the beginning of my Czech adventure started HERE
So I finally get out of the police station and onto another train to Prague, but looking at my schedule there are a TON of transfers. As we get closer to the German border the trains get smaller and smaller until I'm in some tiny town on the German side of the Czech boarder, and I have to get onto this crazy looking OLD train. It's only me, this German couple, an old drunk guy, the guy driving the train, and this older female conductor.

She comes up to me and says a bunch of stuff in Czech. I couldn't understand a word except "bus." I try English and German, but she doesn't speak either. She goes up to the German couple and I follow her. The German couple look just as confused, and when we arrive at the next stop we are thrown off the oldest train I've ever seen and onto the oldest bus I have ever seen. It has holes in all the seats, a vinyl floor like in a dirty old basement, and it's parked next to a whore house. We set off, and the Germans keep looking at me with this, "where the fuck are they taking us?" look, but the old lasy is still with us, so we figure we are going in the right direction.

At one point we drive through this forrest where there are whores standing by the side of the rode. I mean, like seriously in the middle of nowhere! Then we drive through a town named Babylon that is all Casinos. I'm not sure what's going on at the border of Germany and the Czech Republic, but it looks like a hell of a party.

So a couple trains later and I'm in Prague.

I find my way through the train station to the car rental place, but when I get there I'm told I need to pay an €800 ($1200) deposit or I can't have the rental car. The guy is very insistent that it's in my contract, but I read through the paperwork and it's nowhere. Long story short, after trying to authorize all my credit cards (with no luck), dude says I can just up my insurance from apparently shitty insurance to ok insurance. This will cost another $90 for a two day rental, and dude says I'll also have to give him a €200 ($300) cash deposit. At this point I've already been through hell and back and just want to get to the part of my weekend where I'm getting a massage and taking a bath in beer. So I agree and hand the guy €200 in cash.

Then he asks for my international drivers license. Apparently since I rented a car here in '99, the laws have changed. I tell him I don't have one, and says it's fine, that Americans almost never do. Then warns me if I get pulled over I'll get a $300 fine, cause apparently everything in Europe costs $300.

He has me follow him like 2km, cause fucking everything in Europe is at LEAST a 2km walk away, to the shittiest, oldest, Czech car. It's got 97,000 miles on it, no air conditioning, and it's a stick shift. He walks me around the thing and shows me all the scratches, but says I don't need to worry cause NOW I have insurance. Then explains how my insurance doesn't cover broken windows or flat tires.

I ask him if he knows of a place nearby where I can buy a SIM card for my iPad or use the internet to get directions, and he says no. So then I drive around Prague in rush hour for 45 minutes looking for a cell phone store. I FINALLY head down this tiny little street and come upon the words "Free Wi-Fi" in neon yellow. I walk into the cafe, and after a VERY laborious series of grunts and gestures, I end up with a terrible watered-down cup of "coffee" and the wi-fi password. 

I do a search for Chodovar, the beer spa, and Google Maps tells me I have an hour and forty-five minute drive ahead of me. This place is actually closer to the German border than to Prague. I hop back in my piece of shit car, and do my best to follow the directions I took screen shots of out of Prague.

About 20 minutes out of Prague, I realize I'm starving to death. I haven't eaten since the Hello Kitty ice cream bar after the police station. I see a sign for KFC, and hop off the expressway. 

In the US, I would NEVER eat at KFC. It's fucking terrible. BUT overseas, it's actually pretty good. I ate at KFC twice in Beijing. You still can't get ice cubes in your soda, but the chicken is much higher quality and the weird corn dish they serve instead of coleslaw in China is actually really good. I figured it was a safe bet in the Czech Republic. 

I pull up to the drive through, cause they are still building the damn thing. It looks like a war zone, but they are still serving out of the drive thru window, and all these people that look like gypsies and sitting around on picnic tables and a waitress is bringing them chicken wings.

The woman speaks to me in Czech, and I say, "Hello." Which is pretty much the international signal for, "I'm a dumb ass American, can you please speak to me in English. I'm too lazy to every try to learn your language." She just speaks more Czech. I see the words, "Deluxe Box" real big on the menu and order it. Then I say, "Cola... Cola." She responds with "Pipcee," and I figure I'm in good shape.

I get too the window, and when she tells me how much, I just hold up a 100 Kč and a 200 Kč note. 100 Kč is like $6. She points, and I hand her the 100 Kč note. She shakes her head, but when I hand her the 200 Kč note she motions that she ALSO needs the other 100 Kč too. I'm thinking to myself, "What the fuck did I just order?" Before I know it, I'm being handed this huge bucket of three different kind of chicken, two orders of french fries, and a liter of Pepsi. I start laughing hysterically, but she's European and never smiles, so I just drive away.

About four spicy chicken wings, a leg, and two extra crispy boneless wings into my bucket, I find this crazy Czech radio station that's got this old guy telling a story all super dramatically. Occasionally there will be these flourishes of experimental music, sound effects, and contemporary classical jams in the background. I listened to it for over an hour, not understand a single word the guy said. I recorded a little bit of it in the video below.

At 9:30pm, twelve hours and twenty-nine minutes after my train left Munich, I got to the beer spa, Chodovar.

my trip to Chodovar continues HERE