It’s a relief to get back to Prague. There was an small impromptu¹ weekend meetup for some players of Avalon, a larp I attended nearly five years ago. And why not? There’s been some emotionally weighty travel over the last few months, with Senegal and Palestine being particularly heavy. I needed a break. And Prague is great, even with all the drunk tourists doing their best to ruin it.

I can’t complain too much about the drunk tourists, since I was one of them.² The weekend ended up being a kind of slow-motion pub crawl interrupted by a couple escape rooms. The ostensible attraction was to return to the Alchemist, a cocktail bar which had a “Choose Your Fate” cocktail based around a dozen Tarot cards which would send you to other bars around the city chasing some sort of prize.³ But they’ve suspended the game at the moment, leaving us collectively short a single card.

More time for other bars, at least. We visited the Sad Man’s Tongue which featured massive burgers and a kind of ’50s Americana rock and roll aesthetic, AnonymouS Bar based on V for Vendetta, the Vytopna Restaurant where your food arrives pulled by model railroad cars, Joystick filled with pinball and classic arcade games, and ended up at BeBop Bar, a sleek Art Deco lounge with silly but utterly delicious cocktails.⁴ BeBop was chill and relaxed and exactly how I wanted to end the evening.⁵

It couldn’t last, obviously. Everyone needed to get back to their life⁶ so I found myself on a flight out to the UK late Sunday, having found a fantastic brunch restaurant⁷ before hanging out in a craft beer bar through most of the afternoon. I couldn’t do this every week or even every month — I’m past the warranty on my liver as it is — but at least I know I need to do it more.

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Footnotes

¹ At least the planning was impromptu, where one of the players suggested a weekend hangout and within a couple of days flights had been booked. All that happened months ago, though.

² Although my group was very unassuming and stuck to the cocktail bars. We weren’t screaming at each other in packs in the streets, which I like to think counts for something.

³ You would order the “Choose Your Fate” cocktail and get one at random, including the signature card for it. You could then visit the bar on that card and collect a key; once you had each of the dozen cocktails and collected each of the dozen keys you win some money or get entered into a drawing for a jackpot or something.

⁴ Their “Be a Genie” is gin, blackberry, cranberry, honey, tarragon, and raspberry balsamico served in an Arabian lamp

⁵ Prague being Prague and the people I usually hang out with being the people I usually hang out with, I’m often ending the evening someplace loud and cramped and it burns out whatever reserves of energy I have left.

⁶ Except, I guess, me.

⁷ Venue sold me with the grilled mac & cheese sandwich on the menu.