#rainbow hell

Approximately a month ago Nt took me to Prague. We didn’t spend a lot of time there – just one week – but I should admit that I won’t be able to forget that week, well… ever.

We stayed in a hotel located very close to the old part of the town; I asked Nt to pick that one specifically because it had nice rooms built into the attic, right under the roof (which meant the ceiling was sloped and had all the windows while the walls had none), and I kinda hoped we’d get one.

We did. We did, and what a home-like room that was.

Anyway, back to the week. We had it packed almost full with tours (5 days of traveling to all kinds of places vs 1 free), and I still remember the impact those left on my poor back and legs. The shortest one, if I remember correctly, took about 4 hours plus 1 hour to get back to our hotel, and we spent all those walking (up the hills and climbing stairways). Other tours took nearly half a day each, and we had to spend extra hours on sitting cramped in the bus. What I’m driving at is, every day left us so exhausted we had trouble waking up in the mornings, and sometimes I felt dull ache coursing in various parts of my body. Still, totally worth it.

The first day was the most important day since we’d never been in Czech Republic before and needed to get acquainted with it, so we ventured to Germany without delay. My memory is a bit fuzzy by now, sadly so (should have written about this as soon as we arrived), but I do remember loving the architecture there and listening to distant echoes of Ave Maria. Also food. The guides warned us that all meals that are served in Dresden (as well as in Prague) are quite large, but we never succeeded in learning that lesson and suffered thoroughly each time we ordered something.

We also visited a few churches and castles in the Czech Republic, and I’m really sad we didn’t get to go there in summer. Nt found a colorful feather lying in a courtyard somewhere and kept it; we still have no idea whether it belonged to a rare bird or just some lady’s handbag.

The place I will absolutely never forget is the Sedlec Ossuary. It’s no secret that I’m addicted to all types of the undead and especially bones, so I was really reluctant to leave that chapel behind. Nt got us a lot of great souvenirs there, and my most prized possession is a real-sized human skull – not made of bone, of course, but it does look natural, and I love it very much. I even gave it a name and–

Yeah. I know. I’m gonna stop here. XD

…then there was this small town named Český Krumlov where we bought a lot of unique beer and a dozen of chocolate bars I now miss dearly. We had some free time after the excursion, and Nt suggested going to the local museum of torture – an invitation I didn’t accept right away despite having already visited similar places in the past. Yeah, I’m into dark stuff, but I don’t enjoy watching people suffer, especially physically. We still went there, though, and contrary to my expectations the place turned out to be amazing.

We were the only ones in there for some reason, and thank god for that. No one was there to cough or to make stupid comments or to just… you know, ruin the atmosphere by simply being present. It was just us and the museum.

And what distinguished that particular museum from the ones I’d been to before was its placement below the ground level, in a real former dungeon with low uneven ceilings, underground pools and wet stone walls– yes, exactly, wet. The whole place was filled with that stiff smell of old water, and there were cobwebs and moss growing everywhere. Combined with narrow corridors, dim sources of light, high quality ambience and actual torture scenes (yep, not just equipment but full-sized sculptures of people trapped in all kinds of troubles), that hell delivered 100%.

The last day was spent mostly on sleeping and packing our stuff. We bought a lot of beer, various presents and clothes, and it was really difficult to tuck all of that into our bags. The skull didn’t make it into any of them, so I had to take it with me to the plane.

That decision triggered a funny scene in the airport. The worker who was checking my stuff saw what I was carrying, and asked me if he could touch the skull. Yeah, not just see, to actually touch it. I agreed, why not, and he looked so happy when he took it into his hands that he immediately reminded me of a child. His eyes were literally glowing with excitement.

…and then he raised said skull high above his head and shouted to his co-workers, “HEY LOOK, SOMEONE’S TRYING TO SMUGGLE HITLER’S SKULL!!”, and everyone laughed. Nt has been calling the skull ‘Hitler’ ever since, and I call it that sometimes too.

But it does have its own name.

Drum roll, please~~~

‘Mira the Executioner’!!

…

Lol. I know, I know.

Haha.

___

I’m not sure if I missed something important. If I did, I’ll come back later and add it in.

1.1 We attended a pipe organ concert (the instrument was accompanied by two violins and a cello) that was held in one of the Prague churches. Both cried a bit during Ave Maria.

1.2 Nt claims he never cried during the concert. Yeah, okay, you never cried. There, I said it~

1.3 Yep, fuck you too <3

1.4 And yes, the concert was mostly Vivaldi.

2.1 THE FOOD WAS AMAZING

PORK SOUR CREAM BREAD EVERYTHING ELSE

Today I woke up earlier than usual because my grandmother suddenly started to make a lot of noise right behind my door. I somehow managed to unglue my rock heavy eyelids and, swaying like a wasted idiot, stumbled into the hallway to find out what exactly managed to set her off. Turned out, the TV channels weren’t working properly because our building is currently undergoing some major repairs and apparently the network got busted.

“Aw, don’t worry, it’s gonna be fixed in no time!” I assured her with a smile and then returned to my room. Sleep wasn’t very alluring anymore, so I turned on my computer…

And the Internet had been cut off too.

Well, okay, alright, I can handle this, I thought. I called the office, and they told me that they were fixing it, so I decided to put some time into drawing or writing stuff like I usually do. It’s not very easy when I can’t look up any references or word meanings, but whatever. Optimism!

…

…I wasn’t able to start doing anything because the screen suddenly went black. Not only that, all the outlets waved me goodbye as the entire flat got disconnected from electricity supply.

Well… that’s okay too, I guess... I can probably still do something useful with my time…

So I went to sleep, lol… Except I didn’t grab much because someone rang the doorbell very soon.

I got off the bed and went to get the door; on the other side stood a girl I had never seen before. She introduced herself as a neighbor from the flat right below mine and asked if something was wrong in a certain part of my place since the walls in one of her rooms were getting wet for some reason. The room she was interested in was my grandmother’s, so I went there… and was met with a sight of dripping water. My flat is located on the highest floor of the building, so the problem had to be on the roof.

That’s where I started to feel slightly concerned about the quality of our workers. I placed a few large bowls to keep the floor from getting soaked (several power outlets got damaged, but nothing major), and together we went up to see what was going on. There we were met by a group of workers who told us that the main water pipe burst, so… yeah, a few floors would be soaking wet soon, congratulations.

That wasn’t the worst part, haha... The worst part was that in order to minimize the damage, THEY HAD TO TURN OFF THE CENTRAL HEATING. COMPLETELY. And let me tell you what that means to someone who lives in Russia during late autumn when it’s already snowing. That means your home gets to transform into a goddamn freezer!

So I returned to my flat where there was no electricity and no heating, and on top of that one of the rooms kept getting wetter and wetter. To make the day even more spectacular, the guy who was responsible for the Internet dropped by and announced there’d be no Internet connection till tomorrow morning, so please enjoy your Halloween!

The ride there wasn’t very eventful, but it was nice. We had a plane booked for 1pm instead of the usual 3am for once, slept till it was bright outside and left Nt’s apartment on solid legs. The weather was great, the plane was spacious, the bus we boarded after landing was also pretty comfortable.

Then we arrived to our hotel and funny stuff began.

It started with a room that contained three beds instead of two, all of them one person sized and standing wide apart. We quickly decided to move two closest beds together and left the third to our mutual imaginary friend Valera who’s a pretty decent guy when you get to know him better and- I know how that sounds, shut up. Once we got settled, we went to scout the area for supermarkets because the hotel didn’t provide its habitants with free water and we needed it real bad to survive the heat. Actually, I think the temperature might have been a little too rough on Nt because he somehow managed to buy the same bottle of flavored water twice (paying for it in two different stores) and then left his jacket outside our room (I honestly find it endearing because he’s not someone who fucks up often, and when he does he makes that ‘I’m renouncing myself’ face and it’s super cute).

Anyway, first day went okay, and then the next morning came and we went to the beach ­– and I have to say that the beach we chose is utterly amazing, it’s located away from the main area, hidden among giant stones and cacti that grow everywhere, and basically you won’t be able to find it unless you’re deliberately looking for it, which means few people marring good times. We chose a comfortable spot and lay down there… and ended up burning ourselves so bad we really felt it the following morning. For nearly half a week the closest we came to touching were those awkward hug-pat attempts that unavoidably ended with one of us (or both) cringing in pain and hastily retreating.

(While I’m at the beach part, I might as well mention the honorable moment when Nt encountered a ginger cat chilling on the sand and was very merry about it coming to visit us from time to time. Much, much later we learned that it simply saw the beach as one big litter box and used it when it deemed necessary.)

The maids… weren’t awfully impressed by our decision to move beds together, and every single time they left we found them separated and had to move them back together again. There wasn’t much we could do during day hours when the sun was merciless, so we spent them in our room eating Pringles and watching the only two English-speaking channels nonstop (which were Disney (that pulled me into the SVTFOE fandom) and the other channel that showed survival games and Alasca biker gang adventures 24/7 (now THAT was as captivating as it was disturbing)). During a particularly long evening Nt discovered Pokemon Go and it became the main source of my ‘plz stop’ glares because seriously he kept catching those things wherever we went and uuuuughhhh (even though I must admit I installed that too, later)

When we didn’t go to the beach, we went to the pool. And (hahaha) I remember that one time when Nt stood in the deepest part of the pool and I felt triggered and asked him to help me check if I could reach the floor too. He helped me by pushing down on my shoulders so that I wouldn’t float up and then accidentally hit me into the stomach with a knee (I still have no idea how he managed to do that????).

Then there were various excursions starting from Madrid and ending with chibi countries like Andorra. We went to the latter (ever imagined what a huge mall under the open sky looks like? That’s it), took off with so many bottles of wine we had problems packing our luggage… aaaand somehow missed the most important store there could ever be – the game souvenirs. Mysterion watched me from beyond the glass and I couldn’t reach out and take him. Then there was Barcelona with its Sagrada Familia temple I’ve been dreaming to visit ever since Schizm came out (ohhh gooodddd that game left such an impact on my little soul back then), the Dali gallery in Girona and the city of Terragona (which is supposed to be written differently but the typo is hilarious, I’m not correcting it).

And, of course, we couldn’t leave the country without visiting the famous PortAventura. I’m all for amusement parks, and this place delivered 100%. We bought tickets for two days; Nt wasn’t looking forward to it too much (like, eeeeh?! What’s wrong with you!!) but when we were going through our first ride his view on things changed drastically. We spent somewhere around 16 hours walking around the place in total and took on most of the rides. Some of them even went with us sitting front rows, and I gotta say it was fantastic. I only wish we could come back sometime and have a few more Hurakan Condors and Furius Bacos which I consider the scariest experiences in the park. Really, they’re so refreshing I’d ride them every day. Twice. Maybe even more.

The last day was partially slept through thanks to our neighbors who decided it was a great idea to chat the night away, as loudly as they possibly could. The road home took us nearly 12 hours, and we got to Nt’s apartment all wobbly at 5 in the morning. Hitting the pillow was the best thing I felt that day.

The trip was awesome, though. I’m all happy, smiles and gold under the sun.

Just now my grandmother came into my room and handed me an envelope with an identical mask in it. “So you won’t get ill,” she said. She doesn’t know about the game.