As promised, here is the video of my recent travels in the last month. One month ago I was in Prague for a conference and some sightseeing, then went to Greece for a weekend a few weeks ago and I spent last weekend in the Bulgarian countryside! I’m having a great spring!
Since I didn’t upload any pictures yet, I decided to 1 UP my promise and to deliver a video. 🙂
Enjoy!
Or go see it on YouTube or Vimeo.
So, before I write about the joys of Prague last week… I want to get something off my chest first.
The public transport in Prague is not too expensive, although some people would disagree with me. The problem is the availability of tickets at night. There’s no machines available, no shops open, metro stations where there are offices: closed. If you can reach machines, but don’t have exact change: good luck. Even the guys from the tram/metro service won’t change money with you. Oh, and the tramdrivers don’t sell tickets.
So if you don’t have a ticket already, sometimes you’re more or less forced to ride the tram illegally, or put yourself in danger by walking through a city filled with junks and bums for 1.5 hour. So you get on the tram, but a lot of trams at night have police officers in them… who help to enforce the public transport company’s rules. By helping controllers fining you for more than 25 times the price of a ticket. That, by my book, is fascism. Using state security forces to enforce corporate interests at the cost of civilians.
There’s the option to send an SMS to a number to buy a ticket ‘code’ or something, but we were told this only works with Czech numbers… and at the information display at tramstops, the number to SMS is not mentioned. Great job, guys.
Yes, we got fined.
More about Prague soon! It was awesome. So was the 24 hour busride through Europe 🙂
Photo by Tsvety.
I’m about to embark on a 24 hour busride to Prague with my girlfriend. I’m invited to speak at a conference about social dynamics and hope to change some lives with the speech I will give there. I’ll be staying with a friend of mine who’s a DJ and who’ll be playing at 3 gigs that weekend, but before having a blast in Prague, I’ll have to make the best of my time in the bus.
I believe it will be a wonderful trip. Instead of flying across Europe from the south east to the center and seeing only clouds, we’ll be driving through a bunch of countries of which we’ll be able to see the beautiful landscapes and nature that they offer. Last summer I got in a car that was going from Holland to Bulgaria and even though it was exhausting, it was a great experience to witness the diversity of Europe. It made me feel a lot more European at the same time.
Also, when we arrive, a day after leaving, we’ll really have the feeling that we’re somewhere else – which I sometimes miss after a 1 or 2 hour planeride. Let’s hope all goes well and it won’t be too boring. 😉
I’ll be publishing some pictures of the trip if I manage to get any interesting shots and else expect a bunch of pictures from Prague up soon!
Wish me bon voyage and I’ll speak to you soon!
Image by René Ehrhardt, shared under a Creative Commons license on Flickr.
