Written by a co-traveller, January 06

Intro | Step I | Step IIa | Step IIb | Step III

In late November 2005 I visited Prague with a very mixed bunch of 15 collegues. We were heading for a joyous weekend full of »knedliky« (dumplings) and becherovka and of course for some of us shopping and sight seeing as well. During this weekends holiday I witnessed four times that members of our group were heading into getting lost with an eagerness which slightly irritated me. Assuming that getting lost must be something that many people are fond of (they need the kick), I will start a kind of series on Alex website in which tips and tricks in getting lost can be collected.

Step I: Forget your passport
For the impatient among us the best way to get lost in Prague is trying everything to avoid ever reaching it. If you have to pass a frontier to reach your destination one option is to lose your passport and every other card of identity. Of course losing your passport and so on is not difficult, but please let us distinguish between simply losing it and the higher art of losing your passport. For the higher art you’ve got to have strong nerves and a feeling for style, timing and dignity.

You can start for example in throwing a shirt over your wallet which is lying on a chair or something like that while you pack your stuff the day before departure without recognizing doing it. Please note that it has to be a shirt you are not going to take with you, so your wallet will stay hidden as long as possible. After some time you should recognize that your wallet is lost. Please allow yourself a little bit of uncertainty at this early stage of events. Is the wallet at home or maybe in the office on your desk? Decide for the office and don’t search at home any further.

As the departure is at 12:30 you go to work in the morning. It is crucial not to start the search for your money bag too early, better wait until, hmm, say 11:55. Until then please pass the time in answering e-mails, fighting the cerox printer, cooking tea and doing other office stuff. At 11:55 you’ve got to break into big hectic, shifting everything on your desk over and back. Give up early enough to reach the railway station in decent time, say 10 minutes in advance – don’t overdo it.

Now the first really big moment: tell your collegues at the railway station that you can’t identify yourself. If you are lucky they will tell you that this ain’t good, but convince you to come to the boarder with them nevertheless as they are sure there will be a way for you to pass it – no border controller will be that cruel. This is also the time to let various jokes be played on you (We will hide you under the jackets or in the toilet, we will keep you in the middle of us, so they can’t move you out of the train, if they ask us, if we could identify you, we will say you asked in Leipzig to join us in the group ticket and we have never seen you before, and so on). Encourage your collegues by laughing with them while looking brave and confident, so that they fail to make wise suggestions like taking the next train and searching for your wallet.

Enjoy the time on the train until you reach the frontier (~1,5 h) because of course you won’t get any further this time. The inspector will be a very strict woman, who watches you with a mean mien unpacking your bags looking for the wallet you know not to be there. So you will have to leave your collegues and get of the train at »Bad Schandau«. On the plattform you should wave your hands to your collegues in a way that seems sad, lonely and brings tears to the eyes of the more softhearted but also indicates that this is not the last word spoken on that matter and you will spare no effort to come back. You can be sure that leaving you behind will damage their mood seriously for 10 minutes at least.

Triumphant return
Before you get on the next train back to Leipzig it is time trying to find out if your collegues at Leipzig or your flatmate could find your identification card and fax a copy to you. Phone them now – not earlier. Of course the collegues can’t find anything and your flatmate is not at home. So back to Leipzig. You head straight to your home and manage to find your wallet in two minutes time. Now it will be a heroic gesture to put on the shirt under which the wallet was hidden: it will be the shirt of your triumphant return. Take another five minutes to fill your bag with enough beer for the lonely travel to prague, but don’t start drinking before you have passed the boarder.

Arriving in prague at 23:00 one collegue will fetch you from the station (while the others decide for eating and drinking). He brings you to the botel and you find that your collegues where quite unhappy in finding a bar in prague that could treat 15 people on a Friday night. After long walks in the cold night they finally agreed in moving to the botels bar. There you find them and they heartily applaude to your comeback. You are ready for stage II: Getting drunk and piss off.

Kommentare vor spambedingtem Annahmeschluss:

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Mischaf · August 25, 2008 @ 13:03 · Edit

Wahnsinn. Insane!
Ich meine … ich habe die Geschichte erlebt … aber sie so aufberereitet und dokumentiert zu lesen … absolutely awesome.
Thanks a lot for it!!!!
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admini · August 25, 2008 @ 13:53 · Edit

Thanks. Mein 3 Jahre jüngeres ich, dass die Geschichte geschrieben hat, bedankt sich. Man sieht: Erinnerung ist flüchtig, fand es auch sehr lustig den Text nach ewig langer Zeit wieder zu lesen.

… wo geht es eigentlich diesen Winter hin?