I WISH I WAS IN PRAGUE GETTING DRUGGED
Tags: Gypsy, Prague, Drugs, Travel

Some years ago I went to Prague and ended up drugged, naked, covered in mud, and down $200. I was with my oldest friend, Murray, who had met me in Barcelona — where I had been teaching English for nine months — to traipse around Europe on the Euro Rail. We were 22. Our first stop was Vienna because my uncle was a State Department diplomat with a very sweet pad courtesy of the US government (sorry I got wasted and puked in your fancy marble sink, Uncle Michael). Even though we almost got the shit kicked out of us by an Austrian soldier in a bar — when he found out we were Jewish his true Nazi came out — it was a solid start to the journey.

After Vienna we hopped on a train to Prague, which really is a stunning city, with stone bridges traversing the Vltava River. We found a rental room in a Czech couple’s apartment, dropped off our backpacks, and started walking towards Wenceslas Square in the city center. It was early evening and we spotted a brewpub, deciding to sample the local wares. The brewpub, Pivovar Narodni, was massive, with nearly a hundred wooden tables and 75-foot ceilings.

Murray and I took a seat at an open table and ordered a couple big steins of beer. We were pretty pleased with ourselves. As we drank our beer Pivovar started to fill up. When two women walked by our table, we both smiled at them. Surprisingly, they smiled back.

So after another beer, we walked over to their table.

“Hi,” we said.

“Hel-lo,” they haltingly responded in a heavy Eastern European accent.

“America,” we said, pointing to ourselves like two MAGA imbeciles.

“Bucharest!” they pointed at each other.

They made room for us and we sat down.

“Uh, beer?” we offered.

“Ya ok!”

We proceeded to drink without being able to communicate, just grinning at each other and awkwardly laughing every few seconds.

They glanced at each other and suddenly stood up. “Come,” one said.

Apparently she wanted us to go with them. “Sure!” Mur and I said in unison.

The two young women — a dark blonde and a stocky brunette — took us each by the hand and led us out of the beer hall and into the cobbled street. Murray and I shot each other a ‘we might actually hook up!’ look.

They deftly led us thru the streets of Prague — which seemed weird given that they were from Bucharest — and suddenly descended some stairs to a below ground level bar. The bartender warmly welcomed us and we sat at a round table towards the back. The waiter came over and the ladies spoke to him, apparently placing an order. The four of us smiled at each other and again awkwardly laughed.

A couple minutes later the waiter returned with an interesting bounty: a bottle of scotch and a pack of cigarettes. The dark blonde took the plastic wrap off the cigarettes and I poured us each a couple fingers of scotch. We took a zip and Murray motioned for me to join him as he got up from the table. We found our way to the bathroom.

“Dude, you gotta let me go for the dark blonde, I love her.” Murray said.

“Ouch, but the brunette is sporting a heavy mustache,” I responded.

‘C’mon man, I can tell the blonde likes me.”

It didn’t take much for me to relent — it wasn’t clear where this night was heading.

“Fine, you owe me.”

We walked back to the table and as he sat Murray pulled his chair closer to the blonde. I did the same with my chair towards the brunette. I flirtatiously patted her leg and took a sip of my scotch.

And that — after only two beers and a couple sips of scotch — is my last cogent memory of the night.

What I do remember is being back on the cobbled streets of Prague, in a haze, and carrying a nearly passed-out Murray. Stumbling, I dropped him and watched the side of his face break his fall. I also vaguely recall walking into a concrete barrier, tripping at the waist, and landing in water over my head.

“Ok,” I thought, “you seemed to be drugged and underwater. You need to get out of here or you will drown.” Over the years I’ve spent hours trying to figure out what body of water I fell into and have come to the conclusion that it was a water fountain. If I had fallen into the Vltava River I would be dead.

What must have been several hours later we somehow awoke in our rented bedroom. I looked over to the next single bed at Mur and he looked at me.

“What .. the … fuck… happened,” he said.

He pulled off his sheets. He was completely naked and covered in dried mud. I pulled off my sheets and had the same results — naked and covered in dried mud.

“Jesus Christ.”

I thought of our passports and raced to my bag. My passport was there; we hadn’t brought them out with us. Then I checked my jeans for the money we had brought out: $100 USD and 100 in Deutschmarks.

Gone.

“They took our money,” I said.

“Shit. We have to go find them.” Murray was getting pissed. He also had a huge scrape on his cheekbone.

We got cleaned up and headed out, trying to find our way back to the bar. No luck, but we did see a police officer.

“Hello, sir, you speak English?” He nodded.

Murray jumped in: “We got drugged by some girls from Budapest and they robbed us!”

We spoke over each other as we incoherently told the story. The policeman listened semi-patiently and after a few minutes put his hand up.

“Those girls were not from Budapest; they fooled you.”

Mur and I looked at each other. No wonder they seemed to know the streets, the bar, and the bartender so well.

“Well you gotta help us find that bar and them,” said Mur. “They robbed and drugged us.”

“You’re not going to find them,” said the policeman, “they found you once and that was enough.”

We knew he was right. We were down $200, Murray was bleeding from the face, and we had to catch a train to Istanbul.

We were toast.

And I would give anything to be back there right now.