David Czechs Himself

Last weekend, some dear friends and I decided to take a short visit to Prague. Aside from an unrequited, forbidden, and all-too-brief love affair with an architectural fixture, however, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Yet, for a few days of our lives, we lived like royalty. Czech it out: 

We arrive in Prague after a riveting 5-hour train ride through the German/Czech countryside bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Not pictured: tails. 

Photo credit: Peter Geurts

After taking the Metro and a tram, we arrive on the street on which our hostel lies.

We walk up that, and come to our hostel. We czech in, and eventually we all get inside our room. 

Seen here on the set of our upcoming musical, Sound Czech. 
[clockwise from left: Max, Simon, Kat, Sweetness, Sarah, Jenn, Tiffany, Peter]

Photo credit: Carissa Krapf

We made ourselves at home and promptly PTFOed in preparation for our first night in Prague. 

Upon collectively regaining consciousness, we went out for some nice Czech dinner. It was on this very journey that I made the first of many ingeniously designed "czech/check" puns: "What do they do when you ask for the check in this country? Do they just kinda put a person on the table, or what?"
Comic gold.

Anyways, we find a place that says it serves traditional Czech food, and we decide that since that's precisely what we're looking for, we should go in. We do so, and eat our first Czech meal.

Photo credit: Was it the waiter? I think it was the waiter. That's all of us, right?

We order the czech and pay without arousing suspicions of cannibalism, and head off into the night. 

Hold on a minute, you might find yourself saying. That restaurant looks beyond the means of a few meager college students living in a foreign country; why would they eat at such an expensive restaurant?
Worry no longer:
I'll show you pictures of the other two non-McDonald's meals we ate in Prague:

Photo credit: Carissa Krapf

and:

Combined price of all three: about 20 Euros. True, the second one was home-made grilled cheese and pasta, but the third was a 3-course meal with a professional waitstaff, artistically-inspired plate shapes, and the best desert ever. They even surprised us with a 70 Kč (that's "Koruna," apparently) charge for service and gave us beer in wine glasses. This was a classy-ass place. Total: 2400 Kč. Almost exactly 10 Euros. 

This woman is under the mistaken impression that she is holding money. 

Photo credit: Some biddy on the Googlez

As I said: like royalty.

So we get back to the hostel, where the girls decide to get ready while the men decide to get better acquainted with a little Bohemian tradition historically referred to as "absinthe." In preparation for the club, we decide to choreograph a dance that would sweep through Prague faster than a Soviet tank.

And hopefully as effective at inspiring spontaneous displays of nudity.

Starting with the four men doing a Jersey-inspired fistpump, Carissa would arise like dawn from the middle, a blooming flower, as the fistpumps would descend to the floor. Once Carissa reached the top of her ascent heavenwards, the fists would immediately rise again, creating a "super-pump" of sorts, at which moment the dance would devolve into four guys dancing around a chick. Hot. Here's documentation of the prep work for that:

Above: A captivating artistic realization of the power and strength of human perseverance. 

Photo credit: Whoever Peter handed his camera to.

Upon hostel management telling our loud asses to GTFO on account of them not being able to handle us at that particular moment, we go outside and begin walking towards da club. We're too busy looking fly to do much else, 

As seen here. 

but then, like an angel from the clouds, appeared my one true love: The Charles Bridge. I spent the next 10-15 minutes of us crossing the bridge freaking out at every statue and letting the bridge know in no unspecific terms just how attracted to it I was. 

Allow me to share this joy with you:

The Charles Bridge leaves very little to the imagination.

Photo credit: Peter Geurts

This little statue apparently shows St. John of Matha, St. Felix of Valois, and St. Ivan. St. John's the one above the Jesus deer, St. Ivan next to him, and St. Felix standing below Ivan, granting freedom to a Christian while other Christians remain imprisoned by a fat-ass Turk. Not having the pleasure of the Charles Bridge Artists Association website to help me out, I just lost my shit because there was a deer carved into stone. 
When I saw it again in the daytime, I noticed the dungeon and freaked my shit even more. There are people in there. It's like the Saw of medieval statues. Also, czech out St. Felix. He's not one bit happy that he just freed a Christian man from the bonds of Turkish slavery, because that wasn't badass enough for him. John gets a deer, and all he gets is an ex-slave. There being no proscription in the Bible against coveting "thy neighbor's sweet ass Christ-loving deer," his badasseries in what I can only assume involved a Rambo-like endeavor to bust some slaves out of servitude suffice to get him some solid sainthood. Really, an incredibly moving statue.

Damn, you's a sexy bridge.

That would be the entire bridge: 516 meters of impeccable masonry, 30 perfectly sculpted statues, and 16 beautifully curved arches all pieced together to create an absolutely breath-taking river-crossing experience. I've written it 3 postcards in the week since my return to Berlin. Unfortunately, she hasn't gotten to writing me back yet. Architecture can be fickle like that sometimes. 

Eventually we pass over the bridge, and we see the club:

Photo credit: Peter Geurts

That's right: five stories of club for my touristing pleasure. We get in, and there are lasers going off left and right, fog machines are altering the weather, and we're discovering which rooms play which music. Eventually, the time is right: the opening bars to Rihanna's "Only Girl in the World" slowly descend upon the dance floor. We assume our positions, and our stark portrayal of the effects of mid-to-late-1840s English liberalist economic policy on the agricultural classes is underway:

"...[E]ach new Enclosure Act was a fresh blow to our will, to our livelihoods. After four years, Jane and I could no longer afford to till our own land and plow our own fields, and that March little Timmy finally passed. We left to Lancashire's coal mines shortly thereafter..." 

-William Cartwright, Cornwall, 1862

With the club unable to handle us, we went back home and prepared for our tour the next day. After catching McDonald's and eating a McChicken meal for about $0.75 (I wasn't joking about the 3 non-McDonald's meals), we show up 15 minutes late to Filip's tour. He leads us through the Old City, the Jewish Quarter, and back to the Charles Bridge over the next three hours, and then we decide to take our own excursion up to the Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral. 

This is neither of those two. This is Dr. Frankenstein's lab. Not sure how that slipped in here.

Ah, here we go: Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral.

We journey to the top of the mountain where Charles built his cathedral, and from there you can see all of Prague: 

One of us looks sexier. 

Photo credit: Kat Semel

After a solid photo shoot, we walked around the cathedral and palace grounds: buttresses were flying to and fro, thither and yon; spires rose like Carissa-among-the-fistpumps. It was a thing of beauty. 

While the womenfolk went food shopping and Peter went to see the po-pos about his lack of a passport (not that they checked; Peter's just a guilt-ridden idiot), Simon, Max, and myself found a quaint little bar at 3 in the PM where we played 5 or 6 games of cutthroat pool. We came back just in time for our grilled cheese and pasta dinner. We went out that night, but the next day we had to split up because half of our group was apparently incapable of booking train tickets. Simon, Jenn, Tiffany, and I then walked around Prague taking pictures, as I had left my camera in the room for the past two days. While the girls dropped the dollaz to go to the Jewish Museum, Simon and I figured ours would be better spent fine-dining in the Jewish Quarter.

We met back up again and headed home. Before we left, we caught a glimpse of the most awesome clock ever in action: 



That's Death ringing the church bells, while a vain person, a greedy Jew, and an unassuming Turk (together the four biggest fears of the Czechs of the Middle Ages) shake their heads at him. Also, the Apostles stop by in the windows above the clock. It's awesome.

I'll conclude with a photographic report of both my emotional and physical experience in Prague: 

Damn Prague, you be lookin' fine. 

Photo credit: Kat Semel

Gettin' all up in dat.

Photo credit: Max Lazar

Whoa, Prague, slow down. I don't know if I can keep going like this. 

Photo credit: Kat Semel

SPLA-DOOSH. 

Photo credit: Kat Semel

That's right. By the time I got to the cathedral, I couldn't contain myself. I jizzed all over Prague. Embarrassing? A little. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat, if she ever returns my phone calls. 

David Loses Important Things: Part MMCDLXXIV

I'll begin this story where all great stories begin: about a week and a half before the beginning. On Monday, January 24, all the students in the FU-BEST program living in Grunewald meet at the S-Bahn station at 8:19 AM to catch the 8:21 train. Unfortunately, the S-Bahn has changed its schedule without informing us, so trains no longer come at 8:21, but 8:18, and they're back on 20-minute intervals instead of 10. Absolutely befuddled, we begrudgingly climb onto the 8:38 and are late to school for the first time this semester.
Throughout the week, I learn that adjusting my schedule by 3 entire minutes is about as impossible for me as going a few days without losing something of value. In fact, two weeks since the change, I have made the train I have planned to catch only three times. Remember this incompetence, for it will prove ominous.

After lunch, I come to my Modern German History class at 1:30 PM expecting a wonderful lesson from my professor. To my surprise, I don't find my professor there ready to fill me with daring insights into "historical ewents" and "political wiolence."* Instead, I find Dirk, the program director, sitting at my heavy-accented professor's desk and asking the class when it would be best to schedule a make-up session because our professor has fallen ill. 
So 7:15 PM Wednesday after next it is. Remember this illness, for it will prove fateful. 

When I arrive at school the next Monday, my German professor tells us that we're going to a courthouse on our Thursday Exkursion (that's "excursion," in the English) and, it being a government office and all, need to bring our passports along for the ride. I know it's getting hard, but keep this little tidbit in your mind as well.

Eventually, Wednesday rolls around, and I have to catch the 6:38 PM train to go back to school after coming home to Grunewald for some dinner. I'm about to leave the house when I see, out of the corner of my eye, my passport, which I need for Thursday. I weigh my options. I can either bring it with me now and leave it in my jacket pocket to ensure I take it with me tomorrow, or I can leave it here and just hope I remember to take it with me tomorrow. I opt for responsibility. After all, if I take it now, I'll definitely have it tomorrow, right? 

This is how I'll let you know I'm foreshadowing. With a visual pun.

I shove it in my pocket and bounce. The time is 6:34, and I live 2 minutes from the train station. Also, the train's clock is 2 minutes slower than my phone clock, so I have 6 minutes to get to the platform. 

As I mosey on up to the train platform, I realize that, solely because I'd like to catch it, the train has come four goddamn minutes early. I run up the stairs to the platform and sneak onto the train before the doors close, only the second time in 10 days that I've gotten onto the train I meant to. I'm proud of myself. The train begins to pull away. I put my hand in my pocket - and it feels substantially less passport-filled. 
I text Simon, a fellow Grunewalder, and ask him to check the train station for me. Meanwhile, I've got to get to class. 

Three hours later, after hoping that maybe I hadn't taken the passport at all and had just kinda imagined it, I get home, check the S-Bahn stairs unsuccessfully (I hadn't gotten an answer from Simon), and trudge back home. I check my room. No passport. I begin to get concerned. 

Now, let's take a step back and analyze everything that's just happened here, that we might show how much everything that transpired here wasn't just some random actions resulting in a disappeared passport, but rather a perfect storm of sorts conjured specifically by the gods in heaven for, I assume, their shits and giggles. You'll notice some interesting coincidences:

• We'll begin with the fact that the passport got itself lost exactly 15 hours before I need it for class and, even more importantly, roughly 40 hours before the train for which I've already paid leaves for Prague.
• Prague hasn't been in Germany for about 65 years or so. 

Not really sure why they hopped off of that gravy train.

• I need my passport for only the second time since coming here.
• The make-up class is, naturally, the day before I need my passport for only the second time since coming here.
• For the past two years, Berliners have had to deal with an unpredictable (read: approximately 228% more predictable than the Metro) S-Bahn, despite it working perfectly for almost a century before then. Every Berliner will inevitably remind you of both of these facts within two seconds of you so much as thinking of a word that has an 'S' in it.
• For the last two weeks, the S-Bahn has decided to peg its departure time to exactly 30 seconds before I arrive, meaning that regardless of whether I'm early or late, the train will be leaving as I get to the platform and I'll have to run to catch it.
• Nothing in my jacket's pockets less valuable than the passport has ever fallen out of them. Hell, I've had this damn cork in here for weeks now and I've been trying to lose that. 
• And ultimately, this all comes down to my professor. Were he a generally healthier person, the opportunity to take my passport out of the house on Wednesday night would have never presented itself.

Some people - people who obviously lead lives not worthy of self-published blogs - might say that the gods are not petty enough to meddle in the lives of mere humans; that in the scheme of the cosmos we possess neither the volume of an electron nor the permanence of a nanosecond; that we are merely dust and ash that have developed the means by which to understand that dust and ash mean nothing, and in denial of this truth search for meaning in "self-value" and call that search's target "God." 

Hey, I've been there!

These people are fools. 

Having thus been singled out and conspired against for the entertainment of the divine host, I wrote up a plan for the next day: 

1. 8:45 AM: Go to my Exkursion and try to sneak in with copies instead of the real deal 
2. Hop onto the U-Bahn into the middle of the city to check out the Bahn System Lost and Found 
3. Failing that, call the U.S. Consulate, explain my predicament and go see them, despite it being tucked away in a tiny southwest corner of the city 
4. Proceed to storm the Consulate (or, as I phrased it on the schedule, "Bring the ruckus, 'cuz P. Wilence ain't nuthing 2 fuck wit"), get a new passport 
5. Meet Kat to go to the Deutsches Historisches Museum - back in the middle of the city, mind you
6. Go back home to the edge of the city in Grunewald and write a report on the museum for two different classes, one of which was already late
7. 7:30 PM: Get to a play for class, again in the middle of the city 
8. Go to Stammtisch in Charlottenburg (close to Grunewald) in order to properly celebrate Sarah's birthday

I, for one, was looking forward to travelling the length of the city three times in 11 hours. I woke up bright and early, took the train to the courthouse, and the security guard denied me like Peter did Jesus. I figured that was for the best, considering I would have two more hours to hunt down my passport. I head down to the Lost and Found, where I have a whole conversation in German about losing my passport. I'm feeling intelligent, until I tell her that I lost it yesterday and she, to paraphrase, says, "We've been open for all of fifteen minutes since you lost it, you fucktard." 
Fair enough, I say, before bouncing out the place and heading off towards the Consulate. I try to call them, but my phone's a little busy doing a really cute thing I like to call "sucking at being a phone." 

After journeying to the end of Berlin, I get off the U-Bahn and walk towards the Consulate. I get sidetracked by a sign pointing towards a McDonald's 300 meters down the road. I attempt to walk there. I quickly realize I have no concept of meters, become concerned after about three blocks, and turn back around to go see if the Consulate can hook a brotha up. I walk in and talk to the guard who controls the door. He explained my situation to the people upstairs via telephone. He looks up at me, and then ends the conversation.

"Well, you're in luck Mr. Wile."
"Why's that?"
"Someone found your passport. Go upstairs and they'll tell you how to get it."

I'm in shock. I start to head upstairs, but I apparently have to go through security. I do that, head through the Consulate, get stopped because I don't have some paper, sweet talk my way upstairs regardless, and get shown a piece of paper with a name and two phone numbers on it. 

I call the first one, which gives me a receptionist at a doctor's office. Once again, pretending I know German, I explain that I'm looking for my passport and a certain Dr. Bach has it. She puts me through, and he tells me to take the bus to come on over and see him. He works in Roseneck, which I pass through every day I miss the train on the bus. I find the practice, go inside the door, and ring the bell. I get buzzed in, explain to the receptionist that I'm the irresponsible American with blatantly bad German, and take a seat in the waiting room. 

Dr. Bach gets finished with his patient, and he invites me into his office. We have a lovely conversation involving me speaking shitty German and him speaking imperfect English, and he tells me that his son found it in the Grunewald S-Bahnhof and brought it to him. I thank him immensely, and go about my way. 

And by about my way, I mean on a bus headed back towards that McDonald's, where I ordered a Big Tasty Bacon McMenü (that's "meal," in the English). Me and my passport split the fries. 

*When I become a rapper, this is going to be my stage name, stylized as "Political Wilence." 
Also, that took every fiber of my being not to type "wile-ized as 'Political Wilence.'" You're welcome.