Shouzer

Well, hopefully no one from my TEFL course has stumbled upon this site through some random Google search because this story would make certain people very unhappy.

It is the Saturday before I leave Prague. I checked out of my hotel on Friday morning because the thirty days of my lease were up, and I was staying with a couple of friends, I’ll call them Ted and Marshall. Now, in Prague, the Metro is closed from midnight-5am, and on Friday night, I stayed out until the Metro opened in the morning. Why? Because I had no home, and when you crash with friends, you are at their mercy. I also slept on the floor that night/morning so I was understandably grouchy after my 1-2 hours of restless “sleep.” That might not have been necessary for this story, but it was important in my mind.

Anyway, I hung out with Ted and Marshall most of the day, and that was nice. I spent all of my Saturdays up to that one alone (more on this later). Their apartment was something of a social gathering point that day. About 10 people just randomly showed up there to see what was going on. We went out a few times, but it was mostly pretty chilled out.

Everyone was planning to go out at around 6 for dinner/drinks. I had an unconfirmed dinner arrangement with two girls, and I did not want to stand them up. So at about 5, I took off to see if they were home. To get out of Ted and Marshall’s apartment building, you had to have a key. So I borrowed Ted’s key, went outside, and tossed the key back into the window of Marshall’s room, which faced the street. I then jumped on the Metro and headed the few stops down the line to the girls’ apartment. They were not there. Hence the reason I spent most of my Saturdays alone. Few people in the course had cell phones, and I was not one of them. It took two keys to even get to the door of my room so I could never rely on people showing up. This meant, I had to show up places and hope people were there. I usually opted for going it alone. I’m antisocial like that.

But I digress, I met up with the crew of people downtown for the dinner since I was obviously not going to be treated to anything homemade. When I found Ted, we had a nice little conversation about his key.

“Dude, do you have my key?” -Ted
“Nope, I threw it back into your apartment. I think I heard it hit some wood. Didn’t you find it?” -Me
“No” -Ted
“Well that sucks.” -Me

Shortly thereafter, we are roaming around downtown Prague in a pack of about a dozen English-speaking people, drawing, I’m sure, lots of attention, and we realize that Marshall has run off somewhere with a girl. (This is another story which I am not going into now. Perhaps in another post.) This leaves Ted and myself pretty screwed over since we cannot get back into his apartment. All hope is not lost though, for then arrives Robin. The How I Met Your Mother fans should probably see where this is going now, but I’ll continue for the rest of you. Robin is a resident of The Villa, which houses about half a dozen of the TEFL students, and while calling it The Villa might be an overstatement, it was about 10x nicer than my place and within walking distance of the school. It turns out though, that one of the residents of The Villa, I guess I’ll call him Barney, has already moved out. Robin assures us that we can crash in his room. He has a double bed, which means I don’t have to sleep on the floor, so I’m pretty OK with the idea. Ted has a pretty ginormous crush on Robin, so I’m pretty sure he’ll be OK as well.

On this particular night, everyone is pretty exhausted, so we head back at around 11:30. When we arrive at Vysochanska (where the school and The Villa are), Robin suggest we stop in at the local pub, aptly called “Sports Bar”, for a night cap. This pretty much infuriates me. I was ready to pass out at about 11:30 am, and I had failed to do so on multiple occasions. Now, at nearly midnight, I am basically at the end of my rope, and since I do not drink, a visit to Sports Bar is not likely to be enjoyable for me. I usually drink Coke when I go to bars with friends, but I didn’t want caffeine at that point. I, not so tactfully, express my irritation to Robin. When we finally get back to The Villa, I crash in Barney’s room while Ted and Robin head in the other room so that I can sleep. I laid there for about an hour waiting for Ted to come back because I had promised him the blanket (I was pretty cold). Eventually, I realize he isn’t coming back, so I just steal the thing. At around 7:30, I hear an alarm go off in the next room, and a few minutes later, Ted comes stumbling in. I tossed him the blanket, and after an hour or so, we head out for our walk-of-shame back to his apartment. Well, actually, it was the Metro ride-or-shame. As we were walking back, I asked the pertinent question, “When did you realized that my losing your key was a good thing for you?”

Epilogue:
Robin was not too offended by my late-night grumpiness. According to Ted, she liked me a lot because she could not read me despite the fact she was a psychologist. She wasn’t sure whether I liked her or not. Turns out, I wasn’t sure about that either.

Ted didn’t realize his good fortune until we were already at The Villa. It would have been a much better story if he had masterminded the whole thing, but it’s just not true.

Robin and Ted are still together as far as I know. They just spent a week together in Sweden, and last I heard, they were moving to China, as it is the most romantic place on Earth. I didn’t talk to either of them much after that night. Ted got kicked out of his apartment later that day, and I had to find a new host to leech off. Plus, he acted differently when he was around Robin, and one of my pet peeves is guys who act differently around women. I probably do it too, but it still makes me angry. Ted was originally planning to come to Thailand with me. I’m just glad he decided to take her somewhere else. That would have been very awkward for me for the aforementioned reason.