Sunday, June 1
A new week, a new month, and a new adventure. The show was over, and I was officially on tourist time. We had one more full day in Prague with the company in the apartment before everyone went their separate ways.
Sofia and Dan were heading back to the states, while the rest of us continued our journeys for various lengths of time on the continent. Samantha was headed to Paris for three days, in part because she could save the company money by flying out of there, and as company manager, that definitely was worthwhile. I, of course, was off to Germany and Amsterdam with my mother. Frankie and his friend Jon, who had joined us a few days prior, were going to stay a bit longer in Europe, first in Greece and then Barcelona. Jake and Paul were each staying a month or more, traveling all over with various configurations of friends and family. I think each of us was excited about what we were up to after Prague, but it was hard to believe we were done. The artistic part of our journey was over, and in our own ways, we each had to find a new path to creation and fulfillment.
In the meantime, Samantha and I decided to wake up early–or at least earlier than any other day we'd spent in Prague. We were up around 9:30, working on only a few hours sleep, but each feeling pretty sprightly. We were still running on the good vibes of the previous day, at least for a bit longer. After such a glorious day as I'd had Saturday, I was fated for a letdown. Like karmic retribution or something, I hit my peak, and my luck started to fade after the crest of that hill.
It all started well enough. We were both still riding our high after all. We'd planned to go see Terezín, the Jewish Ghetto an hour's bus ride outside Prague. both of us felt we'd fairly seen the city the day before, and she had done some research on this as a day-trip.
We made towards the bus station a bit after 10, following directions Samantha wrote down, but we ended up walking right past it because the station was not obvious from the direction we were walking. Eventually we asked for directions, and a man pointed us back in the opposite way we'd been walking. I noted him saying the word "most" (bridge: one of the few Czech words I knew) because it was on the other side of a bridge we'd passed under.
When we got to the station, it wasn't clear wear the busses were though, and the one desk attendant we found, who wasn't even sitting at her desk, seemed annoyed to help. We've found this type of brusk customer service a handful of times. It seems to be business as usual to act in this seemingly rude manner. They don't appear to be the most outwardly generous people.
After some fifteen minutes walking around the metro station, we noticed a separate bus terminal hidden around the corner. Unfortunately, the helpful desk attendant at this building informed us that the bus to Terezín was at a different station two metro stations away. He said the next bus was in fifteen minutes, at noon, but we should be able tot make it if we left immediately. Around that time I also noticed my wallet was missing. I just hoped it was at the apartment, but I remembered grabbing to put in my bag before leaving. Then it took some eight minutes for the subway to arrive, and it was 11:59 by the time we got to our stop. Then it took another several minutes to realize the busses were across the highway–something our previous informant had failed to mentions.
By the time we got to the terminal, it was 12:05, the bus was gone, and the next one wasn't for another two hours. The morning busses we missed had come more frequently. We confirmed with a different driver that the Terezín bus had left, and felt thoroughly deflated. Samantha and I rode the subway back to separate stops, her going to see the park and gardens north of St. Vitus I'd seen the day before, and I back to the apartment. My route not he winding streets of Prague was rather circuitous, and while I kept moving towards the river, I ended up far north of where I'd planned and much farther from my destination when I reached it. When I finally got back the our building, I ran into Jake, but he was rooming in the other apartment, and my roommates had all left for the afternoon. I was stranded outside without knowledge of my wallet, and hence no money. I could have seen Paul in the other room, but Jake told me he'd just woken up, and our lighting/set designer Dan was still sleeping. I didn't need to disturb them, and there was little they could do for me, so I went to the island park opposite the apartment on the river to write (above.)
Eventually I went back to the apartment, still finding it vacant, with no response from the buzzers to either mine or the other room. I proceeded to another nearby park two blocks away, where I wrote a bit more and started to doze before I noticed Paul running. I waved at him but got no response, so I chased after him to the corner, where we caught up. As it turned out, he was just coming back from a workout and let me into the building, where we did find Sofia in my apartment. She had been just down the block at the café we'd gone to a few times before, and I'd even thought to look for her there, but after the way we were treated poorly by a waitress there the day before, I figured she wouldn't return. Little did I know. I was just happy to find my wallet was indeed in the room, and I rested up after my whirlwind morning.
In the late afternoon, everyone started to reconvene back at the
apartment, and we decided to go out for appetizers and drinks at a
little porch nearby on the river. I got a salmon tartar that was
terrific, and knowing how good the juice had been in so many unusual
varieties–at least for America–I decided to order a black currant juice,
which was pretty tasty. If I'd felt the world was working against me
before, then it had certainly changed its mind now. We might have
lingered longer even, but we wanted to go somewhere else as 10PM and
darkness drew nearer. Coming from New York, we're all so used to getting
good food any time of the day, but kitchens close and people go home
much earlier in Europe.
It seemed that some were getting a little tired of the local fare and not in the mood for the seemingly equally popular Italian cuisine in Prague–I saw at least as many restaurants featuring pasta as goulash–so we tried a Thai restaurant called Noi around the corner from our apartment. We'd passed it everyday on the way to the theater, and I always joked that it sounded like an Australian saying, "No." I guess Thailand isn't too far from there. The food was actually quite good, if inauthentic to the locale, but it was more important to spend that last night together.
We hung out a while longer, stopping in a smoke-filled bar nearby, which drenched my clothes in its scent long after I left, but we were home earlier than any night of the trip, all in bed by 12:30, a bit spent, and prepared for our early morning departures.
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