Here be dragons

Our story begins on a rainy Thursday night. We arrived at Hlavní nádraží late (I think it was around 10 PM). Compared to any Slovenian train station, the main one in Prague is huge, so we were rather lost. And since most of our tutors failed to come to the station to pick us up, we were extremely glad that at least my tutor didn't forget about us. And thus the search for Miša, the girl of many colours (as she described herself in an SMS), the savior of Slovenian Erasmus students, the Pathfinder, began.

At first, there was only three of us. Darjan was already in Prague (he was also kind enough to take one of my suitcases with him, so I was traveling light), waiting for us at Hostivař. On the way to the park, the arranged meeting place, we encountered another Erasmus student who was waving about a Kolej Hostivař leaflet. Not just another exchange student, Katja is also Slovenian - an authentic resident of Ljubljana, the capitol. We decided to search for the promised land together.

The park (also known as the Sherwood) was just outside the station. Save for the occasional by passer it was deserted, so we decided to unload all the luggage and wait for Miša there. After a few phone calls she found us at last, lead the way to the tram station and provided all the directions we needed. So 40 minutes later we finally arrived at Nádraží Hostivař - the place to be.

Darjan was a little late so I still needed to wait for him. The others, however, decided to check in. And that is when we first faced the Czech bureaucracy. The fossil at the reception could only speak Czech language and all we managed to squeeze out of her is "5000 korunas", "No official hours" and "Not possible". Since then, we heard the latter two sentences more times than we can count. After a LONG wait, we finally got our rooms - they were in tower 7. There is no direct link from the reception to that tower, so we had to go out and all the way around the campus (which, for luggage laden, half asleep, exhausted and extremely annoyed travelers translates to about 15 painful minutes of trudging uphill. Not to mention that we got lost half the way there). But at last, at 1:30, we won! We were inside, we had the rooms and we just wanted to sleep. Of course, the old hag the reception managed to mess up even the most elementary category of the room distribution, the gender, and Katja ended up in a room with a Latvian man. The room was empty on arrival and the belongings scattered around the room were not gender distinctive. The mess was sorted out the following morning, during official hours, even though it was a holiday. The friendly English speaking lady at the reception uncovered that the woman from the night before is indeed a little weird, and goes by the (very suitable imo) nickname, the Dragon-lady.

Thusly, the trials of settling in our rooms were mainly behind us. I still expected to move but alas, that is a story that goes beyond the scope of this post ("Not possible.").