Riding the Night Tram

Ex-pat life in Prague usually implies “life without a car.” An important consideration then becomes the night tram and bus lines. At the stroke of midnight, the metros stop running. It can be a scary feeling to face a cab ride home drunk. Foreigner cab fares are calculated differently than they are for Czechs. For sure, the rate per kilometer is different after midnight for everyone. The saving grace for the Czech mass transit system, Metro Hlavni Dopravy (MHD), is after the metro stops there are hourly tram and busses to fill in to keep the city moving. The Prague MHD is a good system, and a three-month pass is only 1150 czk. A bargain considering that four stops on the metro is 12czk per trip.

When you select a place to live it is important to keep things like the night routes in mind. Life will be easier if you know you can get home even if you have to wait in the cold for an hour on the next night bus. After a single party in Dejvicka runs over and you are trying to find a way home half bombed out of your mind on home-made Balzams.

The first place I lived in Prague was in the middle of downtown. So I never used the metro at all. It was a close walk from almost anywhere I needed to go and it just was an unnecessary expense on such a tight budget. My second place was in the second ring of town. Inevitably, I became a daily metro commuter. Sure it did chop down some of the party nights trying to rush to the metro by the stroke of midnight. An early night was better than waiting on the night bus in the 0F (-20C) weather.

Sometimes in Prague I have been lucky, and others I have not. When I got a place only two metro stops from work I was lucky, and that it was on the night bus line as well was doubly lucky. Life is never so easy. Hlavní Nadraží, main train station is the best known gay pickup place in Prague. It is pretty easy to find couples fooling- around in the bushes all around the station after hours. I am all for a guy’s right to chose how he likes to get his, but I am still not so interested in being a voyeur to such activities.

I should not be so upset to find the closest stop down town for my night bus is at Hlavní Nadraží. On one of my first trips home on the “Prague Gay Train”, I found out why I should have been more concerned. It turns out that the train station is not the pickup place, the busses that stop there are. After a few stops on the night bus, the hand on your ass probably will not be a pick pocket. It may belong to someone much harder to deal with. I have not had any violent problems with this crowd. Guys are guys, and horny guys have a hard time taking no for an answer.

Just do your homework and live near a night tram or bus line. Make sure that the half-drunk ride home will be no more exciting than you are expecting. There is no good substitute for adequate preparation, unless of course it is preparation-H. On my night bus, Preparation-H seems more like a pickup line.