Giggle Fight in Prague

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Giggle Fight in Prague

I’m starting a new boy band. The cycle should be picking back up in about a year so we have plenty of time to prepare. The band’s name will be Giggle Fight, which is kind of a take on Britt’s punk rock band, “Rock Fight.” Here is the member list.

Louie- The minority
Chris Ganz -The Bad Boy
Brian Tatko -The devastatingly handsome one with no talent
Cory- The buff one who only sleeps with the fat fans
Bob- The baby face and only one with a chance at a solo career

The Upside of Prague

Once I calmed down and changed clothes, I decided to give Prague a better chance and see where the night may take me. We left the hotel and walked around the city streets and Christmas markets. Instead of spending all my time cursing cobble stone and scanning the first stories of building corners for street signs, I got to look at Prague. Prague may be the only city I’ve been in since Paris that may actually rival Paris for how beautiful it is. Prague, is one of the few cities that didn’t get blown the hell up during World War Duce. Paris didn’t get destroyed either, but that’s because those French pussies gave up in 28 days. If you’ve ever heard the phrase, “lined in gold,” you would think it was birthed here. Everything in Prague looks lined in gold both literally and figuratively. Every building, statue, street lamp, bridge, wall, is intricately crafted and designed to seem unique and special. The literal side of it is that almost every building and statue, etc is lined in some form of gold plate, which gives the city a rich and wealthy feeling. If I was to guess I’d say it took a thousand years to construct this place for it to be so abundant in detail. Simply put, for a place that has always had a heritage of poverty and oppression, you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at it. Prague is mother of all eye candy and the ultimate stress laxative.

Our first night ended with a stop at an English pub called George and Dragons. I never got a full explanation for the title of the bar, but that’s because our waitress was one of those hags who hates her life, job, and hair. There was a two piece band playing that night, consisting of a guitar hippie from Berkley, CA and a Czech boy named Camel on piano. Together they seriously put together a set list of guilty pleasures and songs that you have no choice but to love. We bought them drinks and they started taking our requests because we were the two people who enjoyed them most in the room. They played us, Clocks, the Scientist, Piano Man, Wild World, Wonderwall, House of the Rising Sun, Obla Di Obla Da, American Pie, Losing My Religion and Paint it Black, to name a few of the ones we asked for. I found it most interesting to see people grumble at songs I’d yell out and then watch them as they sang the words and danced in their seats to them. It made me hope and dream of nights where all our friends with music abilities will gather at our bar at 3am in San Francisco one day and we will stay up drinking on the house and playing music, like an acoustic summer every Friday night, where only whiskey and music lovers can gather to appreciate life and think about what I’ve learned here in Europe. Life isn’t that bad, it really isn’t.

The Downside

There isn’t one. Everything is cheap, fun, and new. Go to Prague. Here are some more reasons why;

The Christmas markets-
The Christmas markets here are all about one thing. Selling food and not worthless crap. I like food, so this worked out perfectly for me. I especially like giant hunks of animal cooked over wood fires and unlimited $2 sausage with bread, which started me on my all sausage diet for three days. For beverages they have $1 cups of hot wine and for desert you get these breaded desserts shaped like beehives that tasted of honey and cinnamon goodness. It’s the type of desert that would have Winnie the Pooh in and out of rehab for the rest of his life.

Outside Music Concerts-
Much like my beloved Yule Logs, who I miss dearly. Prague has tons of outside music choirs and concerts that are fun to have playing in the background while you’re walking around or waiting for Tara to finish buying a bazillion postcards. It’s like having a Christmas movie soundtrack playing while you’re enjoying life outdoors and without ipod earphones to make your ears misshaped.

Umbrellas-
For fun, if you ever see tour groups in Prague, simply hold up your umbrella really high, yell that it’s time to go, wave it around and then walk away holding it up. Why do this? Because after a block of walking, turn around and there will be a hundred old people tourists of many different nationalities following you. After you walk them through a good sized maze of streets and confusion, run, leaving them stranded and scared. It’ll help keep the lines down at the hot wine and sausage booths. If you’re feeling frosty, rob them and pay for the whole trip in ten minutes.

Magic Mushrooms-
At breakfast (sausage at the market) I came up with a great idea. We should take magic mushrooms and go on the ghost tours at night in Prague. If you’ve never taken mushrooms, then you should stop reading, because you won’t understand any of this. So we had 35 grams of Mexican Magic Mushrooms. We ate about 20 grams, which is the equivalent of eating an 1/8 of mushrooms in Chico. We walked around for a bit and didn’t really feel anything for the first half hour so we went back and ate the other 15 grams. This was a mistake. We began to visually see the lights of Prague in a very different way. We walked to the Charles Bridge and hung out and then walked back to the city square. As we were walking back the effects became stronger. All the shops had motorized puppets, backlights and colorful hand-blown glass. At one point we stopped at a shop that sold bobble head dolls of American actors and sports stars. It was here I discovered that we didn’t have long before we either:
A) would never make it back to the hotel without crying
B) Were being taken over by small creatures who had taken the shape of NFL football players
C) Had to go on the ghost tours.

The ghost tour flyer said to meet under the clock at 9pm and look for the man in the black top hat and red umbrella. Finding this man became quite difficult because the only person there had no top hat and an orange umbrella. Was it orange, was he fucking with us, and most importantly, why was he standing by himself and looking so sad? After a ten minute debate with myself and Tara, I decided that we could not handle the ghost tour. Our two block walk back to the hostel was the scariest experience ever. That night was Feast of Saint Nicholas and everyone was dressed up in religious pope like outfits and drunken slutty angels. The real top of the cake were the people dressed up like Zwar Pete, who had long scary nails, hair like Slash from Guns and Roses, death make up and he walks around dressed in rags and chains, hissing at everyone and jumping out at them. Now imagine beginning to peak on mushrooms while walking around with all these people around. On top of it all, battery powered devil horns that light up, were the hot item being sold on the street corners so everyone was wearing them. It was a living nightmare. During the last block before our hotel the fog had rolled into the city and we were walking behind two angels, a priest and two versions of Swar Pete, dragging chains, hissing and everything else that could possibly make you feel scared and overwhelm your soul with a sense of evil. I remember just thinking one thing, “this is so fucking stupid, god hates me.” We finally made it back to the room were I discovered that if you rub your hand on your arm and shine the desk lamp on it, a whole universe of dead skin is born into the air like your own little private universe where you are god and your dead floating skin pieces are your planets and stars. Like I said, only a few of you would get this. So between church bells at midnight and a ton of other scary factors involved with doing unknown amounts of hallucinogenic drugs in a strange, but delightful city on a scary costume night, I would say me and Prague fell in love, but with so many cities left on the horizon, I wasn’t ready to declare Prague the capital of my traveling soul, but it had left its mark. It’s like Brett Gruetwitz said, “everything you breath leaves a mark on your soul.”

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Photos

Flamed Meat
I'm installing one of these in my next home.

On mushrooms
I have a great idea!

Camel and Berkley
Kicking out the jams

Wooden Doll Army
Scariest thing ever

Angels and Demons
I elected to take this photo naked, Tara rejected my decision.