Here’s something to
know if you’re going to Prague: the city is divided into several numbered
districts. Prague 2 is adjacent to
Prague 10, which is tucked between Prague(s?) 3 and 4. If memory serves, Prague 5 is across the river from Prague
2-3. If this seems confusing and
disorienting, don’t worry: there are two completely different numerical systems
in place that make about as much sense as the one described above and are also
still in use, and in practice it is often difficult for a foreigner to tell which
system is in play in a given context.
So you should pretty much not rely on that stuff
anyway. Also, most houses have two numbers on them: a red one, which has to do with the order
in which the buildings were constructed within that district, and a blue one that’s the postal
address. Also, blue numbers ascend
or descend along a street depending on which end of the street is closer to a
river. So there’s another valuable
navigational nugget to put under your cap.
In short, Prague is perfectly
easy to navigate if you are a riparian historian.
I should have known we
were in trouble when we stepped off the train, exchanged some money and found
our way to the vending machine for subway tickets. There were at least seven different possibilities according
to the fare structure, which appeared to depend on who you were, what numbered
zone of the city you were traveling to, and how long you figured it would take
you to get there. Which is great,
as long as you know where the hell you are, where the hell you’re going, and
what the hell distance separates the two.
As you have perhaps intuited by now, we did not. In fact, as I would later learn, I had
somehow managed to print not one but two Google maps that, in each case, were
just zoomed-in enough to cut off the subway station nearest to our destination
in the city. This meant that we
approached everything – on foot and with luggage in tow – from the second-nearest subway station
instead. We showed one such Google
map to a person who looked young enough to have studied English, and he helped
us buy our first subway ticket in Prague – the cheapest one. That ought to do it, he said. (He was right, by the way – I realize I might have just created some incidental suspense, but in fact much of the ensuing debacle could have been avoided if only we could have hired that riparian historian to follow us around for the rest of the day).
Having left Berlin at
6 a.m. and made a beeline for our tango lesson (to which we arrived only ten or
so minutes late, miraculously enough), at 3 p.m. we hadn’t yet touched base
with our hostess. We thought we’d
find her house, ring the bell and hope for the chance to plunk down our
suitcases before scoring some late and much-deserved lunch. So, we dutifully
approached the second house on the right from the corner, number 28, and looked
for the red button at the top of the right-hand column of buzzers that her very
descriptive directions had mentioned.
“Maybe the sun has
faded it,” I said hopefully, after carefully checking each buzzer and finding
them all equally dark brown. The
hubs shrugged. I tried the street door. It gave, opening into the cool of the
apartment stairwell, so we went inside.
The building was
non-descript and indeterminately old, in the way European apartment buildings
are indeterminately old, and on the ground floor were Apartments 8, 26 and 14;
a panel of glossy black mailboxes; and, dead ahead of us, the elevator. It was sleek and gleaming, made of
glass and steel painted racecar red, and it had obviously been imported from
the future. Since we were looking
for Apartment 11 and had exhausted the possibilities of the ground floor, we
climbed inside with our three bags and pressed the button. Nothing happened for a while. Then, just as the hubs – a patient man
– was poised to hit the button for a third time, the doors closed with an
irritable little sigh and we shot off to the second floor at the speed of an
old-world elevator.
Floor two revealed
Apartments 4, 18, 6, and 21, and I believe Floor 3 contained all the apartments
that were prime numbers between 3 and 19 (except, of course, 11). By this time I felt tired, sore, hot,
hungry, unusually culturally intolerant and more than a bit cranky with the
Czech notion of mathematics. At
least by the time we were approaching Floor 4 we got wise to the sluggish
elevator door and devised a plan to leave all the suitcases on board, hit the
button, and each scout out in one direction for Apartment 11. A quick glance was enough to tell us
that Floor 4 consisted of apartments 1, 2, 22 and 15, but by this time our
elevator had somehow finally figured out what we were after and zoomed off
toward Floors 5 and 6 with our bags, expending all the haste it had saved up
during our trips from floors 1-3.
Fortunately, the
building was not that tall, and Floor 6 finally coughed up Apartments 9, 23, 16
and, yes, 11. I rang the
bell. Nothing happened for a
while. Then, just as I was turning
to go, a tiny voice called out what I can only imagine was Czech for
“Helloooooo?”
“Hello,” I said. Nothing happened for a while. Then, just as I was getting ready to
ring the bell again, the tiny voice called out again. “Hello,” I said again.
Eventually the door opened, and a woman who was the age of all the
apartment numbers added together blinked blearily at us, clearly not expecting
two sweaty Americans who were pretty sure they had a reservation. I showed her our overly-zoomed-in
Google map and the address we were looking for. She shook her head and told us something that lasted about
8-10 seconds and was, I like to think, intended to be helpful, and then
shuffled back inside #11 and closed the door.
I crumpled on her
doorstep, but the hubs pointed out that that wasn’t a very considerate place to
lose my mind, so we took the elevator from the future back to the ground floor
and I crumpled down there instead.
The hubs headed back to the street and retraced our steps against the
instructions we had been provided, only to find that a. we had followed them to
the letter, and b. there was a third number, etched in the glass pane above the
door we had just passed through: 1701, which was neither red nor blue and had nothing to do with anything.
As I waited for my
hubs to return, I examined the bank of glossy black mailboxes more closely and
found that it corresponded neither to any system of counting I was familiar
with, nor to the actual distribution of apartments in the building. It was at this time – marveling at the
valor of Czech mail carriers and trying to look purposeful and casual while
lurking, hot and grouchy, in the foyer of a foreign apartment building – that I
realized the relevance of the red/blue number system to our current
predicament. When the hubs came
back, we picked up all of our luggage and walked down the block to the other #28 and rang the conspicuously
red doorbell.
Our Czech hostess was
out, but eventually came home. After showing us our room, she fixed us an espresso as we recounted our
adventures. “Didn’t you follow my instructions?” she
asked, incredulous. When I
remarked the numbering system over at 1701, she said, “Ah. Probably the apartments were numbered
in a spiral, starting on the fourth floor and then going up and around.”
I still have no idea
whether she was joking.
