Getting There - Holy Jetlag, Batman

When's the last time you've been awake for thirty-two hours? I think the last time I've been up anywhere near that long was in my youth when I discovered that the first legal high can be had as easily as going down to the store and buying enough Skittles and Mountain Dew to make a horse diabetic. My journey began at the shithole that is the Chicago O'Hare international terminal, in which there is no food and a dixie cup of Heineken costs six-fifty, which I reluctantly passed on. I was flying Swiss Air, which the travel agent stressed to me makes a very sincere effort to get you loaded on your flight. After sitting in the terminal for what seemed like a day and a half, I finally was given the priviledge to sit on the unmoving plane.

Fortunately for me, the travel agent was right, and they kept those little airplane-size bottles o' booze coming. Every seat had TV monitors in front of them, however the novelty of those wore off extremely quickly, considering the clarity on them was so bad that I might as well have been watching my in-flight movie on a screen covered in vaseline and sand. They also had trivia games built into them, but these were rendered completely unfun due to the fact that they were created for a british audience. Do I look like someone who knows what rivers feed the English Channel? Call your lifeline for a hint: No. Sleeping on the plane would have been a great idea, except that my Tylenol PM had disappeared somewhere along the way, so I sat, bleary eyed, watching the monitor as the litttle airplae icon slowly crawled its way across the map of the Atlantic.

Finally, after the most prayer-inducing landing I have ever experienced, we touched down in Zurich. No joke, I think the plane drove about a hundred yards on one wheel. The airport in Switzerland is hands down the nicest one I think I have ever been in, and I was immediately struck by the fact that people were riding around the terminal on bicycles. How European. At this point I had been up for right around twenty two hours, and was starting to get a hangover from drinking on the plane, so I did what any good over-tired person should and shelled out for a huge cup of coffee. I I could have paid anywhere from two to ten bucks for it, because I have no idea how much a swiss franc is worth. But hot damn, it was some good coffee. Again, I went to sit in ther terminal, however this time it wasn't quite so visually offensive as O'Hare. After further delays, I got on the plane for a short flight and another extremely poor landing.

Finally, we touched down in Prague, in what could only be described as a very communist airport. Those communists can do such wonderful things with cement. None of my luggage was lost, so I picked it up and took a cab with a girl I flew with to the dorms. Upon arrival, we were immediately told, somehow, to relinquish our passports to the doorman who spoke no english. This is the number one thing you are not supposed to do, but if you want your room keys, apparently you have to. Introductions and dinner ensued, and at this point I had been awake for about 26 hours. So what do you do when you haven't slept for more than a day? Why, go drinkin, of course.

The only thing I could think of when we went out was this: Holy shit, beer is cheap. 25 Czech Crowns may sound like a lot, but it's a whopping 24 crowns to the dollar, and those beers are mighty big (and also delicious). We wandered from bar to bar having absolutely no clue where we were going, but eventually we made it home after I had been awake for a whopping 32 hours. But at least I'd get to sleep in. Oh, right. I had orientation in six and a half fucking hours.

Thus is my tale of my travels and self-imposed insomnia. Fortunately, I'm still alive. There aren't any pictures because I'm not one to take pictures of an airport. Coming next is all the touristy photos, and an exposeé on Czech dorms. Here's a preview: Even the soviets can make a dorm room better than the University of Wisconsin.