By jfbarszcz
Hey there! I was pretty sick last weekend, so I didn't write an entry last week. But I'm back now! So while this might be the fourth week of blogs, it's only my third post, but I'm going to call this Week 3 (because the first one was Week 0, remember?). Don't bother looking for Week 2. It doesn't exist.
When I saw the prompts for this week's entry, one jumped out at me immediately. "Tell us how to get around your city! (Describe how to take the bus, ride a bike in the city, etc.)" This is because one of the most wonderful things about Prague is how easy it is to get around! While I love DC, its public transportation, by comparison, is honestly crap. The only American city I've been to with a comparably extensive mass transit system is New York, and if you've ever been there you know that besides its extent the NYC Subway lacks in pretty much everything else... besides character, of course. It has loads of that. But really, if Prague is any indication, Europeans have the public transportation thing WAY better figured-out than us Americans.
First, the metro. Prague's metro has three lines, which are labeled A, B and C but most of us in my program refer to the lines by their colors on the metro map (green, yellow and blue, respectively). "So what?" you say, "DC's metro has five lines." Yeah, but I've never had to wait more than about 6 minutes for a train on Prague's metro. And that's on a weekend; during the week the most I've waited is something like 4 minutes. Czechs would probably regard the DC Red Line with abject horror, to say nothing of New York's subway. It's not quite Tokyo-level efficiency, but it gets the job done more than adequately. The only problem with it, in my opinion, is that it stops running at midnight every night, even on weekends, which makes nights out slightly more inconvenient. Also I'd like to note that the escalators in most of the stations are really long and it reminds me of DC. People here suck at the stand left/walk right thing, though.
Then there's the tram (tramvaj) system. You were probably wondering why I said Prague's mass transit system is so extensive when there are only three metro lines. That's because wherever* and whenever you can't take the metro, you can take a tram! These are essentially trains that run on tracks at street level (usually literally on the street) that make frequent stops. Unlike the metro, there are many, many tram lines (23 of them run during the day and 9 run late nights), which means that at any given time in Prague, even if you aren't close to a metro station then you are close to a tram stop. With so many lines it can be a bit confusing if you have to make a transfer, but I'll take it over the mess of numbers and letters and colors and impossibly confusing service interruption notices that is New York's subway (I swear I'll stop harping on NYC, for real I love the place, but...). And (so far) I've never had to take a tram trip that has involved more than one transfer, because the routes have been very well-planned-out. The trams aren't as fast as the metro, but that's fine. They're each good for different things; the metro is like a highway that gets you across the city quickly while the trams are like local roads you can take for shorter trips (or to actually take you between the metro and wherever you're going/coming from). In all it's very efficient and easy to use..
I should also probably talk about the pricing of all this. To be honest, I don't remember how much tickets cost, but the way it works is that you buy a ticket, and when you get on a tram/bus or enter a metro station, you insert it into a machine that puts a validating stamp on it. Depending on how much you paid for your ticket, it's then valid for a certain amount of time (30 minutes, 90 minutes, 24 hours, 72 hours) and can be used on any tram, bus or metro until it expires. A very interesting thing about the mass transit here is that ticketing works on the honor system; there are no turnstiles so there's nothing stopping you from getting on without a ticket. However, there are transit police who will occasionally ask you to present your ticket, and if you can't show them a valid one then you get a nasty fine. As for the reason I can't remember ticket prices, well... I actually have a 3-month transit pass. Like the tickets it's valid on all city public transportation, and since I get the student rate on it I paid the equivalent of... wait for it... $36 USD.** That, dear reader, is the deal of the damn century. I've only been here for three weeks and I'm pretty sure it's already paid for itself. Aghhgghghg I can't get over how livable and cheap Prague is.
On top of all this, Prague also happens to be a very walkable city... as long as you have lots of time. The ancient cobblestone streets weren't really designed for automobile traffic, and indeed many of the streets remain closed off to cars. Walking is also great simply because it's the best way to take in the city's beauty. It force you to take more time looking at things, whereas on a tram the sights often whiz by and on the metro you can't see them at all. A nice thing about Prague is that people hardly ever seem to be in a hurry; in this regard it's very much unlike New York or DC. It makes me feel more compelled to take my time with most things I do, and getting around is no exception. Even in such a huge, busy, crowded metropolis, there's still something very zen about just taking a walk.
So I think I went into enough detail here, and seeing that I have a 6-hour day of class ahead of me tomorrow (going to try to change that) and that my writing is getting way way sloppier, I think I'm gonna head to bed now. Good night and see you next week!
*The trams don't travel to the outer, suburban reaches of the city; you have to take buses to go to those places, but in general there's much less for someone like me to see in those parts of town.
**In case you're interested in what that is in the local currency, it was 720 CZK. The current exchange rate is something like 19 crowns to a dollar, though at the time I bought it it was closer to 20. Hence the $36 figure.