Prague.

Mexican John, subway booster.

I went to Prague in 2007 as one of the destinations of a 10 week BMX inter-rail adventure. I didn't really enjoy Prague for various reasons. I'm going back there next week to visit Cairnsy. Here's a piece I took from my travel journal and wrote up for Brainmind issue 3 about the Prague leg of that trip. When it was printed in Brainmind the text was tiny and it was full of mistakes making it quite hard to read so here it is in it's revised form. With the added bonus of blurred print photos from the trip.


Prague, what a hell hole. I'm so glad to be finally out of there. We just got on the train after one of the most stressful mornings of my life. An American Leslie Nielsen lookalike with a gold tooth and a fluorescent green jacket said 'Right on' to us for getting our bikes on the train unreserved. I wonder if he realises it was his fault the woman wouldn't let us reserve our bikes because he was a couple of spaces ahead of us in the reserve bikes line. Im sick of this reserve bikes bullshit. I met a German flatlander in the station, he looked nervous, worried even. He was as white as a sheet and he asked politely if it was alright to sit with us. I presume for safety. He had missed his lift in Dresden and had to rendezvous with him in Prague as he was on-route to the BMX Masters. I said 'no way, the Masters, me too”.

The German said 'I fucking hate this place.'

I shook my head and told him 'I couldn't agree more' with the whiff of piss in my nostrils.

I had just spent an hour with Joe tooling round grotty streets and filthy avenues looking in vein for a socket to strip down a bunch of stupid BMX bikes. Every shop employee we spoke to absolutely loathed the English and would refuse to help in anyway. For a while we went through some used car lots trying to buy a car for the equivalent of 150 euros. we were that desperate to escape Prague. Things were looking bad. We had already been told in absolute terms that we weren't getting on the first train that we had safely boarded. We were subsequently thrown off bikes and all by an angry fat inspector.

Czech yourself before you wreck yourself.

Lewis was then told that the compulsory reservations we had to make were not possible to be made by an angry booth bound rail employee. We can presume we were told to fuck off but can't be sure due to the language barrier. I knew I was leaving one way or another and began stripping my bike as did lewis which was easy due to the simplicity of no pegs. Lewis' stone age brain began to clunk and he had a revelation similar to the dawn of time the invention of the wheel or the first creation of fire with flint and tinder. 'We should wrap our bikes in sleeping bags.'

Brilliant. Lewis you're a genius, even a stopped clock has to tell the correct time twice a day. The others with pegs removed what they could and wrapped the obvious wheeled vehicles in tents, bivvie bags and other miscellaneous tarpaulin products.

Once out of the very centre of Prague early this morning there was no chance of any vegetarian food. I was starving cranky and felt like I had rapidly rising blood pressure. This was stress of the bleeding gums variety. The unbelievably crammed train pulled in and it was every man, woman, child and pigeon for itself on the rampaging and unruly platform. We all boarded the train at different points with our bikes in various levels of disguise and managed to reconvene somewhere near the bike carriage. Sweating and in a state of disbelief we were finally all rolling on our way back to Berlin where Joe and I had planned to continue on to Cologne and the BMX Masters. The others are going to Melt techno festival. I still have the ebb and flow of unvented anger and frustration in my chest and shoulders. For a while I wanted to kill now a serious maiming is all I want to deliver. On to Berlin with the hopes of catching a night train to Cologne or failing that, sleep in a park.

Joe, hip hop pose in a tree.

Prague was not easy on me. We didn't have much time to check the place out and ended up trying to do too much for fear of not doing anything. Upon arrival we got lost straight out of the station which incidentally I had to check wasn't Beirut by mistake. The word grim didn't even touch the battered and exposed wire reinforced concrete surroundings. The place reeked of human piss and was awash with bums drug addicts and lawless children. Top three worse train stations I have been to. Evidence of heroin injection, prostitutes pulling at knickers, cars burnt out, barbed wire on every fence and the only thing not boarded up was a McDonalds restaurant.

Setting off quickly we rode uphill for almost 10 miles in the wrong direction. I was initially Surprised that it wasn't raining but 2 minutes out of the station it started. Mexican John had been to Prague before so it was supposed to be easy. But a misaligned landmark and being on the wrong side of the river all meant we were up shit creak. We passed a bank that had a sign on the door no dogs no motor bike helmets no ice creams and no .357 magnums. Yeah lads if you could just check your firearms at the door this is a bank. The part of Prague we had ended up in was rough as it comes. We got directions to a tube station after giving up on the riding fun. On the way up to the station we saw a near fatal car accident. Everybody drives at one hundred miles an hour and is late on the brakes. Its hard to ride a bike here especially with no brakes in the wet. We had to jump the tube because we finally realised they don't use Euros here and we haven't any Koruna to pay for it. Apparently they march you to the cash machine at gun point and make you pay the fine here. The inspectors boarded the stop before the centre and began creeping down the carriage checking tickets. I turned my face the other way so as not to look suspicious. About 4 passengers from us the speccys caught someone else while they were processing him the train pulled up and we all bailed off at triple speed not easy carrying a 30 lb. hiking bag and a bmx.

It was fairly smooth, we found a cheap apartment, changed some money, locked the bikes and ate at a pizza place where we all ordered for two. I was starving no longer.

Prague is full of bums. The buildings look like there from the third world and the cars are either Lada or Skoda the likes of which I haven't seen since 80s England. There's barbed wire and gun outposts everywhere and every corner smells of human piss. Wild dogs roam the overcrowded and dangerous traffic streets. Many of the population appear miserable, hostile and dangerous. Outside of a few glitzy and swanky restaurants and a fancy church in the centre the city sucks.

Rad spot shame about the rain.

Day2 Praha. We go to the bank for yet more Imperial credits or whatever the currency is here, we then eat a huge quantity of scrambled egg in the apartment. We ride about after breakfast. We see a skatepark made of wood but it is still being constructed. No riding. We find some ledges. Wally guns a couple. he's successful on the first and not so on the second. A broken thumb possibly. I'm in a wingy mood and pretty tired so I ride around not as fast as everyone else. This probably pisses my friends off. I feel bad about this but I feel like shit with the onset of a bad head. A monument surrounded by marble banks is fun but a torrential downpour starts after five minutes. We hide under a huge and ancient willow tree. The rain causes giant spiders and beetles to fall of the leaves they attack and bite us. One bites my neck. I want to cry for my Mam but I must be a man. I decide to laugh as it usually lifts my spirits. Usually. Our bikes get locked to the bench under the tree and we make a run for the Egyptian steakhouse for beers. There's a little child running about the steakhouse doing a good job at pissing me off. Wally's thumb is massive and black. He puts ice on it and he remarks that the pressure is unreal. It does look like it could burst at any second. Wally is good at laughing through the pain. He's been injured a lot in his life time and his pain tolerance is high. Plus he's just generally tough and good spirited.

Wally oversized thumb under a tree in the rain. 

More beers and then its dry out. We ride too fast on cobbles constantly uphill through intense traffic and trams that try to kill you at every intersection. More bums. More dehydration. More barbed wire. In the centre of Prague there was a perfectly flat and slightly under cover spot. There was a guy dressed hip hop and doing some serious flatland moves. It always shocks me to see BMX-flatland because it virtually doesn't exist in Northern England. This dude threw down the moves but had bad English. I asked him about street spots but he could only recommend flat car parks. We rode with him for a little while and did grinds and mannys on the ledges around his spot.

A monument is good to ride and we find the Steven Hamilton spot with the fattest rail in the world. We can only ride the little trannys as there is a huge bulldog faced security guard at the front of the property. I'm starving and dehydrated again. We decide to go to Main train station and find out how to get the hell out of the czech republic. The area surrounding the train station is fortified with concrete road barriers stacked one on top of another forming 6 foot high concrete walls. These walls run down the middle of roads and across lawns. At the corner of every barrier wall there is a gun out post with many mean faced looking guards standing about looking bored and brandishing fully automatic weapons. Its hostile. Its post apocalyptic. This city has beautiful aspects but it has the cheapest and nastiest aspects also. somewhere in between good and evil in the city everything got pissed on and fell to pieces. The rag tag atomic survivors comprising its populace look angered and homicidal. The place reminded me of cheap science fiction with concrete set pieces and the ever familiar gun posts dotted amongst holed tarmac and security fencing. Many low budget and unoriginal set designers must holiday in Prague.

Wally, ledge grinder.

The train station is like a demilitarised zone. Although retaining some fascinating and original design the place has gone to ruin. It's like industrial 80s russia but with more barbed wire and less charm. It even lacks the colourful Communist murals. Bums of all ages sit around weeping and soiling themselves or burning backy with yellowed rag bound fingers or passing strange beers. Their lives look depressing and base level, they're just another part of the city no more important than the pigeons or the man hole covers. The bums are a feature of the street to be trodden on or avoided. Some bums bicker and squabble over alcohol others sit silently staring at the cracks in the pavement with piercing eyes and tatted beards. Some huddle together-women and children in grey coats with scabby lips. Some lie alone on the numerous benches. A few mooch back and forth looking for cigarette ends or spare change. Some hassle the tourists. We receive no hassle, I put this down to being with lewis who shares more than a few characteristics with the homeless. today he's wearing the Clinic T-shirt that he wore for a year straight when he lived on my couch in Heaton road. The T-shirt used to be black with a white print on the front. Its now grey with sun bleached brown shoulders and the print is indistinguishable. As many of Lewis T-shirts end up it has large gaping rips in the arm pits. Lewis is the only man I have ever seen that rips T-shirts in this way. This clinic shirt isn't a one off, virtually every piece of clothing he owns is ripped in this peculiar way. Today lewis is sweating profusely and has large clumps of wiry underarm hair on display from the custom T-shirt vents. His beard has long passed uber cool NME indie stubble. It has gone past dirty but cool skate beard. but it hasn't yet reached ZZ Top fully dedicated to the beard lifestyle length. Lewis beard is basically routed in the homeless and helpless street urchin gap.

After coming up short amongst barricaded and barbed wire entrances we finally found our way into the station. For an international station it was pretty small. There are mainly cattle trucks standing at the platform and very few people about. Down below in the catacombs of brown tile there is a ticket office. The staff are literally burning up in the non air-conditioned heat. We ask for routes and times to Berlin and it looks like we have to leave extra early for a direct route.

The looming grim and decomposing brickwork forces us back to the safety of our sixties wood panelled apartment. We drop our bikes off in the room under the strictest rules not to and head straight out into the safer tourist areas of the city to eat. Mexican john takes us to a Blues restaurant with Blue Note posters, Thelonius monk vibe and live music. This place is really good and super cheap. Whilst listening to acoustic cover songs we get some reasonable beers and tremendous vegetarian burritos. Its got to the stage of the trip where we have ridden so much that I've lost all my stored up energy and I've been getting hungry twice as fast. On the road I have learned just to eat whenever I can even if I'm not hungry because an hour later I will be hungry but then there will be no food. John got stuck to one of the chairs by his belt loop much to the amusement of two tourists sitting next to us.

That evening sleep has me instantly. I have a dream about Blob, he's out at a mastering place putting the final touches to NSF2 on Vinyl. The sleeve looks amazing jet black and then he has this huge stockpile of them in a truck. I pull one out and it really is a piece of work. It has that new vinyl smell, the static grips the paper of the in-sleeve which is full of movie stills form the feature and the quality is of the best reissue I have ever seen. I was left thinking it was a classic and it needed to be preserved as such and what a way to do it. Well done Blob. I awoke rain streaming down the windows seriously disturbed and uneasy, how the hell can this thing be viewed?