Praha... AHA!
Prague (Praha to the local tongue) is one of those places which captured my fascination ever since I saw pictures of it in a brochure given to me by a Czech National Committee member at IC 2001 in Switzerland.
I kept those pictures fresh in my mind for a good 4 years, until I saw Czech Airlines selling tickets to Prague for a penny! :)
(aite, they weren't sold for a penny - but a really cheap deal!)
So, on an impulse I buy the ticket. And then the next big question - VISA!
How on earth would an Indian living in Sweden get a visa to a country which had imbibed communist values and a bureaucratic system as heavy as lead tied to your balls?!
If you are the holder of a beautiful blue Indian passport, then you know what I mean!
(Yes, red ones are excluded - they are diplomatic passports. Holders get a red carpet welcome.)
Nonetheless, Aloke Sarnobat rises to the occasion and contacts the embassy - only to receive a laundry list of papers and documentation as thick as the Oxford English Dictionary.
Painstakingly, I put together all the papers - as I have done for 13 other visas. There is a famous joke which does the rounds at Opera Software quite often... that Aloke needs a visa even if he has to go from Stockholm to Gothenberg!
(yeah yeah! Laugh you lucky b*******!!)
And then the ordeal starts! The lady at the embassy is anything but the epitome of cooperation. She refuses to take anything less than 7 working days to process my visa. Slight hitch - having my passport stuck in a God forsaken embassy for 7 working days is unthinkable because I travel abroad almost every week.
Anyway, I somehow manage to salvage the situation and get things sorted as I always do. If ever you go to the Czech Embassy in Stockholm, make sure you give the lady a kiss on my behalf :)
Date of departure to Prague: 17 February 2005.
16th of February in the evening: Aloke, do you have your ticket? - Ofcourse I do!
Where is it?
mmmmmm... eeerrr..... hmmmm... SHIT!!!
I had done the unthinkable! I had forgotten my ticket at home in Linkoping, while I was already in Stockholm, ready to fly the next morning!
A cool head and a wonderful colleague did the trick. I asked a colleague of mine to give the ticket to absolutely anyone who was to take a train from Linkoping to Stockholm. So that's what he does and the next morning, I have my ticket with me, and I'm set to fly!
Oh, I almost forgot. My flight which was in the morning was cancelled and that is how I got a time buffer to pull off this Linkoping Stockholm ticket trick.
Phew! Quite a plateful to get to Praha, huh?
Well... what if I told you that I was caught by the ticket collector for travelling ticketless on the subway, while I was on my way to pick up my ticket from the stranger?
Yeah! Now that was a real plateful to get to Praha!
So thats how my 3 nights and 4 days sojourn to Praha begins!
The minute you step into Praha city, you know there is something different about it.
I wont waste your time and my energy telling you where I went in Praha and what you should see - you'd much rather visit a tourist website. What I'd rather do, is leave you with a few pictures and some thoughts.
I kept those pictures fresh in my mind for a good 4 years, until I saw Czech Airlines selling tickets to Prague for a penny! :)
(aite, they weren't sold for a penny - but a really cheap deal!)
So, on an impulse I buy the ticket. And then the next big question - VISA!
How on earth would an Indian living in Sweden get a visa to a country which had imbibed communist values and a bureaucratic system as heavy as lead tied to your balls?!
If you are the holder of a beautiful blue Indian passport, then you know what I mean!
(Yes, red ones are excluded - they are diplomatic passports. Holders get a red carpet welcome.)
Nonetheless, Aloke Sarnobat rises to the occasion and contacts the embassy - only to receive a laundry list of papers and documentation as thick as the Oxford English Dictionary.
Painstakingly, I put together all the papers - as I have done for 13 other visas. There is a famous joke which does the rounds at Opera Software quite often... that Aloke needs a visa even if he has to go from Stockholm to Gothenberg!
(yeah yeah! Laugh you lucky b*******!!)
And then the ordeal starts! The lady at the embassy is anything but the epitome of cooperation. She refuses to take anything less than 7 working days to process my visa. Slight hitch - having my passport stuck in a God forsaken embassy for 7 working days is unthinkable because I travel abroad almost every week.
Anyway, I somehow manage to salvage the situation and get things sorted as I always do. If ever you go to the Czech Embassy in Stockholm, make sure you give the lady a kiss on my behalf :)
Date of departure to Prague: 17 February 2005.
16th of February in the evening: Aloke, do you have your ticket? - Ofcourse I do!
Where is it?
mmmmmm... eeerrr..... hmmmm... SHIT!!!
I had done the unthinkable! I had forgotten my ticket at home in Linkoping, while I was already in Stockholm, ready to fly the next morning!
A cool head and a wonderful colleague did the trick. I asked a colleague of mine to give the ticket to absolutely anyone who was to take a train from Linkoping to Stockholm. So that's what he does and the next morning, I have my ticket with me, and I'm set to fly!
Oh, I almost forgot. My flight which was in the morning was cancelled and that is how I got a time buffer to pull off this Linkoping Stockholm ticket trick.
Phew! Quite a plateful to get to Praha, huh?
Well... what if I told you that I was caught by the ticket collector for travelling ticketless on the subway, while I was on my way to pick up my ticket from the stranger?
Yeah! Now that was a real plateful to get to Praha!
So thats how my 3 nights and 4 days sojourn to Praha begins!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The minute you step into Praha city, you know there is something different about it.
I wont waste your time and my energy telling you where I went in Praha and what you should see - you'd much rather visit a tourist website. What I'd rather do, is leave you with a few pictures and some thoughts.
Praha - a city home to a wealth of incredible buildings, structures and monuments that span several eras. A wealth of architectural forms, ranging from Romanesque and Gothic through Renaissance and Baroque to Art Nouveau, Cubism and Deconstructionist, co-exist in an unusual harmony.
The Czech capital was blessed in the sense that the majority of its man-made structures survived the Second World War. Even the Socialist regime, with its penchant for cold strictly functional architecture, could not put a damper on Prague's historical glow. In fact, in a jolie-laide way, there are socialist structures that serve to enhance the city's attractiveness in the same manner as a mole is sometimes a beauty spot.
And, now for the real reason why I went to Prague... no, I am not referring to the chics in the photo! By the way, that's Ira on the left and Eva on the right.
KB aka The Duke aka Bob aka Bobby aka King 'F***ing' Pin aka Khalil Bachooali.
It was good meeting you brother!
KB aka The Duke aka Bob aka Bobby aka King 'F***ing' Pin aka Khalil Bachooali.
It was good meeting you brother!
posted by /A @ 3:20 fm
2 comments
2 Comments:
gosh i love prague, its the most beautiful city in europe! And khalil u are still there!:)
Aloke, just came across your blog now.. dont know if you remember me.. Ive lived in Praha for 1 year and Im the one that matched KB!! Its sooooo good that you went there... Im going back to my second home in April!
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