I appreciate this guy’s efforts, but I know when I’m being ripped off by an exchange bureau. There’s a sign that says “EXCHANGE BUREAU.”
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I’ve always been tempted to learn something like, “Would you say these hurtful things if you knew I understood [language]?”, which I’d say with my most withering glare before flouncing off the Metro car. (Probably at the wrong stop, because I’m exactly the big blundering American doofus that locals should be mocking.)
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Hope Janek warns people about Kafka Airport next:
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The problem is that it runs against traditional advice. In the past (as in, '70s/'80s/'90s), you’d get much better rates by exchanging on site with local dealers, because foreign currencies were more valuable to smaller dedicated organisations than to large consumer banks (especially in “poor” countries). After the Euro transition and computerised networks became commonplace, banks can (and must, from a market standpoint) offer much more competitive and predictable rates. Even better is to go with dedicated internet-based exchange websites in advance, which are the most competitive (because their costs are extremely low).
However, this means ignoring your mom who keeps saying she went to Paris in 1973 and got this great rate from a guy with a little stand.
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I’ve been to Prague 4 times in the last 25 years. It has changed. The old town is now overflowing with tourists, but undoubtedly cleaner. Local businesses look wealthier, hotels are better. The nightlife scene is rowdier and seedier than it was, IMHO. Prices are still quite low from an European perspective, although not as rock-bottom as they were in the '90s. You don’t really see local pro-level classical musicians busking as they used to.
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I have never been a pro-level musician, but I have been a decently good tuba player by high school band standards, and I got to busk in down town Seattle a few times. That was a lot of fun. Me and my three best friends in the band (me on tuba, a trumpet guy, a drummer, and a tenor sax player) got to play on a street corner for about 3 hours. We played whatever we wanted, with whatever flourishes. It was christmas time, and we got a few people asking us to reprise Carry on My Wayward Son. I guess they were sick of the xmas music. That was a lot of fun. Although in hindsight I feel bad because we didn’t need the money at all and probably were taking up someone else’s spot.
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I think in '90s Prague, it was a side-effect of foreign currency being so much better than the local one, which meant busking for Deutschmarks would get you a pretty decent payout compared to local salaries. That’s likely not the case anymore, as in most developed countries.
I loved Czechia, shame the language is too fucked up to learn 
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I’ve got a friend in Prague who says he’ll take me to Helsinki. That seems like an ideal Eurotrip to me.
Marketing says Disneyland is the happiest place on earth. But sociological studies indicate that the real happiest place is Finland, so why not visit two great countries?
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Like Toyg said, it has changed – and not really for the better. In the 1990s, when they were new to the whole capitalism thing there was a feel that that this once isolated country really wanted to show itself off to the world. Now it is all about getting money out of tourists – like Venice but even worse. If they can find a way to charge for it they will. There are a set of cottages near the castle called the Golden Lane, most famous because Kafka once lived in one of them. In the 1990s it was just a normal street that anyone could walk on. Now they charge money to just walk on the street!
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Too fucked up to learn? It’s like Polish but more phonetic 
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Well yes, but the only way Polish could be less phonetic was if it was written in eye-searing glyphs found on a monolith discovered in the middle of an impact crater in Horlick-Kenyon plateau.
Backwards.
(I’m Slavic which means Polish sounds hauntingly familiar when spoken, but looks utterly incomprehensible when written. It looks like the effort of transcribing Cantonese in Hungarian by someone who doesn’t speak either. Czech on the other hand sounds like someone trying to speak my native language and failing. I had to suppress an urge to yell at them to speak up. Reading it is easy, though, as long as you figure out a letter I can only describe as R, as understood by an alien.)
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You mean, Cyrilic?
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I’ll never understand what happened in Central and Eastern Europe. Italian, French and Spanish territories hung on their precious Latin for long enough to crystallise on fairly-similar languages, which they then pushed on England and a few other places.
Everywhere else, they must have been like “fuck that, Latin is for pussies! MY language will have none of that! Berserker!”.
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That’s how Dutch is for me. It sounds like a language I understand, but somehow I can’t make sense of what I’m hearing.
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Did Sam and Dean show up?
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When in Prague I deploy one, and only one phrase. Spoken in my best southern drawl.
Pivo, bitte
Maximum confusion, minimum effort, and I eventually get a beer.
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Same. To me, Dutch is like 1/3 German, 1/3 English, and 1/3 neither.
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drunken?
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Cyrillic would make more sense for Polish. Instead, they have four letters szcz to replace Cyrillic щ.
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Ř. The Polish equivalent is rz, which isn’t really the same. I’ve heard this described as the most unique sound in any language in the world. It’s more unique than those African clicks.
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