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.
