Sunday, February 27, 2005

11:16PM - Prague (April 2004)


One of several small winding passages you can take to arrive in the Old Town Square, this one comes from the direction of Wenceslas Square. It's an interesting passage to attempt walking through on New Year's Eve. I succeeded in this task two years in a row, although this fact leads me to question my intelligence (as any number of other facts have led me to do in the past...). The first year I did it, I discovered how it feels to be completely out of control of one's own fate. I guess the second year I had forgotten the feeling and wanted to rediscover it. So many thousands of people use this passageway to exit the Old Town after the midnight festivities that the street becomes a solid undulating mass of people pushing to get out. A person could almost brace themselves against their neighbors and float along on a sea of Homo sapiens completely without touching the ground. As tempting as that was to me, not wishing to risk death by a thousand tramplings, I resisted the urge and resorted to pushing myself along under my own power. The anxiety one feels as a result of being tightly compacted in a small space with thousands of people is only compounded by the combination of large quantities of alcohol having been consumed by those people with the fact that many of those people are also carrying large concussion-grenade caliber firecrackers to stealthily drop on the ground beneath them for the pleasure of unsuspecting followers. It's mighty good times for everybody.

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