Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

On the train ride to Prague from Romania we had plenty of time to read up on the city in our guide books. We located the major sights that we would need to see in our limited time there, such as Charles’s Bridge, the Prague Castle, and the Lenin Wall. We were able to find out that marionettes are very common in Prague and there are many theaters devoted to putting on shows using these puppets. We were able to locate the hotel where we would be staying on a map. But one of the most interesting things that I read about in the guidebooks was that the Czech Mafia ran an official taxi service that charges many times more than what other taxi services charge.

I stashed this little tidbit of information in the back corner of my brain as I attempted to figure out how to say important phrases in Czech, such as “hungry” and “bathroom”. By the time our rather eventful train ride came to its conclusion I had almost forgotten what I had read.

We arrived in Prague and immediately went to the bathrooms in the train station where we had to pay to go in. Jennifer and I were both looking a bit worse for the wear after the train ride, but we decided that we would skip showers and naps, both things we were in dire need of, to get in as much sightseeing as we could before we dropped from exhaustion.

In order to get from the train station to the hotel we needed to take a taxi. The hotel wasn’t all that far from the station, but we both had rather large suitcases to get there and the streets of Prague were cobblestone which would make rolling the suitcases rather difficult. And neither of us had enough of a functioning brain to read the map to figure out how to get to the hotel.

Jennifer started following the signs toward “The Official Taxi”. I remembered what I had read as Jennifer approached one of the drivers and began inquiring about what the fare would be to take the two of us to the hotel. The driver looked at us, looked at the hotel address and the map, and back at us and announced that it would be 750 Kroner. (I don’t remember what the exchange rate was, but this was way too high.) Jennifer began to try and haggle with the driver, saying that it was too much money and she wasn’t able to pay that.

The driver just stared at her blankly as she tried to convince him that the fare was too high.

When she was finished talking the driver responded in Czech and it was my aunt’s turn to stare blankly. Neither party was having any success in winning the other person to his side when the driver said, “Sprechen Sie deutsch?” Jennifer continued to stare at him, not understanding a word of what he said. My ears perked up at this though. I had just finished my first year of studying German in high school and I knew enough to understand that simple question.

I responded with a quiet and hesitant “Ja” and stepped forward. Jennifer got a startled look on her face that quickly turned to one of apprehension. I could read in her expression that she was quite nervous that I was going to be taking over the negotiating in a language that she couldn’t understand. The driver and I started discussing prices. He lowered the price to 700 Kroner but that was still too much. I asked him how far away the hotel was, and he informed me that it was about 3 Kilometers away. I then calmly told him that we would just walk there and turned my back on the taxi queue and started towards the escalator that led out of the train station.

As I turned around I said to Jennifer under my breath, “Follow me, and don’t look back.” She grabbed her suitcase and followed me with a rather confused look on her face. When we got to street level, she asked me what I had said. I told her about what I had read in the guide book on the train. And I told her that I had told they driver that we were just going to walk.

She took out the map and began trying to orient herself. A taxi from the AAA Taxi service pulled up in front of us and the driver, who spoke very good English, asked us if we needed a ride. We showed him the address of our hotel and asked him how much it would be to get there and he told us it would cost 125 Kroner.

We threw our bags into the trunk and hopped into the back seat.

When we arrived at our hotel Jennifer paid the cabbie the 750 Kroner because she was so relieved to have found an honest cabbie. We headed into our hotel to drop off our bags before heading off sightseeing, and he drove away with one of the biggest grins I have ever seen.