My First Night

Techtle Mechtle

The night I arrived, we checked into our dorms which are really nice. I live in Prague 2 in an area called Vinorhady. The area is beautiful outside and rather reminiscent of the Upper East Side in New York. At night time it is quiet, and the absence of noise is pleasing when I compare it with the clamorousness of New York. There was supposed to be 4 people in my room, however, since NYU Prague is smaller in the spring there are only 2 (and my room is huge). After our check-in, our dorm (and the one closest to us—Machlova) went to a pizza place and had a plethora of pizza with different toppings (mostly meat—and in Czech meat is pork). I sat next to a group of kids from Bucknell and got to know them fairly well over the course of dinner. Afterwards, a bunch of us Slezka’s (that’s the name of my dorm) decided to go down the street to a Czech bar/club. To be honest, it was more a bar trying to pose as a club, but by New York standards, in no way was “Techtle Mechtle” (‘hanky panky’ in English) a club. Across the street, there is a café called “celebrity café” featuring pictures on the windows of Pamela Anderson and other D-List celebrities. Techtle Mechtle, from the outside, is completely unnoticeably unless you read the sign. The building blends in with the rest of the off-white brick buildings surrounding it. Inside, you walk downstairs and into a large, dark-lit, red walled room with a black bar in the middle that blasts American tunes such as “Rehab” by Rihanna. At the bar, a waitress ignores my request for a beer after having asked her in English. Another bartender, male, 20-something, eventually assists me with my drink order. The Pilsner is delicious. Truly unlike any American beer I have tasted before—thicker, far more refreshing, twice as big, and 1 dollar US. After a few hours of talking to people on my program, we decided to walk back.