trains about five or six times, and sometimes we were only going to have a minute or two to get on board. Turned out to not be as bad as we expected. In most cases, our connecting train was right next to the one we had just gotten off of, and all the other passengers were also getting on that same train. We only had to run at one station, and we did cut it pretty close.The most interesting part of the trip was on one train in the Czech Republic. The three of us were just sitting, reading quietly, not expecting to get off the train for another hour. An old man seated near us made a whistling noise to get our attention, then gestured for us to get off. The train stopped, and everyone got off and started walking down a gravel road that ran parallel to the tracks. This was it, we thought. We're going to die. Instead, we all got onto a bus, which drove through a nearby town. The whole ride we couldn't help but wonder 1) why were we suddenly forced to get off the train and onto a bus, 2) where were we going? 3) were we still on our way to Prague? and 4) if we were not, how the heck were we going to get there now? Communicating with whistling and
gestures can only get you so far in a foreign country where we couldn't speak or understand a word of the language. Even when we tried to say the word for "thank you" we were getting funny looks, like maybe our slang book, written circa 1972 (ie in the middle of the Czech Communist era), was actually telling us to say something like "thanks, Commie!" Eventually, however, we pulled up at another train station, followed our fellow passengers to another train, and got on. We never knew the reason for this odd little detour.Finally, we arrived in Prague. But our excitement was short-lived. At the train station, we struggled to understand how to buy tickets for the subway. We took our best guess at what type of tickets we needed, then headed toward the entrance. We found no turnstiles like you would in ordinary subway stations. There was a small, unobtrusive machine on a wall near the entrance. Alexia asked if we thought that's what we used to validate our tickets. I foolishly said it couldn't possibly be - that there must be a turnstile up ahead. There wasn't. We got on the subway, thinking maybe we turned in our tickets when we exited. Wrong. As soon as we got off at our destination, David and I were stopped by a man in uniform. Alexia, with her experience of constantly being approached by peddlers within the Metro in Paris, casually kept on walking, thinking this man simply wanted to sell us a watch. Instead, the man told us we should have validated our tickets in the mystery machine near the entrance. He showed us instructions printed on the wall of the subway, and I thought, what a nice man. Giving us a lesson on how to use this system. Then he said we needed to pay him 1,000 koruna. What?!?! Fortunately, we had just withdrawn some cash, which probably saved us from going to jail, but unfortunately we had NO CLUE how much 1,000 koruna was in dollars. Were we to hand over to this man all of our spending money for the next week?
I had remembered reading something in our guidebook about being approached by men on the street demanding that we pay some ridiculous fine. Remembering that, I suddenly wasn't so sure that this guy was actually a cop. I mean, who in the world would fine a foreign tourist who had literally just arrived in town for failing to comprehend a ludicrously complicated subway system? So I took the advice of the guide book and stopped a passerby to ask if this truly was a fine-able offense. He said yes, and a quite common one. I then ordered the "cop" to show me his badge. He did, and it matched up with one pictured along with the instructions on the wall. Well fine, I told him I'd pay the fine, but that I was not about to pull out my money while within his sight. I told him I was going to go stand behind a nearby pillar to retrieve my cash. I was taking a great risk that this man would haul my husband off to some dark Czech prison while I wasn't looking, but hey,
I still wasn't convinced he wasn't a scam artist who would tell his buddies outside where to find my cash-laden wallet. Finding David still standing there when I returned, I grudgingly handed over my cash, demanded a signed receipt so that we wouldn't get fined by the next "cop" we ran into, and we were free to go. Poor Alexia! During the whole ordeal, she was standing alone and confused at the top of the escalator, wondering whether her friends were lost or simply too stupid to not buy a watch from a street peddler.We later learned that 1,000 koruna equals about $40, so it wasn't as expensive as we'd thought. Had we been a native, the fine would have been double. Still, a cab would have been cheaper - and more pleasant.
A note about the photo above: It's the only picture we took of that dreadful subway station. Pretty, but deceiving.
Reunited, the three of us found our way out of the evil subway station and stumbled our way around until we eventually found our hotel. Our first impression of Prague was not pretty, and the rest of the day we tried our best to ignore the sour mood our subway experience left us in.
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