: R&R alpha - (day 11)

(as usual, all pix are clickable for more detail) i woke up on the 11th wanting to die. my feet were still completely gooned after more than 12 hours sleeping. TheWayne was wanting to go out and sight-see, so i pointed him to the camera, and told him to come back, and i'd force myself to walk to get lunch. around 1:30PM, i tried another bandage technique, and hobbled my way out of bed into the sunshine in the square. in the square, there is a place called "batalion - hard rock café". it's so just bordering at some sort of legal infringement that i had to go in for a beer while waiting on TheWayne.

i was thinking about grabbing the laptop from the room since this place advertised free wi-fi, and though we were leeching off someone else's net in the room, as you can see from the previous post, we had to hold the laptop in some strange positions to keep that connection. anyways, well you can see from the photo that in prague... free isn't free (i'm guessing that goes for more things than wi-fi). my day wasn't very productive, trying to rest up for that night. i did witness some live music and a bunch of bum's in the main square outside the hostel. also, i almost accidentally walked through a "bike courier/walking courier" race course. granted, it was marked out in caution tape, but at work, i'm so used to looking around for the harmful thing you are being cautioned against, if there's nothing there, going through the tape. i ALMOST did this, but then noticed there was a crowd watching this "course" and soon enough, a biker and walker (with said courier packages) rounded the corner in some sort of strange relay. i can't see how the walkers had any chance unless there were stairs involved somewhere further down the course.

anyways, TheWayne got back to the room in the late afternoon, so we just cleaned up for dinner and a night out. he got some cool pictures of the city that are at the end of this post. we grabbed dinner at "U Volvodje"(if i can read my notes correctly), then went on to "la fabrique" for some drink and to watch a UFC fight that was on that night. after a few beers that i believe TheWayne felt weren't up to par, we went downstairs to the "dancefloor". he ended up getting us some höegartens in massive chalice like things that covered your entire face. you couldn't look smooth taking a drink, you looked like a baby drinking out of a big soup kettle. still, after a few höegarten's, my memory got fuzzy. this is when TheWayne loves reading these posts because he gets to write massive correction comments. TheWayne gave me a polite shove onto the dance-floor. i think i'd remember more if there was better lighting. it was downstairs, dark, i remember votive candles everywhere. it was very cave-like. anyways, i ad-libbed a dance of shorts. then we met TheJana (pronounced Yana). she was at the bar, and her friends had left her. if i recall she was pretty cute, Czech, and had a ponytail on the side of her head (or maybe i'd fallen over)? she talked to TheWayne most of the time because 1) he's got game, 2) he's a triathlete, so he's in mad shape, and 3) i was a boozed-up zombie unlikely to be able to find my face at the time. anyways, she said she knew of another place that was cool to go to.

we asked if she'd show us where it is (and at this point they may have been trying to ditch me, but i was too drunk to really tell), and she agreed. once we got to wherever the fuck we got to, she and i had waters and TheWayne, champeen that he is, got a heineken.

at this point, it was cleared that they wanted some alone time in the form of TheWayne miming, "we're going back to the hostel, give us some time, make your own way home later". i got most of the gist of that. maybe 20-30 minutes later, i realized they were gone, and i had no clue where i was with no czech language in my babelfish. fuck! so i stumbled outside and bummed a cigarette off a cabbie (this was during my brief smoking stage). in an epic game of charades, i'm trying totell this guy where i live and to take me there. he brings over another cabbie who knows possibly LESS english and drunk sign-language. they agree that they know where i need to go, so i get in. after maybe another 10-15 minutes, i realize he has no clue, so we just start stopping people on the street. finally, someone knows a bit of english, i tell them where i need to go, and i get there maybe 10 minutes later. i estimate this whole ordeal to have taken maybe just shy of an hour. i'm walking towards the hostel, ready to pass out, when i pass TheWayne and TheJana walking toward me toward the hostel. WTF?! it took them that long to get there too PLUS the head start i gave them? FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! i'm tired and drunk. TheWayne recognized me and nodded me off, so i made my way to the only bit of civilization i could find nearby, a 24-hour KFC. FANTASTIC! i went in and ordered half the menu, but i'm sure they refused, so i probably got a twister or some shit and some popcorn chicken. i spent a completely-impossible-to-tell amount of time watching the other drunks wander in, speak gobbledy-gook, laugh, fight, flirt, clean up, etc. i think it was a fair amount of time to give someone to knock the bottom out (i just had to say that phrase, hah). i took my box of popcorn chicken to have for breakfast and, as slow as possible without falling down, stumbled my way back to the room.

i fumble with my key in the door for god knows how long. you'd think i was doing it to be polite, to warn those who were inside that i was entering, but i was just in no shape to be putting inanimate objects into other inanimate object. as i open the door, the light shines in where i see TheWayne poke his head around the wall with a grin... "can you go in the bathroom for a bit?" **WINK WINK** hey, it's flat, and i won't get arrested there, so i go in the bathroom, close the door and curl up to pass out with my popcorn chicken. when TheWayne was done and sent TheJana on her way, he roused me from my fetal position in the bathroom and said i was free to pass out in my bed, so i changed into my PJs and attempted to do so. now, keep in mind, i was horribly drunk and had just been woken from a bathroom floor by no fault of my own, for some reason, i punched TheWayne in the ass. it made sense at the time. and for some reason, he felt like getting dressed and taking some pictures. he found the porno setting on my camera. i didn't realize i had a porno setting on my camera, but after this scenario, i'll never forget. there is a setting on my camera that takes a picture every 2-3 seconds for as long as you have the button pushed. being that is was, maybe, 4AM, it was dark in the room, so it fired the flash every shot. what was recorded looks worse than those pseudo-pedophile wooden panel-board basement calvin klein commercials from the 90's. TheWayne is giggling, yes, GIGGLING at me trying to fend off the damning record of digital media, blinding me with every shot. i hesitate to share these, but in the vein of full disclosure, here is TheWayne's first photo shoot. i'm still scarred. hah.

now that you are as damaged as i am (or sore from laughing), we were going to get up the next morning to either drive/fly/train to the auschwitz concentration camp in poland. in a bit of foreshadowing, we ended up crashing around 5AM or so. let's see what happens tomorrow.