Weekend Of Stag

Wow, what a weekend. That was a whole heap o’ fun. If you haven’t been keeping track, last weekend was James’ stag trip to Prague in the Czech Republic. We flew out on Friday morning and arrived at about 3 in the afternoon to be greeted by gorgeous weather and an amazing city. Thanks to Adam’s navigations skillz we got a bus and a tram to the hotel but got off slightly too early and treked about 2 ks up a road in the blazing sun. The hotel was nice, basic but clean and friendly.

First beer in Prague was a glass of Star Prammen in the hotel bar costing 35 Krowns, 35! That’s less than one pound and that was in the hotel! I love this country already. After rounding up the troops we headed out into the centre and wandered for a bit, had a few more beers and then got dinner in Klub Arkitektur, which is ironic as James’ Dad is an architect. I had traditional Czech beef in a gorgeous creamy sauce with dumplings, and some more beer. At this point we weren’t planning on making the Friday our “big night” but, you know, boys will be boys. The rest of the night was a blur of more bars (including one called Trendy Bar where they showed Japanese sumo), more beer, some awful Czech paint-stripping spirit and then waking up fully clothed on top of my bed as Sandy went for breakfast. So much for the non “big night”.

About five people (out of 10) turned up for breakfast and everyone was horrible, horribly hungover. Saturday was our day of going pistol shooting and we got a metro out into the boonies where Adam assured us you could get a taxi from. We emerged from the metro station blinking in the sun to find the whole area surrounded by Soviet-era tower blocks and, bizzarely, apple and apricot trees. We did manage to find some taxis and arrived at the shooting range to begin the fun. We shot glocks, magnum revolvers, a cool browning with a laser sight, some other pistols and a Desert Eagle. Oh my god, the desert eagle is a total hand cannon and makes the loudest noise ever. The noise and the smell was the strangest thing. When you’ve only seen guns in movies and on TV you don’t think about the small things like that. But heck, they are scary things. Very scary. I think we were all a little freaked out in our hung-over state by the whole thing. After a while you get used to the noise, the competitive edge takes over and you try to get a grip. There was a mini marksmanship competition which Adam won and in which I didn’t come last, so, bonus. When the pistol shooting was done you could pay extra to have a few blasts on a pump-action shotgun which James and a few others did. It looked fun and nearly knocked James off his feet :).

When we got back into the city we had some “do whatever you want” time and so we wandered around the touristy stuff, browsing the wee markets and buying cheap food. Prague is a gorgeous city with beautiful architecture around ever corner it seemed. In the evening we decided to go out a bit later and to take it a bit easier than the previous night. We plonked ourselves in a bar and then Adam scouted out somewhere to eat (an excellent idea). We ate in a small mediteranean place where some locals (I think) were having a brithday party in one corner. It was a really nice meal, I had spicy lamb kebabs to start and then duck with couscous for main. Polished off with wine, coffee and a super-sweet chocolate mousse dessert.

This night we’d decided to go to more clubby places and so we set out to go to the famous Roxy club. Which was totally, absolutely, dead. We did find an amazing place next door though which was just a table serving beer in a open candle-lit courtyard. The toilets here were an experience. You climbed up some steep stone steps and navigated around various landings (all in the pitch black, lit by candles) before coming to two urinals bolted to the wall in a random room with no door. Great fun.
Eventually we ended up in Klub Lávka, complete with pole dancers (Update: OK, not really pole dancers. More just fully clothed girls on podiums, dancing. No poles. Sorry James…) and a giant rear garden. We sat out playing 21 with increasingly stupid rules and having a great time until about 4am. By this time in Edinburgh you might be on the way home or tucked up in bed. But not in Prague! Clubs stay open until 5:30. Some of our group decided to call it a night, but us hardcore bunch moved on to Karlovy LáznÄ› the “Biggest Music Club in Middle Europe”. This place looked to be a whole apartment block turned into one giant club. There were four floors all with huge bars and dancefloors on either side but each floor being a different genre. We had a brief fling on the techno floor to Born Slippy but then (embarrassingly) ended up on the cheese floor for the rest of the night. Got out of the club and crawled back to Harry’s swish hotel, got some wierd takeaway pizza, drank the mini-bar, said goodbye (he had a stupidly early flight) and then waited at a tram stop for the first tram back to the hotel.

Someone came up with the idea of not going to sleep, so we went straight to breakfast when we got back to the hotel and attempted to eat something. I pushed stuff around my plate in a sleep-deprived comma before giving in and going to bed. Got up later, went for flight, (other) James lost his passport, bought duty free chocolate and vodka, got (bumpy) flight home and then slept.

Awesome weekend 🙂

There is an assortment of out of sequence pictures in the pictures section.