Sorry for not having posted much between Christmas and this weekend. I was in Prague for the entire month of February, making up for lost time... I've never really been one for smalltalk. Indeed, I don't do it very well. In Prague I needed to be a master at it. Everywhere I turned, new people to be introduced to, but invariably the same conversation and Q&A pattern: Where are you from? What do you do? How long are you here for? Where are you living? Blablabla... Which was OK, as this is standard when you're meeting new people. But when talking about nothing in particular is a common theme amongst people you see more often, it becomes a little irritating... After a while, it makes no sense to spend longer than you should around them.
Another group that irritates me is (for want of a better word) sheeple. Sheeple are those who don't really do anything alone because they need approval for their actions, and that can be manifested through others wanting to join in. But then, sheeple attract other sheeple until the entire place is full of baa-ing humans. There was one place, for me a living hell, which was full of nothing except latte-swilling expats and oversized t-shirts containing the sort of person who needs a map to find the bathroom in the morning. Its main selling point was its bagels, and boy if that was its selling point, you can guess what type of place it was. Tourist guides stopped there with huge groups of sheeple who were force-fed muffins, cheesecake or brownies. Just 50 metres away, there is a glorious café selling Viennese and Parisian-style cakes and proffering proper coffee out of a Gaggia without pretentious names like "flat white" and "frappuccino" and in sizes so disproportionate to the coffee content, a microphysicist would find it hard to find many atoms of the said bean. The establishment in question also had its own ticket booth selling nights out to some "authentic" Prague shows. The same authentic ones you can find in the West End or on Broadway. You came all the way to Prague to take in a show you could see in any other city. Groovy.
Prague has innumerable amounts of interesting places to go to in the evening, and caters for all ages. Why sequester yourself in a place meeting other people you could see in any other city, talking about the same stuff, asking the same questions, and going to the same shows? Could you imagine a conversation between two of these people? "I saw Cats in Munich last week, but it wasn't as good as the Cats they put on in Budapest." "It was the opposite for me. I found the ornate theatre setting in Budapest too disturbing for the eyes. If they want to put on musicals, they need somewhere without gold-leaf around the edge of the stage and those awful cherubs in the frescoes." Begone, foul sheeple! But then there's the most irritating group of all: the bubble. These are people who, no matter where they are, no matter what huge range of options lie before them, will go out in their group, the same group, night after night after night. Prague is full of them, as is every other city. These über-sheeple seem to think there's nothing else outside their group. They walk around large cities talking to each other and fail to notice little details that make the place they are in special. They take photos of themselves eating in a restaurant, mainly when the plates are already empty, and they must be caught smiling in a photo hugging a statue or with the fingers and faces contorted in front of a monument or building. They rarely speak to locals (usually only shop assistants who speak their language) and eat at famous burger joints because they don't really understand local food and have a slight distrust. And there may be someone in the group with dietary requirements (doesn't like cheese, can't stand the smell of beer, gets bouts of Tourette's after eating spicy food) who makes it almost impossible to find an alternative place to eat, so they end up in the same place all the time. I think the worst case of sheeple syndrome I encountered whilst in Prague was on the final Thursday of the month. About six of us had got tickets to a concert in the glorious setting of the newly-renovated Malostranská Beseda, a palace built solely for public entertainment. One gave up his ticket for someone who when the tickets were booked didn't want to go and now did. Just under two hours before the concert, we agreed to meet at the metro station. Ten minutes later, I got a text saying they all wanted to grab something to eat first and would meet me there. I went to the station, one person there so we went together. My flatmate who was not in Prague when we bought the tickets but was interested also came along in case there were spare tickets. We got into the concert hall about ten minutes before the band started - no sign of the others. My flatmate could not get in, so he waited in the bar upstairs until he could. Forty minutes into the concert, I received a text message from the others saying they had only just sat down to order some food. In a pizzeria. In Prague. On the night they had concert tickets. Halfway through the act. They arrived, no joke, in time for the final two songs of the encore. I wouldn't have minded so much, if one of the group hadn't sacrificed his ticket and hadn't come, which could have gone to my flatmate, who
was on time, and was getting bored on his own upstairs. See? Sheeple. One is hungry, so the others follow. Satellites around the one currently having the issue. And to think, my flatmate could have bargained a ticket off one of the others. So it came as a huge relief that I was able to hang around with a few people who wanted more than swapping clichés, hanging round in tourist trap cafés, eating in pizzerias and missing concerts. We had so much fun night after night that we almost flunked the course we were on. But that was by-the-by. We would never have done anything to jeopardise our prospects of passing it, especially a whole month-long course. That would have been reckless. Nevertheless, there was too much to do than just sit in a restaurant as a group and just... chat. Despite them, I have a huge set of new memories I never thought I would have, after what can only be described as the best time of my life. I thought the days of fun were over when I left London in 2000, but I was given a month reprise in February in my favourite city, Prague, the place I like to call my second home town. She is still as alluring and enticing as she was twenty years ago when I first fell in love with her. But if I were only going to be there for the one month of my life, why on earth would I want to ignore her by hanging around the same people in my little bubble? That is an insult to the host city. I see it as a badge of honour that I only squeaked a pass but had enormous fun and didn't spend day after day working on projects in the hope of getting a higher grade (which made no difference to how you would be seen) with little or no contact with the real Prague.
Sorry for not having posted much between Christmas and this weekend. I was in Prague for the entire month of February, making up for lost time... I've never really been one for smalltalk. Indeed, I don't do it very well. In Prague I needed to be a master at it. Everywhere I turned, new people to be introduced to, but invariably the same conversation and Q&A pattern: Where are you from? What do you do? How long are you here for? Where are you living? Blablabla... Which was OK, as this is standard when you're meeting new people. But when talking about nothing in particular is a common theme amongst people you see more often, it becomes a little irritating... After a while, it makes no sense to spend longer than you should around them. Another group that irritates me is (for want of a better word) sheeple. Sheeple are those who don't really do anything alone because they need approval for their actions, and that can be manifested through others wanting to join in. But then, sheeple attract other sheeple until the entire place is full of baa-ing humans. There was one place, for me a living hell, which was full of nothing except latte-swilling expats and oversized t-shirts containing the sort of person who needs a map to find the bathroom in the morning. Its main selling point was its bagels, and boy if that was its selling point, you can guess what type of place it was. Tourist guides stopped there with huge groups of sheeple who were force-fed muffins, cheesecake or brownies. Just 50 metres away, there is a glorious café selling Viennese and Parisian-style cakes and proffering proper coffee out of a Gaggia without pretentious names like "flat white" and "frappuccino" and in sizes so disproportionate to the coffee content, a microphysicist would find it hard to find many atoms of the said bean. The establishment in question also had its own ticket booth selling nights out to some "authentic" Prague shows. The same authentic ones you can find in the West End or on Broadway. You came all the way to Prague to take in a show you could see in any other city. Groovy. 
Prague has innumerable amounts of interesting places to go to in the evening, and caters for all ages. Why sequester yourself in a place meeting other people you could see in any other city, talking about the same stuff, asking the same questions, and going to the same shows? Could you imagine a conversation between two of these people? "I saw Cats in Munich last week, but it wasn't as good as the Cats they put on in Budapest." "It was the opposite for me. I found the ornate theatre setting in Budapest too disturbing for the eyes. If they want to put on musicals, they need somewhere without gold-leaf around the edge of the stage and those awful cherubs in the frescoes." Begone, foul sheeple! But then there's the most irritating group of all: the bubble. These are people who, no matter where they are, no matter what huge range of options lie before them, will go out in their group, the same group, night after night after night. Prague is full of them, as is every other city. These über-sheeple seem to think there's nothing else outside their group. They walk around large cities talking to each other and fail to notice little details that make the place they are in special. They take photos of themselves eating in a restaurant, mainly when the plates are already empty, and they must be caught smiling in a photo hugging a statue or with the fingers and faces contorted in front of a monument or building. They rarely speak to locals (usually only shop assistants who speak their language) and eat at famous burger joints because they don't really understand local food and have a slight distrust. And there may be someone in the group with dietary requirements (doesn't like cheese, can't stand the smell of beer, gets bouts of Tourette's after eating spicy food) who makes it almost impossible to find an alternative place to eat, so they end up in the same place all the time. I think the worst case of sheeple syndrome I encountered whilst in Prague was on the final Thursday of the month. About six of us had got tickets to a concert in the glorious setting of the newly-renovated Malostranská Beseda, a palace built solely for public entertainment. One gave up his ticket for someone who when the tickets were booked didn't want to go and now did. Just under two hours before the concert, we agreed to meet at the metro station. Ten minutes later, I got a text saying they all wanted to grab something to eat first and would meet me there. I went to the station, one person there so we went together. My flatmate who was not in Prague when we bought the tickets but was interested also came along in case there were spare tickets. We got into the concert hall about ten minutes before the band started - no sign of the others. My flatmate could not get in, so he waited in the bar upstairs until he could. Forty minutes into the concert, I received a text message from the others saying they had only just sat down to order some food. In a pizzeria. In Prague. On the night they had concert tickets. Halfway through the act. They arrived, no joke, in time for the final two songs of the encore. I wouldn't have minded so much, if one of the group hadn't sacrificed his ticket and hadn't come, which could have gone to my flatmate, who was on time, and was getting bored on his own upstairs. See? Sheeple. One is hungry, so the others follow. Satellites around the one currently having the issue. And to think, my flatmate could have bargained a ticket off one of the others. So it came as a huge relief that I was able to hang around with a few people who wanted more than swapping clichés, hanging round in tourist trap cafés, eating in pizzerias and missing concerts. We had so much fun night after night that we almost flunked the course we were on. But that was by-the-by. We would never have done anything to jeopardise our prospects of passing it, especially a whole month-long course. That would have been reckless. Nevertheless, there was too much to do than just sit in a restaurant as a group and just... chat. Despite them, I have a huge set of new memories I never thought I would have, after what can only be described as the best time of my life. I thought the days of fun were over when I left London in 2000, but I was given a month reprise in February in my favourite city, Prague, the place I like to call my second home town. She is still as alluring and enticing as she was twenty years ago when I first fell in love with her. But if I were only going to be there for the one month of my life, why on earth would I want to ignore her by hanging around the same people in my little bubble? That is an insult to the host city. I see it as a badge of honour that I only squeaked a pass but had enormous fun and didn't spend day after day working on projects in the hope of getting a higher grade (which made no difference to how you would be seen) with little or no contact with the real Prague. 
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