Space, spice and sirens!

I woke up pretty early on my blow up madras after a night of rather good sleep. After all this is the first time I sleep in the busy part of a big city – I’ll explain more down below.

Yesterday’s flight went surprisingly good, our flight Captain Linda took us both up and down safety. Flying with City Airlines was pretty much more convenient due to the fact that that’s the only company that have a direct flight from Gothenburg to Prague. I paid 1200SEK which is fairly good – “fairly” because I could’ve got the ticket for 800SEK if I’d booked it a month earlier.

I arrived at 2:20pm and went to grab my suitcase. Then I was about 10 minutes late and knew that Jackie was supposed to arrive at 2:00pm. Even if I was late Jackie’s flight got delayed almost 20 minutes and we found ourselves randomly looking at each other while we grabbed our luggage – now that saved us a ring.

We got into town to try to locate Jeanine who was waiting at a hotel, pretty close to the apartment, together with her mom and dad. They planned to go on a shopping spree at IKEA right away but first off we had to meet Jiri, our broker, at the office for contract signing and payments. So after a minor discussion we took a cab there, which was the right decision to make, both because the rain was pouring down on us and it only cost 136CZK which is approximately equal to 54SEK, hence our surprised faces when we saw the recite and Jeanine was planning on giving the cab driver a 2000CZK bill.

After almost 2 hours at the office – and for crying out loud don’t ask what took them so long, most of the time we just sat waiting for papers (I guess the copy machine, computers AND the printer was slow as hell) we finally signed the contract and handed over the first rent deposition of 36 360CZK. Quite a lot you might say, and yes indeed, counting up that amount in cash was rather odd, still this covered the first half month, the next rent as well as the so called “safety deposit” that we’ll get back in the end of the contract.

Jeanine went to IKEA to meet up with her parents while Jackie and I fetched the keys to the flat and took the tram there. After too long of a tram ride, due to heavy afternoon traffic and major construction work, we finally got off at what I thought was the right stop. By now we were starving and stopped on the way, by writing “on the way” take in consideration that Jackie thought we were lost and my awesome navigation powers brought us to a noodle bar, to have some noodles.

We also stopped to get some beer, for the take away noodles, and entered the flat. Gosh it’s empty – almost creepily empty. With no chairs to sit on we just crashed down on the floor in the kitchen, exhausted and starving, and began to eat the delicious but oh-so-hot-and-throat-burning noodles.

The rest of that evening we just sat there waiting for Jeanine to get back, drinking a couple of beer, chatting and listening to music – which echoed pretty sweet in the hollow acoustics of the empty flat.

Once Jeanine got back we began to clean the floor, the toilet and the bathroom from the construction dust left after the renovation. Then we crashed down, watched Grown Ups and went to “bed”.

Lipova 18 isn’t the best place for an untrained “city-sleeper” like me. The street outside is a pretty small one, but oh so busy. Since it’s just next to the biggest hospital complex of Prague the ambulances and emergency vehicles are dashing by at the street below and they haven’t exactly turned their sirens on silent mode. I guess we’ll get used to that and I must say that it’s kind of a good reminder of where I am and what I am about to do in the future as well contributes to the atmosphere of this neighbourhood (though, if people would get sick once every hour instead of once every tenth minute I’d sleep a lot better tomorrow).

And yeah, speaking of sleeping distractions, there’s two pigeons cultivating the art of bird intercourse right outside the window, smashing their nibs and wingtips at the glass 7:40am...