Pubs filled with with porn, cough syrup and a sexy animal

By Lizy Yagoda

It was my friend Shmandrew’s birthday (all names have been changed to protect the drunk), and it also happened to be Mardi Gras, so a celebration was planned. He invited me to come join the pub crawl he had arranged through pubcrawl.cz, a firm that arranges nightly excursions for clueless foreign revelers.

In keeping with the holiday theme, I put on my most festive outfit. I clashed purple, green, and blue. I wandered the streets of Prague in my get-up, feeling more and more like that one weird kid who goes to class in costume on Halloween.

After getting lost several times, I found the meeting place, cleverly named Pub Crawl Bar, on Dlouha in Prague 1. The entrance was through a darkened alley, the kind that girls sometimes never return from. I quickly scanned my memory for tall tales of pub crawls used as bait for cannibalistic sacrifices or alien abductions. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw another friend of mine inside the small pub.

She was not wearing a costume. No one was wearing a costume.

At the beginning of the night, I had to shell out 290 crowns ($15) to the crawl organizers. Quickly, I made some calculations. That would buy me 9.66 fried cheese sandwiches on Wenceslas Square, a cappuccino and a croissant for 6 mornings, or tickets to two hockey games.

The 290 crowns afforded me the luxury of an open bar— just beer or cheap wine— for an hour, a free shot of absinthe—which I declined, and a drink— I assumed it was going to be beer— at every bar we went to. The crawl leader’s objective was to get us as shit-faced as possible. I figured that such extreme indulgence would call undue attention to the peculiarity of my costume, so I decided to decline most offers of booze.

Like some European Union mission member at an election in a developing country, I was there as an objective observer.

Now I like not remembering my nights, like any other young adult. But not because I black out. I just would rather it be because I’m asleep, or in some kind of food coma situation. Sitting in Pub Crawl Bar, I took a deep breath, sipped my bad wine, and settled in for the long haul. This bar was dark and small— much smaller than a dorm room, certainly small enough to make the 25 or so of us uncomfortable.

Sucking up cough syrup, yum!

Instead of beer, at every bar we were given our complimentary drink, little flasks of a Robitussin-pink beverage called “Fluegel,” the German word for wings. Each bottle was adorned with a cartoon of a pink duck looking like he had had a few too many. I think the use of a duck as a mascot was kind of apt. I was reminded of the adage, “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and smells like a duck, it probably is a duck.” If Fluegel looks like cough syrup, smells like cough syrup, and tastes like cough syrup, it probably is cough syrup.

Davide was the leader of our crawl. He was of ambiguous European origin, the type of guy who would play a Casanova in a movie. His dense and curly black hair grazed his shoulders and his face was lit with a glazed-over energy, the kind that must come from having to shepherd drunk foreigners to seedy bars every night of the week. He only roared, never simply talked. On the website for the pub crawl, he describes himself as “a sexy animal.”

He led us through the streets, ignoring the 10 p.m. quiet laws in the center of Prague. Casual acquaintances became bosom buddies during the walk between the starting point and our next destination, just around the corner.

We entered Top Secret. There we were greeted with a complimentary flask of Fluegel and took in our surroundings. Being a Tuesday night, the small bar was deserted. Soul-catching mid-to-late 1990s dance beats, the kind I remember from the most fun summer camp dances, filled the room. We mimed dances to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” and the Village People’s “YMCA.” The DJ knew his audience. There is nothing tipsy college kids like more than pop music nostalgia. The DJ, however, looked exceedingly bored, like a re-enactor at Colonial Williamsburg. It is a show he too, like our host, must put on every night. He must wait in the basement of the bar until exactly 10:11 p.m., and then know to start playing N*SYNC. Every night, he must have to watch girls who had one to many at the open bar try to show off their best Pussycat Dolls moves. I can only hope the poor gentleman gets as much Fluegel as he wants.

Show down with the sexy animal

It was here that I had a showdown with the sexy animal.

Two days before, I had received an email from a former boss from the YMCA summer camp. I’ve worked at a YMCA summer camp for the past three summers, most recently as a head counselor for 14- and 15-year-old girls. They girls LOVE Facebook and the Internet. And finding embarrassing pictures of their counselors.

The boss email, sent to the entire staff from last summer, said that we should be aware that “one picture, one comment, or one video posted on a networking site can influence campers in truly negative ways.”

That email was at the forefront of my mind when I noticed Davide taking pictures of us on a sleek black digital camera. I assumed that the camera belonged to one of my compatriots, so I asked Davide whose it was. He said that it was his, and that the pictures would go on the pubcrawl.cz website.

I tried to explain to Davide why I didn’t want my picture on the website. I tried to explain that I’ve always tried to set a good example for my campers. He laughed and said that if they saw a picture of me, “they’d be proud.”

When my picture surfaced on the pubcrawl.cz website, I emailed and asked the photo to be taken down. They obliged. Now there would be no lasting record of my mild revelries that night. Except for this article…

The making of a porn film, yawn

At the next bar, El Mojito, after receiving—and hiding in my pocket for evidence— my “wings,” I noticed some rather energetic thrusting on the TV screen mounted on the wall. I realized that it was a “making of” documentary of a porn film. Nothing was blurred out and every few minutes the focus would turn to a pensive looking director. It wasn’t so much that there was porn playing in this bar, it was just really bad porn. I couldn’t understand if there was a plot, the set was just a cheesy looking hotel room, and there were none of the gymnastics, contortions, and degradations so popular in porn these days.

There was no money shot, no production values, no costumes, no interesting sexual pairings. It was just bland American sex on a polyester blanket. I tried to imagine the bar manager discussing what would be playing on the TV screen. “Well, we want people to feel relaxed, to not feel stressed. What always helps me when I’m stressed out? Porn. But we don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable, so let’s find some boring porn, just enough to make this bar seem edgy and cool.”

I was only in the next bar, Cathedrale, for a few minutes. The time was near 1 a.m. My time there was so boring it has been replaced in my memory by something slightly more important— perhaps Britney Spears’ new boyfriend? As I was leaving Cathedrale, I noticed a large photograph on the wall. A woman was sitting on a ledge in a burning building. She was holding a long stick with a fish on the end of it. I didn’t understand what it was supposed to symbolize, or if it was just there to be pretty. I did think, however, that if my house was burning down, fish roasting might not top my priority list. Maybe I am too literal?

This was the third bar of the night where no one was there but us pub crawlers. A Prague Pub Crawl quality control monitor began to enlighten me and the only other sober gal on his theory of Fluegel as a vital resource in the case of nuclear holocaust.

It was then that I felt something I hadn’t since I last sat in a Quaker Meeting. The Holy Light moved me and I knew it was time to go home.

The Venues:

Pub Crawl Bar: Dlouha 24, Prague 1, www.pubcrawl.cz

Top Secret: Masna 9, Prague 1, +420 222 316 903

El Mojito: Dlouha 31, Prague 1, +420 776 872 989

Cathedrale: Truhlářská 23, Prahue 1, cathedrale.cz

Lizy Yagoda is a third-year student at Vassar College studying history and religion. She is from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.