Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Let's Get Together and Fuck the Spelling


So, Legerova, the nastiest downtown street you can only imagine. Wide, noisy, very pedestrian-unfriendly, unlike most other streets in the city. It smashes into the city center straight from the lovely Nuselsky bridge, the great place for both pretty views and successful suicide attempts. Then it runs past some serious-looking buildings in the New Town, winds around the main train station, and gets dispersed somewhere around Holesovice and Mala Strana. In the New Town, hotels, hostels and pensions press themselves against the walls, scared by the never-ending traffic. I believe this was sprayed onto the transparent wall of a telephone booth by someone who lived in one of these places. Can't imagine a Praguer writing something so multicultural, so defenselessly uniting. But the two spelling mistakes suggest it still could have been a non-Native speaker. And anyway, the phone booth in this city are mostly used for heroin injections by gypsies, especially around the main train station. Every booth you pass looks like a tiny Lynchean stage with skulls and weird smiles dancing in the dark. I enjoyed staring at the traffic current through that window with these vibrant words painted onto it. Why I even was in that street? I was going to my preferred legal assistance company, a bunch of nifty Russians who know their way around local red tape. It's such offices of such companies where people in Prague really get together, I thought.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Tourists Love Prague and it Loves them Back


I saw this beautiful, sincere, screaming inscription on the wall somewhere between The Globe and the main pieces of tourist flypaper in the Old Town. Now what's not to love here! I lovingly picture a middle-aged man, probably not a native English speaker, but with an attitude, splashing a random wall with his rant about the city he visited. His restaurant bills and overpriced beer was thrown at him, the taxi meter seemed to race faster than the cab's engine, and a galaxy of other torrid tourist experiences landed upon his head. And there he is, pulling out a felt pen and putting it all in a few simple words which pretty much sum up the stories of many a foreign traveler. Though, mister, if you think that a mild touristy fuck-over in a post-Soviet Slavic state equals to being in the hands of mafia, you haven't been in Soviet Union proper. You would beg to pay 5 Euros for a beer-water cocktail served with a trademark Czech sneer once you realize these young men with pipes in their hands are not exactly plumbers on their late hour round through the city outskirts.

Still, this should be definitely put on flyers in hotels. I am also forwarding a link to this image to the ministry of tourism. Hope they heed!