the disco tram

all right, so the disco tram that i mentioned earlier. i suppose i owe an explanation, as promised.

last week, as she is wont to do, debbie was perusing the New York Times travel section and stumbled upon an article entitled "After midnight in 10 European cities."

The premise is this: you pay 320 crowns (so, at a current exchange rate of 15 crowns to the dollar, about 20 bucks) for the privilege of boarding an unnumbered tram at namesti miru filled with 50 strangers who share the common interest of wishing to dance to disco music while drinking warm staropramen and hanging on to the nearest pole, strap or unsuspecting dancer for dear life. all while fighting the forces of a bladder full of beer. this continues for two hours as the tram traces routes you didn't even know existed to parts of town both remote and familiar, the endpoint being the club "roxy" near namesti repuliky.

during the two and a half hour tram ride, i posed for several pictures with perfect strangers (sadly not THE Perfect Strangers), asked for 4 beers, was given 6 and paid for 10, considered peeing in an empty beer can, a trash bag or simply in my pants until finally being allowed off the tram to pee in a park, met a canadian, did not meet a czech gentleman with curly hair speaking english with a british accent because he was at the back of the tram and we were at the front (the layout of public transportation discourages mingling, probably for good reason), and successfully communicated in czech with the affable, yellow-vested security guard manning the tram's middle door. "kolik minut until we stop?" yeah, i am pretty proud of myself for that one.

i suppose enjoying this kind of event lies in mastering the fine art of being just drunk enough to still be able to stand, despite the jerky movements of prague integrated transport system. much the same as it's american counterpart, the party bus, the "party tram" is not for the casual drinker. maybe i'm being a negative nancy, but i would almost rather have just paid the cover for roxy and started the night there.

on the bright side, drew and i managed to persuade a taxi driver to take us to JZP for "sto," which is 100 crowns!!!! this is amazing and completely warrants my use of four exclamation points in the previous sentence. 100 crowns for a cab ride is almost unheard of.

also, i didn't get hit in the head with any drink containers. so i suppose it was a good day.