180km/hour

March 22, 2013 (continued)
I sat on the wooden bench outside of school waiting for Ivana. It was another chilly Prague day, with gray skies and a biting wind. For a town that is known for its beautiful spring, I have certainly seen more winter than anything.

Just after 4:00, Ivana came out of the front doors of the school. She walked down the steps in her usual black pea-coat with gold buttons. She has a beige hat that she always wears with a matching scarf that is so long and thick, it looks like a cape trailing behind her.

She smiled as she cross the street. “Hello,” she said, and gave me a hug.

“Do I look like a tourist?” I said gesturing to all my gear.

“I do!” she said, turning around to reveal a bright purple backpack. We laughed. “I think it is going to be a very cold weekend. This weather is very odd for Prague. It should be nice by now, but it is still like winter.”

“This isn’t usual?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if that made me relieved or envious.

“No,” she said. “Is very weird. I think it will be bad in Germany too.”

“That’s what I saw online,” I said.

She shrugged a little. “Can you come with me to get some pizza?” she asked.

“Sure!” I said. We walked down to the little pizza window by the tram stop. She bought a slice with ham on it and ate it as we walked back up to the school parking lot.

“What did you do this week?” she asked.

I thought for a minute, replaying it in my head. “It was a busy week,” I said. “One of my professors from back home was teaching an intensive class this week, so we met for dinner one night.”

“What was his class called?” she asked.

“Business ethics,” I said, not correcting her on the gender assumption.

“Oh,” she said. “I have to take this class too. I have it in a few weeks with a professor from Hungary.”

“Very cool,” I said.

“What else did you do?” she asked.

“Then Wednesday was one of the French student’s birthday, so we went to dinner at the puma bar,” I explained.

“Very cool,” she said. “And you had fun at the party.”

I smiled at the irony of that question. “Yes,” I said. “I did. What did you do this week?”

“Nothing really,” she said. “I have a lot of exams next week so I studied a lot.”

“Did you work at all?” I asked.

“No, not this week,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “I took my professor to your restaurant on Tuesday.”

She chuckled. “Thank you. That’s very nice. I also worked on my Visa application this week.”

“How is it coming?” I asked.

“It’s very long,” she said. “They ask questions like, ‘Are you a terrorist?’ and ‘Are you a prostitute?’ and ‘Are you being forced to travel against will?’”

I laughed. The Czech visa application had asked if I’d ever been convicted of a crime, but nothing so straightforward.

Lubos was running late. Ivana started to get cold so she gave him a call. She spoke quickly in Czech and when she hung up, she said, “He will be here soon.”

“Should we wait inside?” I asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said. Pointing down this hill she said, “He is right at that…at that…I don’t know it is in English. The place where streets cross and there are lights?”

“Intersection?” I offered.

“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know this word. But I need to ask you question.” She reaching in her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. “My mobile had problem the other day and I lost all my contacts. Can I have your number again?”

“I don’t have my mobile anymore,” I said.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I never figured out how to pay the bill, and it seemed pretty expensive anyway for as little as I used it, so I just let them shut it off.”

She laughed. “Now you really are a tourist.”

Less than a minute later, Lubos pulled up in his black Audi. He got out and gave Ivana a kiss. They spoke in Czech as we loaded our bags into the hatchback of his car. I climbed into the backseat, and they got in a few seconds later in the front.

“He had a bad day at work,” Ivana explained as he started the car. “He will be better soon.”

“This is the first time I’ve been in a car since I left the States,” I said.

“How is it?” she asked as we pulled away.

“Not so different,” I said.

“Maybe you should try driving in Prague,” Lubos said.

“That would not go so well,” I said. “I’m not quite brave enough for the traffic here, and,” and this was probably more important, “I can’t drive a stick shift.”

“You haven’t driven a car like this?” Ivana asked, pointing at the gear shift.

“Nope. Well, once,” I said. “My car is automatic.”

“You have your own car?” she asked.

“Well my Mom owns it,” I said. “But I drive it a lot.”

“Wow,” she said. “No one our age in Prague has a car. Most don’t get them until they are twenty-five or older.”

“It was kind of a birthday present a few years ago,” I said. “It’s my little Subaru.” I wasn’t sure if they’d know the brand, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t.

Lubos had the radio on an international FM station called Europa 2. With artists like FloRida and songs like “Dani California” I felt like I was back at home. As we got further out of town, we lost the signal and had to switch to Czech stations. The songs on these frequencies switched from American hits to Czech classics.

“Is this the same highway to Terezin?” I asked.

“Yes,” Lubos said.

“I thought I recognized the view.”

“We will take it to Czech border and then get on the Autobahn,” he said.

I laughed. “Do you know the term ‘bucket list?’” I asked.

“No,” Ivana said, turning around. Lubos didn’t either. “What does it mean?”

“It refers to things you want to do before you die,” I explained. “Bucket list items are the things on the list.”

She chuckled a little. “Okay.”

“Riding on the Autobahn is a bucket list item for me,” I said.

They both laughed. “But I think you should go in a better car,” Lubos said. “My max speed is 210 kilometers, and is not as fast.”

If we hit 220 kilometers, that’d be faster than I’d ever driven before.

The radio switched to an American song. I instantly recognized the lyrics, but not the music. “Is this American Pie?” I asked. “I’m sorry to change the subject.”

“Yes,” Ivana said turning it up. “It is Madonna.”

“Huh,” I laughed. Ironic that just two nights ago, Lourenco had asked me if I knew any cover versions of this song. “The only version I’d ever heard was the original.”

“Is your window open?” Lubos asked me. I didn’t think it was, but I did notice the fluttery sound. That was also when I noticed that the window was controlled with a crank instead of a button. I twisted it, the wrong way initially, and the window opened. Reversing directions, it sealed close. I think it had in fact been cracked a little because the sound was gone.

As we wound up towards a series of hills, Ivana pointed and said, “These are the biggest mountains in the Czech Republic.”

“No they aren’t,” Lubos snapped. Both of them are avid snowboarders and since Ivana is from Slovakia, they have heated debates over which country has better mountains. “These are only hills,” he said. They began speaking in Czech, and from the whimsical pitch of both of their voices, I gathered they were teasing each other.

Lubos looked in the rear view mirror and said, “You know Slovakia has more gypsies than Czech does?”

“It does not!” Ivana retorted.

“It does,” he said. “They call Slovakia ‘Little India.’”

“That is not true!” she said.

“I don’t think I’ve seen any Gypsies in Prague,” I said, although this was not the first conversation I’d heard about the hatred towards them.

“Go to the Andel station on the metro,” Lubos said.

“We were there one day when I got here, weren’t we?” I asked Ivana.

“Yes,” she said. “They hang out there a lot. They are bad for Prague. During communism, they were forced to settle down in Prague and forced to work. Now that capitalism has come, they still don’t move around, but they don’t work anymore. They don’t educate their children. They don’t have jobs or pay taxes. They are lazy and not very polite to the economy. They take money from the government and sometimes have houses from the government, but they destroy them and then move into other houses without fixing it.”

“I think there are gypsies in this car ahead of us,” Lubos said. We’d gotten stuck behind a slow moving sedan that was cautiously maneuvering the hairpin turns of the pass.

“Why are they gypsies?” Ivana asked.

“They are slow and lazy and their car is black,” he said.

“Your car is black!” she shouted, and we all laughed.

As we continued to climb, we saw more and more snow on the pass. Soon, fresh snow started falling. “It is always snowing here,” Lubos said.

Ivana asked him something in Czech and he responded in Czech. “We are almost to Germany,” she said, turning to me.

“Cool,” I said.

“And then the Autobahn,” she said with a smile.

“You know what is ironic about the Autobahn,” Lubos said. “It is so famous, but it was actually Hitler’s idea. He started the construction of it.”

I hadn’t known that.

We went through a tunnel, and on the other side, I noticed the street signs were different.

“We’re in Germany,” Lubos said. His iPhone, which we were using to navigate, chimed to confirm this fact.

Shortly after we crossed the border, the snow really picked up. The radio signal kept dropping, and Lubos would search for another frequency. The channels were all in German and the language sounded so much harsher than the buttery flow of Czech.

One station we stopped on didn’t seem to play music but was just a lot of talking in German. After a few minutes, Lubos changed frequency again in frustration. “Do they only play ads on that station?”

“I was pretending it was some sort of novel or German soap opera,” I said.

He laughed. “But I understand it, so I can’t pretend.” Ivana had told me he was fluent in German and was trying to teach her.

We scrolled through other stations (which I guess were all political talk shows) before finding a German music station. I pulled out my iPod and showed them the one German song that I have on it.  Lubos confirmed it was by a famous band and that a lot of their songs are quite funny (I’d always pretended they were inspirational.)

When we came down out of the mountains and made a few lane changes on overpasses, Lubos said, “Ok, this is Autobahn.”

I smiled as the car accelerated. With my eyes darting from the view outside to the speedometer of the car, I think our max speed topped out at about 180km/hour (approx. 112miles/hour.) The view outside really wasn’t much, since it was so dark but it was fun and exhilarating to ride so fast.

When we drove through Dresden, they joked that I should recognize it, although we were on the very outskirts of town. They also suggested we stop at McDonald’s for dinner. “I’m going to vote that we don’t,” I said.

“I also have this opinion,” Ivana said.

As we drove again out of town, Ivana fell asleep. Her head bobbed from side to side with the motion of the car. Lubos told me there was an armrest on the side of my seat that I could pull out. I did and it was more comfortable. With Ivana sleeping, Lubos turned down the music and we pretty much stopped talking. Looking out the window, the view was pretty much all landscape and trees. After an hour or so, we were coming up on some lights.

“That is Berlin airport,” Lubos said. “One of the airports. I think they have more.”

Ivana woke up and said something groggy to Lubos in Czech. They began talking back and forth as we rode along.

As we got more into town, Ivana turned and said, “This is Berlin!”