Day 3 - saving the Swede

We did some more of “taking it easy” – couple of tourist sights, lots of talking and getting updated on each others lives, good food and coffee and cakes. There’s always something going on in Prague. There was a film crew up at the grounds of the castle. And it wasn’t just some local documentary production, but a Hollywood movie shoot. I’ve found out by now that the movie they were filming was The Brothers Bloom with Adrien Brody, Rachel Weisz, Mark Ruffalo and Rinko Kikuchi, to be released in 2008.

In the evening we decided to not give up of the salsa idea and headed towards another place on our list - Manes. This time we found the place rather easily, however, on the door we were greeted by a androgynous guy with heavy makeup, an inch long lashes, black finger nails….wearing an animal suit. I am not making this up. Guess not a salsa night in this club either.

So we headed downtown. On our way we found a Cuban bar, so it wasn’t exactly a dancing place but they had salsa music. We starting warming up with some mojitos – 5 euros per drink in this bar. The Cuban guy at the door told us that ‘twas definitely the night to go to Tropison. Who were we to argue. Back to Namesty Republiky then:) An yess, this time the music was right and we actually got to dance some salsa. However, let me tell you about the place and the people a little bit. The venue looked like an old soviet style restaurant with a dance floor, it was too light, too big, not cozy at all and really not going along with the real Cuban salsa feeling. There were, however, quite a few people who were very good at salsa. And some really bad. This night all the Prague Cuban guys were in that very spot. And of course there were the Czech women to dance with them.

It’s a salsa place, right, so you expect people to be, if not excellent at salsa, at least have good rhythm and be able to shake some booty. Never in my life have I seen so many women out of rhythm as in Prague:) There was a tall girl who moved as if she were obsessed by some dark powers. Maybe she was high, but would that make you lose rhythm?? It was almost painful to watch her, especially because she kept falling down. And then there was a girl, whose partner was a good dancer and tried really hard to teach her. Hopeless case, I’m afraid. Her hips were not moving and her shoulders were moving too much but in a very wrong way.

The music and many of the dancers were good but the place was getting on our nerves so we moved on at some point, to look for another party. While searching, we found a lost Swede at the verge of old town. God knows how he’d been left behind but all his friends were in some club near Charles Bridge. Boy was he off course. We thought we’d do our good deed for the day and take him to his people. With very lacking info from his side we managed to find the place. It turned out to be a bar/strip club – free entrance for girls but not for boys. So in we went to check whether his friends were there. All we had was the knowledge that they were Swedes and we’d seen a pic of one sleeping friend on the mobile. We see the first group of people…R goes: “Are you Swedish!?” I go “Are you Markus?”. Yes and Yes. You should have seen the looks on their faces! We go: “We’ve found your friend!” The rest of the evening was spent with the Swedes. I did not get any sleep that night before taking my plane in the morning.

It was a good weekend!