Prague, Day 2

So, much of the communist era seems to have vanished without a trace.

I've been a little disappointed, as we walked around Prague and took a long bus ride out to Cesky Krumlov tonight, that the architecture and scenery aren't more... well, something. I could be in Austria, when I look around Prague. I could be in Germany as we drive through the countryside. I just don't feel like it's defined, somehow.

Thankfully, though, we found a little slice of the old communist heritage when making our way to the bus station.

As we looked at metro ticket machines, we were faced with the (unfortunately) usual dizzying array of choices. How many zones? Hard to say, since they weren't marked on the map. How much time did we need? Probably the short one (20 minutes) but it could be close. The machines were full of cryptic messages (like O+B, C) which didn't seem to match up to anything on the map or information board. Oh well. We decided to buy and hope for the best.

As we headed down onto the platform, one of my friends looked at the validating machine.

"Do we need to stamp them?" she asked.

"No," I said, heading for the escalator, and conscious of the time it would take us to get to the bus station and find out how to get the right bus, "that must be for passes, but when you buy them time-limited from the machines you don't need to validate them."

We got to the bottom of the long escalator, and two men in blue uniforms approached us, asking for our tickets. We showed them, and they looked them over.

"Not stamped" they said, turning them over and pointing to some almost-legible print on the back of the ticket. "See? English - ticket not valid. Passport, please."

So, it turns out that the "don't need to stamp it, it's dated from the machine" is only valid in every other country I've been to. I'd done a lot of metroing in my time, and I'd never seen anything like this. They had picked us out because of our suitcases, I'm sure. True Czech hospitality.

My mind flashed back to a guy I started talking to at the airport before the flight. He runs a software company (for macs, by the way) out of the US, but lives in Prague since he can work online and be anywhere he wants. He said it's nice, but can be a little hostile: Czechs don't really like foreigners.

In Calgary, there are people at the airport to help you out if you're not sure what to do next. They're old, and they wear white hats. They don't take your money. But the rules are a little different in Eastern Europe.

I reluctantly handed over my passport and we headed back up the escalators - where they showed us a poster listing the fine for riding on the metro with an invalid ticket: 700 CZK, or about 50 CHF/$.

Ouch.

There wasn't a lot we could do. At least they also pointed out, several times, that the tickets we were using were only valid for 5 stops (something we hadn't seen written anywhere prior to that). Wonderful. We were paying a fine on tickets that weren't even the right ones.

But, that's part of traveling. So we paid, we bought new tickets, found our way to the bus station and started on the aforementioned journey through vaguely generic countryside. We have a couple of days to explore Cesky Krumlov, and it's reputed to be beautiful, so I'm excited to see it.

I'm especially happy, because it's small. We can walk.

As far as I know, they don't ticket foreigners for walking.