RE: Prague
2007-03-07 11:40:16
For those of you with experience in Prague/Czech Republic-
How practical is it to rent a car?
There are a couple of places outside Prague I would like to visit on the
weekend (in particular the JAWA Motorcycle Museum of Konopiště, about 20
miles outside Prague), and I am considering renting a car.
Thanks
Janet
"David Harrington" <ietfdbh(_at_)comcast(_dot_)net> wrote on 03/07/2007
12:30:20 PM:
Hi,
I travelled to Prague after the Vienna IETF in 2003.
It's a city; you need to take city precautions.
There are signs of poverty, mostly outside the city center. I was
surprised when I arrived (by train) by people aggressively trying to
rent me a room in their house, and by taxi drivers who grab your bag
and try to lead you to their taxi. Things might have changed by now,
or not.
I accepted a room in a private home from a person at the airport, 45
minutes by train outside of Prague, where people are striving to make
enough to join the middle class. My landlord was a doctor, who found
it more profitable to rent rooms in his house than practice medicine.
Most IETFers will be better off financially, and will show it, so we
become obvious targets.
In three weeks of travelling through the Czech Republic and Slovakia,
with no reservations and usually renting a room (a zimmer) in private
houses, I met many wonderful people and never had a problem. I
travelled alone at night usually. I was probably lucky, since I did
not take many precautions that are simply common sense.
Prague is a wonderful tourist spot with good food, good bier, quality
shopping, lots of culture, and many interesting things to see. I rate
it as one of my favorite cities in Europe.
So I agree that Prague is very survivable.
David Harrington
dharrington(_at_)huawei(_dot_)com
dbharrington(_at_)comcast(_dot_)net
ietfdbh(_at_)comcast(_dot_)net
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Crocker [mailto:dhc2(_at_)dcrocker(_dot_)net]
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2007 12:03 PM
To: IETF Discussion
Subject: Re: Prague
Edward Lewis wrote:
I will attest to Prague being survivable. I have been there once
already and suffered no ill effects and was not robbed.
I.e., don't panic.
...
At 14:52 -0500 3/6/07...:
...
Under the entry for taxis from the airport they say "Warning:
Prague's taxi drivers ...
When the IETF started having the meetings outside the U.S.,
there seemed to be
two basic reasons. One was to adjust the burden of attendee
travel, with a
slight shift towards more fairness for attendees from outside
the U.S. The
other was to have our presence in the locale serve to
encourage improvements
to the local infrastructure.
The former is obviously still valid. By and large, the
latter hasn't been for
a number of years. So it really is not reasonable for us to
go to places that
have poor Internet services, except that I'm one of those
folk who think that
having to go through a meeting venue learning curve for
installing and
debugging the net makes our meeting more fragile than it
should be. But even
that issue has gotten far less risky around the world, even
for first-time
IETF presence.
But it occurs to me that there is an additional benefit that
has been lurking,
and I think it just surfaced: We kind folk from the U.S.
tend to have very
little understanding of what is "normal" elsewhere in the
world. Even those
of us with real travel experience often are so sheltered in
those trips, or
narrow in our venues, we have no serious basis for
appreciating what to worry
about, and what to merely be cautious about.
A month before the Paris IETF, I was in Paris, at the same
convention center,
and had my wallet stolen as I was leaving the Metro. First
such experience.
Very traumatizing. But I'm hard-pressed to view Paris as
more dangerous than
any large U.S. city. And Amsterdam has public signs warning
of pick-pockets.
Should we avoid it, too? My Paris trauma came at the end
of a fabulous day,
and although during IETF week, I had a bit of a tremor when I
had to use the
same metro station, it was, still, the same, wonderful Paris
of the travel books.
Frankly, I have the same worries about Prague as John. I have
read the same
sorts of cautions that he has and must admit that seeing such
cautions show up
in a Frommer's is pretty unusual.
So, I fully intend to be on guard. (And I am staying at a
place that will
require serious use of the transit system.)
But, then, that's the lesson: Some places are seriously
dangerous. We should
stay away from them. Some merely warrant caution. And most
places that
American's worry about are no worse than most cities in the
U.S. Just different.
Yes, it can be a challenge to find credible ways to
distinguish between the
two, but it's clear that the otherwise review of published
reports is not
sufficient.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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- RE: Prague, (continued)
- Re: Prague, Fred Baker
- Re: Prague, Marshall Eubanks
- Re: Prague, John C Klensin
- Re: Prague, Lucy Lynch
- Re: Prague, Dave Crocker
- RE: Prague, David Harrington
- RE: Prague,
Janet P Gunn <=
- Re: Prague, Stephan Wenger
- Re: Prague, Janet P Gunn
- Re: Prague, Marshall Eubanks
- Re: Prague, Ole Jacobsen
- Re: Prague, Jari Arkko
- Re: Prague, Fred Baker
- Re: Prague, Tim Bray
- Re: Prague, Jari Arkko
- Re: Prague, Eliot Lear
- Re: Prague, Brian E Carpenter
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