On a small bridge crossing a narrow canal that runs to the west of the Vltava River, couples have covered the fence with padlocks with their names on them. From what I understand, it’s a symbolic thing, to represent everlasting love or something. Or at least for as long as the padlock is locked to the bridge. Kind of sweet, really. And incredibly corny.

Old Town Square. Pretty and tourist busy.

The Astronomical Clock, on the wall of the Old Town Hall. Sure, it is pretty, but to get the chance to take a photo of it, a more or less had to stand in an unofficial line.

 

 But some of the houses in the old town had really beautiful facades. Like this. Lovely. Absolutely adorable.

I did pay the fee to go into the Strahov Monastery Library, though. You know my passion for libraries. The Strahov Monastery was founded in 1149, but the library is in no way as old.

The Theological Hall, completed in 1679. I wouldn’t mind sitting by that table to study. I’ve always believed that beautiful things are good for the soul.

The Philosophical Hall, built in the late 1700’s. Still beautiful, but less cozy. I really do prefer the older room.

In the hallway connecting the library halls, the walls were covered with exhibits of dead animals and insects. There is something spooky with those kinds of glass cupboards, filled with stuffed animals. We had a couple of those at my old high school – I went to one of Stockholm’s oldest schools, and some parts of the building was almost like a museum. I guess dead butterflies are OK, but seriously, a stuffed fox gives me the creeps.

 

You can’t really see it on this photo, but there are gargoyles sticking out of the St. Vitus Cathedral. Mr. P likes gargoyles. He feels a kind of kinship with them, I think.

Martin had left when I finally arrived at the Prague train station, but a very friendly man let me borrow his phone so that I could call Martin and tell him that I was on my way. And using his excellent directions from his Couchsurfing profile, I found my way to his house, no problem. My worries wouldn’t have been necessary – as they rarely are.

Martin had prepared dinner for me, homemade Slovak sausage and beer and he was such a lovely Couchsurfing host, considerate and he listened to me speaking about places I’ve been to, geography, gender roles and feminism for hours. Incredible patience. Yet another good-hearted member of the Couchsurfing community. It gives me hope in the future of the world.

After a good night sleep, I then took the metro into the city center to do some hardcore sightseeing in Prague on this my 33rd day of traveling (17/7).

The view of Prague from the castle hill. The Prague castle is huge. Like village all in itself. I really don’t get why one royal family needed such a big abode, successively built during the centuries. But then, I’m no king.

(According to Wikipedia, the Prague Castle is the world’s largest ancient castle, covering almost 70 000 m². Maybe the Bohemian kings wanted to be in the Guinness Book of Records.)

The St. Vitus Cathedral, the seat of the Archbishop of Prague, built in the middle of one of the castle courtyards. THAT’S how big the castle complex is.

The cathedral was completely filled with tourists. Which was only expected, I suppose.

Right next to the castle, facing the city walls, was this beautifully decorated building. In a way, I found that much more impressive than the castle itself. But I didn’t go into the actual castle, so maybe I missed all the splendor and magnificence there. I just didn’t feel I needed to pay yet another entrance fee to see old furniture. I wanted to go out into the city, so that’s what I did.

I don’t understand what people in Sweden are whining about, when the trains occasionally run late. Ever since I left Vienna, not a single train I’ve been on has been on time. Now, the train just started running again, after standing still for about an hour at a station 10 kilometers outside of Prague. I don’t mind being late, the train is very comfortable – but I worry about Martin waiting at the train station. I got to borrow the phone of a French guy to send a text saying that he should go home, but Martin answered that it’s no problem, he’ll wait. I haven’t even met this guy, but I have a strong feeling he is little short of being a saint.

Excepting this unintentionally forcing a Couchsurfing host to wait, this train ride has been the most comfortable of my trip. The air condition works, the landscape outside the window is beautiful – fields of wheat, corn and sunflowers, deciduous forests and small rivers running through the fields and meadows. The evening sun is giving everything a golden glow and I’ve soon read the entire guide book chapter about Prague. If the train could only get there, I’m certain this will be a wonderful stay.

Well, upon second thought, maybe I don’t like hostels that much. While I left the dorm for just a short while yesterday night, someone went in there and stole my phone. I’d left it there to be charged while I went to the bathroom. Luckily, I had just locked up everything else of value, so nothing else was lost, and I’ve been so annoyed with Apple lately anyway, so I kind of feel relieved that I’ll be allowed to get another kind of phone – but still. It frustrates me. It was really just extremely bad luck. While being in the common room, brushing my teeth or something, I saw a very fat man, a pretty fat woman and a little child carrying a big Coca Cola bottle entering my dorm room, and just a short while later they left again. I remember thinking that it was odd, them leaving the hostel so late with that little child. And I wondered how on earth that fat fat man could fit in one of the bunk beds. (The hostel staff later said that they probably were Romani. I have no idea about that, I just know that they were black haired and brown eyed – but it feels so strange, thinking that what if they were. And that that would be such a cliché. And how will this affect my prejudices – I always get mad when people say that the Romani steal or that Muslims don’t believe in gender equality. It’s individuals we’re talking about, not a anonymous mass of bodies. There are so many idiots writing stuff on the internet in Sweden, and there is such a crazy and massive discrimination against Romani all over Europe. And now, I get robbed by, what I’ve been told, a Romani family. Not that it will change my mind when it comes to discrimination and marginalization of them as a minority group, but it just feels like fate or whatever has a sick sense of humor.)

Well, turns out they had gone into several rooms, put on the lights and rummaged around. Of course I didn’t see them steal my phone, but it was probably them. At least they did not belong at the hostel, and the hostel staff got so overstrained and jumpy when they were told about this by the Danish guy and the Finnish guy that had been woken up by the intruders. Somehow, they had gotten in to the hostel, and once you’re in, it’s pretty easy to wander around. Hostels tend to have a mixture of people as guests, so even though they didn’t really fit in, they weren’t that odd either.

The police arrived and I had to make a statement and the hostel staff was running around, checking to see if the intruders were still inside. I called my phone company with the hostel phone and told them to block my SIM card, and then I just sat there at the bar, with my heart beating hard in my chest, not really knowing what I felt. The police told me to go to the police station the next day if I wanted to get the police report, in case I might want to claim money from my insurance.

There were at least three policemen, about five of the hostel staff (a bartender and the receptionist, the rest were staff that weren’t on duty anymore, but had been hanging out in the hostel bar) and everything was just confusion, people speaking Slovakian, someone translating something into English, and then someone gave me a shot of the local Slovakian gin. It went straight to my head. Everything just felt so extremely surreal. I realize now that drinking alcohol in that situation might not have been the best idea, but I had no proper judgment at the time.

What probably saved me from completely losing it (not because I was scared or because I was sad or angry, but because I seriously had no idea what I felt and things were just happening in a blur) was the Finnish guy that stayed at the bar with me until the police left. He was very Finnish, a no bullshit kind of guy, and he was happy to talk about the weirdness of the situation with me, helping me when I got confused by the police’ questions about the worth of the stolen phone and what kind of insurance I had. I think just speaking Finnish with someone, the language that I most of all associate with family, grounded me and gave me the clearness of thought to ask the police when I should go to the station, what I should bring and if there would be anyone speaking English there.

It was an extremely long day, getting up at 4:30 to catch the train in Belgrade and ending it by climbing into bed at two in the morning after having spoken to Slovakian police officers for two hours, so I should have slept like a log. But I didn’t. I fell asleep, dreamed about forgetting to buy hiking shoes for the glaciology field trip that I’m going on in August, and woke up at six feeling even more stressed than before. After that, I woke up and fell asleep and woke up again, never really getting that deep rest.

When I finally got up around nine I felt great, however, and after having a Serbian nectarine for breakfast I walked the three blocks to the police station. There, after describing the situation, I was told to come back in an hour, because the translator wouldn’t be able to come until then. So I took a walk up to the Bratislava castle, looked down on the view of the Danube and then walked back through the old town.

Back at the police station, the translator had arrived, a very agreeable and sympathetic woman called Zusana. We went through the entire story again with the police, and he was extremely thorough. He even wanted me to draw what the white pattern on my knitted phone cover looked like. I sat there for more than an hour, in the nicely air conditioned police office and described everything at least twice, to make sure that he had gotten everything right. And in the end, the only thing that I got was a short text written in Slovakian, on official police stationary, with a stamp and my and his signatures. I don’t know if my insurance company will accept that, but now at least I have it. It all felt very professional and correct and the fact that they even got a translator to arrive in an hour impressed me.

I still don’t know what to feel, though. Or, rather, I don’t believe I really feel the way I feel. Because, right now, this feels more like a funny story to tell when I come home, something more than just descriptions of museums and architecture, than an actual loss. Of course I didn’t want to get my phone stolen, but it would have felt so much much worse if it had been the computer (with all my photos and texts, and it being new too) or the camera, or so inconvenient if it had been my passport or my debit cards. Now, the phone was pretty old, starting to get slow, and Apple annoys me so much. (That everything you own has to be Apple for it to function properly! And that I can’t decide how to upload things on the phone myself. Nah, I’m no Apple fan.) What I’ve lost now is a couple of notes about my stay in Belgrade, the list of books that I’ve had recommended to me, and a couple of blurry photos of sunflower fields taken through the train window. All of these are things that I can live without. With Facebook, I won’t have any trouble getting the contact information to all my friends back either. Dad was even quick to answer my e-mail this morning, telling me that I can borrow my brother’s old Android smartphone until I decide to buy a new one (if I ever do, I don’t like buying new things, maybe I’ll just buy this old one from my brother – he likes selling stuff).

I’ve never really had anything bad happen to me when I’ve traveled, so I’ve lately kind of felt that something was bound to happen. Not that there ever has to be anything bad happen to you, but statistically, people get robbed while traveling all the time. I’ve never lost a phone before, never even accidentally dropped it and broken it that way. And just thinking that I could have forgotten to lock up my camera, with all the Belgrade photos still in it, or my debit cards, make me think that the phone probably was the best thing of all my valuables that they could have stolen. I choose to regard myself as lucky, and to see this as a surprisingly pleasant experience with the Slovakian police – and as a future story to tell when metaphorical travel scars are being compared.

I didn’t feel like sticking around in Bratislava after finishing up with the police, though. I felt that being robbed was enough of an experience for me in Slovakia. So, I packed up my things and walked to the train station, bought a bottle of coke, got on the train to Prague and shared the compartment with a very nice Slovakian couple. They had just come home from a trip to Mallorca, and were so beautifully tanned.

The guy even agreed to take a photo of me and Mr. P together.

They got off the train an hour ago, and now I’m all alone in my compartment. But I don’t mind, there is even an outlet where I can plug in my computer. I don’t have any music (because all of that was on my phone) and the book I had just started reading (an e-book from the Stockholm public library, ”Cirkeln”, about a group of teenage girls who realize they’re witches and are being hunted by an evil power) is also lost – but I’ll download the book to my computer the next time I have wi-fi and I still have my mp3-player with all the podcasts, so I’m fine.

In Prague, I’m going to couchsurf. Going to someone’s home feels like exactly what I need – I want no more hostels, not now. When I e-mailed my host, a guy called Martin, and told him about losing my phone, he offered to come and meet me at the train station – so I won’t even have to worry about finding my way through the Prague public transportation system! The world is so full of wonderful people, friendly and helpful, and if stealing my phone has meant that the little boy with the Coke bottle got some food, I guess I can be OK with that too. I’m feeling very magnanimous today. It’s a condition that might blow over, but it feels good and true right now at least.

Say what you may of the size and sights of Bratislava, but I must admit that the street art in the capital of Slovakia was amazing. To be honest, it was probably the coolest that I’ve seen in any city on this trip. Everything from classical graffiti, stencil graffiti and tags to comic-like unique creations. Hats off for the Slovakian street artists!

 

Mr. P by the Bratislava Castle, with the SNP Bridge crossing the Danube in the background. He thought it was embarrassingly small, a backwater capital in the great shadows of metropolises like Budapest and Vienna. He’s got a weakness for the classical.

So, my hostel was robbed and I lost my phone during the wee small hours of July 16th. That meant that I spent most of my only morning in Bratislava at the police station, making a statement for the police report. But I got an hour and a half to walk around in Bratislava after being done with the police before I had to pick up my bag and go to the train station to catch the train to Prague.

The gardens behind the Grassalkovich Palace.

They have fancy Habsburg era buildings in Bratislava too.

 

 

The view from the Bratislava Castle, with St. Martin’s Cathedral in the foreground. The castle was kind of tiny, but the view from the castle hill was nice.