Getting lost in Prague

By daytime it’s very hard to get lost in Prague. You just walk for at most 15 minutes, find a metro station, get on the metro, and suddenly you’re not lost any more. At night it’s a lot easier to get lost though.

It all started in a bar. I was out with some other trainees and Czech AIESEC-members, but the music was terrible, so at around 2:15 I decided it was time for me to go home. I would have to take the tram, since the first metro would leave at 5 in the morning. So I went outside to search for a tram that would take me to Lehovec, the nearest stop to my flat. This was not too hard, just follow the tram tracks and eventually you will find a stop where the right tram line will stop.

So after 45 minutes of semi-sleeping in the tram I arrived at Lehovec. I asked somebody for Rajská Zahrada and the guy just pointed in one direction and told me I needed to “go around”. I had no idea what he meant, so I just walked in the direction he had told me to and randomly turned left somewhere. I asked some more people for the way and eventually I ended up at a gas station, where the woman behind the counter did not speak English or German, but was willing to help. She had nothing else to do anyway. So she opened the door for me, showed me the map of Prague, but Rajská Zahrada was not on the map. Then she just used her hands to show me where I needed to go. Finally I found tram tracks again and walked to the nearest tram stop. It was the last stop before Lehovec. I had walked in a circle. So I got on the tram to Lehovec again.

Then I remembered something my Estonian camp leader Kadi (from the voluntary work camp I did last summer) had said to me: “When you’re lost in the woods, just follow your instinct. It will always guide you home.” I know Prague is not really comparable to the woods, but I decided to follow her advice. It worked: with a small detour through a communist neighborhood I walked home in about 10 minutes. It was already 3:55 in the morning at that time. A quick calculation told me that it had taken me more than 1.5 hours to get home. The conclusion of this night out: I really need to move to a place closer to the city center. I hope to have more news on that subject soon. :)