Prague New Year's
When they say Prague is dangerous on New Year’s Eve (or Silvester, as it’s known in Europe), they mean it. It’s not so much the pickpockets and pimps that add the normal flair of danger to the center of Prague, but the complete abandon of rules in certain areas. Observe:
Grace and I took a leisurely approach to making it to the center. We drank some beer and down a bottle of champagne at her flat, then went to a café for some Irish coffees to perk up a bit. She lives close to the center, maybe a fifteen-minute walk, and even so far away there were drunken teenagers blissfully sprinting about and shooting sparks off into the sky.
We made our way to Wenceslas Square. Wenceslas is the Prague equivalent of Times Square, and not somewhere the locals go if they can avoid it. A bit of a tourist hotbox, if you get my means. And I’d been told to avoid it, too, by concerned students looked out for my New Year’s Eve life.
But I’d never seen such mass spectacle, and that more than anything is what drew me to Wenceslas as midnight neared. Half of the Square was devoted to a concert which was broadcast across the country—that section required a frisking to enter, and was well guarded by policemen with twelve o’clock shadows.
LAME. I wanted the action, and the other half of Wenceslas was teeming with it. I would point out the drunks, but it might have been easier to point out the sobers. When we first arrived, around 11:30, the fireworks seemed sporadic but controlled, coming out of a few certain strongholds of explosion. But the closer it got to New Year’s the more people just started shooting in every direction, at their own discretion.
There weren’t any cops over here. The only atmosphere I’ve witnessed close to this is Bourbon Street, particularly during Mardi Gras. Some of the things I saw:
Cherry bombs were littered behind careless celebrators, ready to blow on an unexpected group.
A girl not ten feet from me took one to the calf and was helped, limping, away.
Several times a massive grouping of fireworks accidentally went off together, which sounded like a mortar landing twenty yards away and filling the air with colored smoke. Startled “Ooh”s carried from the crowd.
The couple next to us was just gone, absolutely blitzed, and the girl was dry-humping her man as if her life-depended on it. I think at that point she might have believed intercourse was taking place. Amazingly, she tried to finish her friend off by going down on him, and when he tried to stop her from actually unbuttoning his fly, her hair became stuck in his shirt zipper. Good times.
People just chucking empty bottles towards empty areas: soon a shattered glass snowfall developed.
Blissful drunks dancing (to no music) between the hurled bottles and falling fireworks and malicious cherry bombs.
After getting rained down upon by multiple bottles of champagne and getting enough celebratory kisses from strangers, we decided to depart. I never particularly felt in danger, though I never exactly felt safe either.
I remember when my friends and I left the Bonaroo Music Festival back in 2002, we agreed that it was a great experience and we never wanted to do it again. And I think that’s pretty much my take on the Praguean New Year’s—can’t risk my luck each year anyways.
Grace and I took a leisurely approach to making it to the center. We drank some beer and down a bottle of champagne at her flat, then went to a café for some Irish coffees to perk up a bit. She lives close to the center, maybe a fifteen-minute walk, and even so far away there were drunken teenagers blissfully sprinting about and shooting sparks off into the sky.
We made our way to Wenceslas Square. Wenceslas is the Prague equivalent of Times Square, and not somewhere the locals go if they can avoid it. A bit of a tourist hotbox, if you get my means. And I’d been told to avoid it, too, by concerned students looked out for my New Year’s Eve life.
But I’d never seen such mass spectacle, and that more than anything is what drew me to Wenceslas as midnight neared. Half of the Square was devoted to a concert which was broadcast across the country—that section required a frisking to enter, and was well guarded by policemen with twelve o’clock shadows.
LAME. I wanted the action, and the other half of Wenceslas was teeming with it. I would point out the drunks, but it might have been easier to point out the sobers. When we first arrived, around 11:30, the fireworks seemed sporadic but controlled, coming out of a few certain strongholds of explosion. But the closer it got to New Year’s the more people just started shooting in every direction, at their own discretion.
There weren’t any cops over here. The only atmosphere I’ve witnessed close to this is Bourbon Street, particularly during Mardi Gras. Some of the things I saw:
Cherry bombs were littered behind careless celebrators, ready to blow on an unexpected group.
A girl not ten feet from me took one to the calf and was helped, limping, away.
Several times a massive grouping of fireworks accidentally went off together, which sounded like a mortar landing twenty yards away and filling the air with colored smoke. Startled “Ooh”s carried from the crowd.
The couple next to us was just gone, absolutely blitzed, and the girl was dry-humping her man as if her life-depended on it. I think at that point she might have believed intercourse was taking place. Amazingly, she tried to finish her friend off by going down on him, and when he tried to stop her from actually unbuttoning his fly, her hair became stuck in his shirt zipper. Good times.
People just chucking empty bottles towards empty areas: soon a shattered glass snowfall developed.
Blissful drunks dancing (to no music) between the hurled bottles and falling fireworks and malicious cherry bombs.
After getting rained down upon by multiple bottles of champagne and getting enough celebratory kisses from strangers, we decided to depart. I never particularly felt in danger, though I never exactly felt safe either.
I remember when my friends and I left the Bonaroo Music Festival back in 2002, we agreed that it was a great experience and we never wanted to do it again. And I think that’s pretty much my take on the Praguean New Year’s—can’t risk my luck each year anyways.
posted by Avimaan @ 9:45 PM
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