I realized that
I finished the last post and hadn’t said anything about my birthday! I’m now a
few days removed and can think about it without getting nauseous, so some
progress is definitely being made.
The entirety of
what occurred on my birthday will likely remain a mystery for a long time, but I’ll
share the parts I remember, but first let me preface, I am alive and I did not
attempt the 21 shot salute.
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| Dinner Crew Minus Mira |
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| Mira |
My birthday
celebrations started quite respectably with a small dinner at a traditional
Czech restaurant that Mira recommended. At the dinner were Meghan, Anita,
Devin, Adam and Mira. I didn’t have anything to drink with dinner, but I did
have a very nice chicken dish. It was the leg and thigh with some scalloped
potatoes and a gravy-like sauce.
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| My Dinner. |
Mira and I had
already run around and across town to pick up drinks for the party that night –
I spent far too much money buying alcohol and discovered that I should never be
trusted to buy liquor as I just kept putting more into the cart – so when we
finished dinner, all that was left for us to do was show up. Red, who didn’t
make it to dinner because he had to wait for his credit card to arrive (he lost
his a few nights ago at the bars), had helped some girls down the street
decorate the apartment for my birthday, so when I returned there were streamers
and balloons everywhere.
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| Birthday Decorations! |
I don’t know
whose idea the decorations were, but it was pretty cool. It actually felt like
a birthday party instead of just having a bunch of people over to drink.
Clearly, my birthday spirit came out as a result, because shortly thereafter I
was taking shots of a traditional Czech drink – it is distilled from herbs and
such from the region and smells kind of like an eastern medicine (I can’t
pinpoint it, but the dominant aroma is definitely from a familiar herb). We
took three shots of that in quick succession and meanwhile I’m also sipping on
a glass of champagne.
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| The world is not ready for this. |
I think we ended
up cramming about 30 people into my apartment (it was only crammed because we
all congregated around the drinks were on the kitchen table). The rest of the
night is a blur of rum and coke, absinthe and cake (someone brought me a birthday cake!), but
I managed to mark down 14 shots (marking each shot as an equal and not counting
the champagne or beer) which remained in the morning as a reminder of the
mistakes of the prior night.
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| The Cake (a few shots deep)! |
The last thing I
remember with any clarity is taking my first absinthe shot with Mira,
immediately yelling at him about how terrible it was and how it tasted like
cough syrup only to take two more within the minute. From that point on my
memory turns into a montage of short clips starting at my front door going to
the tram ride and swaying on the bars and ending with entering the club and
going for the bathroom because I was sick.
Note: From here
on out I can only regale you all with stories passed onto me by those who were
present.
Apparently I
spent nearly thirty minutes in the bathroom vomiting during which time I
managed to attract the attention of every patron using the restroom. A few of
the guys on the program utilized the bathroom during my reign of terror, but
told Meghan that I was “fine” and that she should “go enjoy herself.”
Thankfully Meghan didn’t believe them and got my attention long enough to get
me to the door of the restroom and took my wallet, phone and tram pass out of
my pockets to prevent me from falling victim to a pick pocket before letting me
return to continue my sacrifice to the Ivory Goddess.
I eventually
exited the restroom and went with Meghan toward the bar where she found us a
booth. Someone handed me a bottle of water and thought I made a valiant attempt
to drink it; I ended up spilling most of it on my shirt. When I finished with
my water, I started to lie down on the bench.
At some point
they (Meghan, Anita and Mira) shepherded me out of the bar to get back home. I
guess I proved a difficult sheep, however, and stopped several times to lie
down, most notably, in front of a church where I slept next to a homeless man.
Somehow we managed to make it to the tram stop in time for the night tram and
from there I was brought up to my room to go to sleep.
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| The Church! |
First I needed
to take my shirt off though, and thinking that I was really cool, I managed to
strip my sweater, button up and undershirt all at once. Of course, taking a
button up off without unbuttoning it is a recipe for disaster, as anyone with a
clear mind would know. I didn’t have a clear mind at this point though and a
clean rip in the center of the back of one of my favorite shirts is the result.
I suppose in the grand scheme of things, a ripped shirt is a decent outcome
considering my state.
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| Victory. |
Though I wasn’t
smart enough to unbutton my shirt, I did have the foresight to set my alarm for
class the next morning before I
started drinking. And when I say my alarm, I mean all four of them, two on each
phone. It worked too, because I woke up for each alarm and got out of bed on
the fourth attempt when I knew there were no more coming. Funny story though:
when I woke up to the first alarm, I hear a groan from behind me. When I turned
to investigate the source, I discovered that Mira had slept on the other side
of my bed to make sure that I was okay through the night.
After finally
getting out of bed, I showered and prepared myself as best I could for school,
grabbing a banana, a bottle of water and a roll for breakfast. Thinking that I
was doing okay and that I’d somehow escaped yet another hangover, I headed off
to school. It was about an hour later that I found out just how wrong my
initial impression was and suffered through three more hours of Czech with a
miserably uneasy stomach. I trooped on though and made it through all of class
(minus a few minutes before our break when I needed some fresh air) and even
went on the two and a half hour walking tour of Prague Castle following class.
And with that, the
tale of my birthday is concluded. I hope you enjoyed it.
Oh I did. Thoroughly.
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