PRAGUE POST
The Czech postal service is one of constant befuddled head scratching, at least to the American mind.
In America, you put a stamped envelope in a mailbox, or drop it off at a postal office, and off it goes. Usually it makes it to where it should go. Here, in Prague, the mail could come, or it couldn’t. It’s up in the air, and nobody seems to really care. They just passively accept it as part of life and move on with theirs.
When we were setting up our Czech bank accounts and we needed our debit cards mailed to us, the very friendly teller told us, very matter of factly, that delivery to our address, a standard Czech, 3rd floor flat, would be “impossible” and they’d have to send them to the local post office where after four days time we’d have to go and see if they were delivered.
Believe you me, the Czech post office is not to be taken lightly. In a city that generally speaks English, nobody at the post office does, and they’ll look at you like you’re insane if you go their to avail yourself of their services. Now, I won’t demand they speak English just because I can’t speak Czech, but it strikes me odd that this is the one place were English knows no quarter.
After much arm flaying and pointing at things, you will eventually get your letter, or package, and be sent fleeing from the building. On the plus side, the Czech post office is open until 19:00, and on the weekends.
The postal service is one thing, ordering packages from online mega-corporations, or really, from anywhere, is another matter.
You may be used to ordering your mass-produced, plastic garbage, and having it delivered the next day, flung at your front door, or left at the main office. That’s crazy talk here in Prague. They will, under no circumstance, leave a package at your residence. Probably because every entrance is secured so strangers can’t just wander in to your building. So, in lieu of abandonment, one of the multiple courier companies who has been assigned your package’s delivery will call you when they’re arriving. This means if you order something online for delivery, you had better fucking be there when they come a calling. If not, back into the wild package collection it will go and it’s anybodies guess as to how and when it will be delivered. They could try again the next day. They could send it to one of the various corner stores that also functions as a package pick up location, which could be located anywhere in the city, or they could leave it at one of the numerous package holding lockers they have spread across the city, which, admittedly is rather useful.
Since Amazon doesn’t have a stranglehold in the Czech Republic, they have a local service called “Alza” where you can get the same sort of wasteful crap, but you can have it delivered to a collection point, which is a row of secured lockers. They’re everywhere. We have a row of them literally across the street. Things get delivered overnight and you can go and enter your code and boom, there’s your crap.
Unless the Alza lockers are full, which is sometimes the case, then your package gets put back into that random, chaotic redelivery process and could end up anywhere in the city, at another locker, or again, at some corner store.
Oh, they’ll send you a text about it, but you’ll just have to figure it out.
This whole postal conundrum confounds my mother, who is desperate to make the American postal service and the Czech postal service work together in order to mail me stuff. She periodically sends “test” letters to see if and when they arrive. Typically, they do, 4 weeks later, but held for collection at the Czech post office, due to some indecipherable customs regulation that prevents American mothers from sending 13 year old Halmark cards to their middle age, expat sons.
On the flip side, my mother-in-law has sent us numerous enveloped correspondence that have arrived in our mailbox, no questions asked.
Who fucking knows.
MORE CONSTANT TRACKING
Everything I’m connected to wants to tell me just exactly how much I’ve been engaging with it throughout the year. Here’s what the Playstation 5 and Nintendo Switch has to say about it.
What it doesn’t take into account is in September I got a Steam Deck and have essentially forsaken my PS5 and Switch for the luxury of playing everything I want while lying in bed, unencumbered by the tethers of demanding consoles and thusly the hours reflected here were likely impacted by that acquisition.
ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE’S TOP 500 ALBUMS
OF ALL TIME
I’m making my way through Rolling Stone Magazine’s top 500 albums off all time list. The journey continues:
485: Richard and Linda Thompson - “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight” (1974)
I quite enjoyed this one. Simple, singer/songwriter, folk infused music with beautiful singing, lovely guitar playing, and a slight Celtic flourish. Sounds like it could be released today and not skip a fucking beat.
484: Lady Gaga - “Born This Way” (2011)
I’ve never had anything against Lady Gaga, just never really paid much attention, that is, until she started acting and stopped putting on weird costumes and generally being over-the-top, which I thought was kind of sad. Why get rid of the eccentricities?
That being said, this album is full of over-the-top eccentricities. It’s a fucking banger. Just not stop energy. It’s easy to see why she’s a modern icon.
483: Muddy Waters - “The Anthology” (2001)
I get the historical and societal impact Mr. Waters had on the Blues and Rock ‘n’ Roll, but I think Rolling Stone could have picked a more succinct album to represent his place here. This is a compilation of 50 songs, and despite how good they are, after about 15 or so they all start to blend together and I feel, the impact is lost.
THINGS I’M LISTENING TO
HEALTH - “RAT WARS”
Judicator - “I am the Void” Single
The Smith Street Band - “Life After Football”
LYRICS OF THE WEEK
I'm a desperate poet, lost for words and I know it
My ink is dry, though I try, still my words will not fly
I'm a desperate poet, and I know that I owe it to you
To deliver the goods, and I would, if I could
Wuthering Heights - “The Desperate Poet”