Around the World with Hardy(T)Around the World with Hardy(T)(If you recall from page 1, we were about to start drinking again)
Allow me to introduce
you to Serge. He is one of the celebrities at the hostel. He purports to
be in the Italian police - drug squad, in fact - but I have my doubts. Anyway,
he is twice my size (and I'm pretty big), mad as a hatter and almost exclusively
nocturnal. So, when you've been hard at it sightseeing all day and all you
want is maybe one or two quiet beers, the last thing you want is Serge crawling
out of his pit at about 8pm saying to you, "Tonight, my friend, we
drink some absinthe!" For the uninitiated, absinthe is only
legal in about three countries in the world and is 70% alcohol. So it happens
that Serge and I are shortly sitting in the Marquis de Sade, soaking teaspoons
of sugar in absinthe, setting fire to them, dousing the flames in the absinthe
and downing the evil concoction in one! So much for my quiet night. I apparently
spend the rest of the evening talking to some Portuguese tourists about
Porto railway station - it has some lovely blue and white tiles, you know...
It gets worse. The following night Serge and the Irish contingent drag me along to the usual haunts again - Marquis de Sade and Chapeau Rouge - but tonight we take in an even more "interesting" venue: The Bunkr Rock Club on Lodecká. The place is full of down and outs, punks and general social misfits, and they serve a drink called rum alpsky which, at 80%, puts absinthe to shame! I literally shed a tear as it goes down. At least afterwards there's no reminiscing over Iberian transport icons. Tonight's entertainment is the Olympic ski jump down the bannisters at Starometská metro - surely the steepest in the world - and serenading early morning commuters with very drunken renditions of Molly Malone.
After all
the excitement of the Dukla Prague away shirts
a real culinary treat is in store on the next night. There's an excellent
beer hall beneath the equally good James Joyce pub at which the house speciality
is pig's knee! Now, at the time, I was a vegetarian of some nine
years standing, but, when in Rome... (and besides, a minimum of four people
is required to have this meal and I don't want my chums to be disappointed).
After a couple of litres of the excellent house beer, the waiter brings
out the most enormous dish of food I have ever seen - it must be at least
2½ feet in diameter and, apparently, it weights 2.4kg! It's a huge
stew of split peas, barley, potatoes and dumplings, with bacon and sausages,
a whole chicken (!) and, as the centrepiece, a whole pig's knee. Magnificent.
There's not much room for beer after getting through that lot, so the night
comes to a reasonably early end as I stagger out of the Chapeau Rouge at
about 4am...
My final day in Prague is spent watching Sparta Praha's opening league game of the season and then going out for "one or two quiet beers". Somewhat predictably I roll home drunk at 6am. Tonight's bizarre events include meeting Kirsty, an English student who is very keen to show off her Marks & Spencers underwear; Pasi, a very alcoholic Finn (who also turns up in Budapest later); a very drunken Russian who can't speak a word of English, but is very good at saying the names of English and Russian footballers and giving each of them a thumbs up or thumbs down gesture; and Marina, a spaced out Irish chick who is nicknamed Marinska, which is Czech for dope! As I said, Prague is a real party town!
I'm rudely awoken at 10:20 and told if I'm not out of the room by 10:30, I'll have to stay (and pay) for another day. This could go on forever, so I reluctantly drag myself out of bed and onto the next train to Plzen...