Max I just had the most amazing experience

A convoy of rigs closed all the streets through Prague, through Letensky tunel with lasers, dogs barking, up the dual carriageway, dancing with the rigs down the motorway at night!

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlNg8W87kCs&feature=youtu.be[/embed]

Then rave

Old factory out in Praha 9 - concrete and lasers, small like a bunker, then doorways doorways, tunnels, a woodland with a big fire going, dirty lit caravans.

My first in Prague

Better than anything in London, equal to the Kentish nights. Free parties here are still free. Prague feels like it just turned 19.

Suddenly at 3.45 the djs - average, couldn't beatmatch, possibly too wasted - suddenly went transcendent, an hour and a half of the most world class mix

And I dropped a table on my foot, and now my toe is black. I can't get it x-rayed because I lost my EHIC...

I'm not gonna lie to you it hurts a lot right now and I'm preeeetty wasted, I am a bit concerned. It's hurting a lot for someone who is very stoned.  And quite drunk. You'd think it would hurt less if you were very stoned and quite drunk.

J thinks it can't be broken because when she poked it I didn't punch her in the face.

I think it's less reliable than an x-ray.. but it'll have to do! :D

P, Baileys & J, me

It was fucking amazing; I've been so lost. Fuck London, fuck London forever, have you seen this place?!

Praha, thank you. Arwen, you're welcome. Shanti, Shanti, Shanti

Propaganda Bar

Staroměstské náměstí (Old Town Square) again today, this time in the dark, to meet G for drinks. He's a gay Irishman who teaches French in an English school in the Czech Rep, and coincidentally my airbnb host from the summer. I loved him from the moment he waved me through his bedroom to shower because he was too hungover to get up.

We hit the Propaganda Bar. Consider this a fair review.
What?

• Rock and metal bar


• Crazy warren of basement rooms


• Covered in old communist slogans and posters


• Motorbikes mounted in wall niches, because Why Not


• Cheap beer, like everywhere in Prague


• Nooks available for tongue-tennis

Band:

A two-piece on tonight, probably both about 19. They were very enthusiastic. That's all I have to say, really.

Look out for: visual song references, such as the ‘two minutes to midnight’ clock #WoopIronMaiden

I was tired, and the place was loud, and also maybe I’m old now, so I went home about 11pm. Sorry.

Another tyre exploded

Second this week. Turns out the pressure gauge on my bike pump is broken.

Meant to get an ISIC (student card) today, but it was closed when I arrived.  Turns out they close two hours earlier on a Friday.

My flatmate said to me last night, ‘lol you said you felt so lucky'

Ha!

But this afternoon I walked through the old town square in the autumn sunshine, good smells and buskers blowing bubbles, and wonderful tourists and gilded buildings and cobbles, and holy shit, have I been so lucky.

Nothing nothing nothing

I have no cash – the £400 I lost was all the cash I brought – so I can’t get a toaster or anything else. I booked a place on an orientation lecture on student finances.

It was scheduled in Czech but I thought I could pick up any leaflets and translate them at home.  I didn’t go.

Guess I’m depressed today.

Moving: I thought the life part would be hard, and the uni part would be easy.  it’s pre-organised for you, right? In fact, both are kinda shit. Hope this gets better.

Please take this document and stick it up your arse

Enrolment today.

I’ve been struggling to pick up my ‘nostification’ (nostrifikace) documents since Monday.

Monday my bike inner tube exploded, so I couldn’t cycle down.

Tuesday I did start cycling down, and lost my passport and £400.

Since enrolment is today, at 9am, and the nostrification office only opens at 9am, I have resolved to be in two places at once and everything will be fine.

Later:

I have enrolled! That’s the good news.

Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them.

Through a series of wrong offices and non-English speaking office staff, I valiantly prevailed to take my photocopies to the lecture theatre at Filozofická Fakulta. I was half an hour late, but this didn’t matter.

Good old fill-in-this-form-and-queue format.

My degree documents have now been 'authenticated' by five separate official bodies, in two countries, but apparently I was missing yet another official stamp - on the documents I had just picked up.

A committee of Faculty women, one by one, in Czech, explained this to me, and then one of them alluded to my only being there to get out of paying fees in my own country.

So that was charming.

For the record, since my course is taught in English I am paying fees. I also completely smashed their marking criteria for admission. Not to be a dick about it, but they should probably be paying me to be there.

A Czech student interceded, and I didn’t understand at the time why he seemed so irate. Quietly. Quietly intensely angry.

Then he took me for coffee, and the missing stamp, and told me what they said.

Mercifully I was at the end of the queue (deliberately, so I wouldn’t hold anyone up with my language barrier) so there were only a few Czech students left to witness my engineered humiliation.  It’s so much worse that I didn’t understand what was happening until afterwards.

I hadn’t even enrolled. Not even my first day - the day before my first day. My -1^st day.

I don't know how to process this. Eventually I went home and cried for a long time. I’m afraid this has been a big mistake. Is this a representative experience? I feel hated.

I miss Max.

Police: Czech yourself

Today I learned about Czech police stations.

Czech local police stations are very nice:

• Clean


• Mood lighting


• Comfy chairs

Czech 'Foreign Police' (immigration) stations are not very nice:

• Flickering lights


• Dead flies


• Holes in the plaster


• Lots of men with gun


• Chipped beige-painted bars everywhere

It was like an apocalypse video game except the guys with guns weren’t shooting at me. At that moment.

And there were no zombies. That I could see.  Hey, it was after office hours.

I have a suspicion that this two-tier policing system is not unique to CR.

Wait, so why was I there?

Well, I lost my passport. And my EHIC. And £400; CZK14,000, aka two-months' rent or a heart-breakingly enormous sum of money.

It fell out of my pocket cycling through Letna Park. When I went back almost immediately it was gone.

I need to simply NOT get hurt in a cycling-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road incident; need to ENROL ON A DEGREE PROGRAMME TOMORROW; or eat or pay rent.
Rent and eating are arbitrary social constructs, right? I mean we don't need them.

Fuckit.

Punny names

Getting a kitten! Via flatmate’s girlfriend’s cat. They’re four weeks old right now! :3

Possible Names:

Franz Katka

Alphonse Mouser

We went to Ikea, and nobody broke up

But I did accidentally buy £6 of deep-fried cheese in breadcrumbs.  I thought it was priced by the plate.  I heaped that plate high.

Don't worry, I got a doggy-bag.

ARRIVED!

My quixotic Czech cabbie spoke only German to me. I wish I lived in a world where there is only 'us' and 'everywhere else'. Aber ich bin auslander, und spreche nicht gut Deutsch.

Fireworks from my window, 10pm. I don't know why!

Then this happened:

That's right....
Roman 'Humbert Humbert' Polanski is now available en-hammock.



And the seagull?



Miss you Max x