I was the one who wanted to go to Prague. My friend and spring break travel buddy, Mel, had chosen the other locations—she had managed to convince me about Vilnius, and we had agreed on Krakow.  Prague was not high on her list of priorities.  Despite having done hardly any research on the city, I worked hard to convince her that we needed to see it before the end of the semester.  I had a very particular image in my head.  The Prague I expected was small, quiet, and quaintly beautiful.  The Prague I encountered defied expectations:  large, commercial, and crowded:  a tourist city.  At first blush, I was a little disappointed.

But, as one does when abroad, Mel and I adapted.  With a few days of travel already under our belts, we learned a handful of useful Czech expressions and set off to discover the Prague that lay outside our imaginations.  We visited the Museum of Communism, whose small theater looped video footage of 1989 protests in Wenceslas Square, and whose gift shop—particularly the coaster set depicting a fanged, leering matryoshka doll—was a blatant “fuck you” to the former Soviet Union.  We wandered around the elaborate Prague Castle gardens, taking pictures of the noisy resident peacocks.  We escaped an afternoon of freezing rain by holing up in a smoky pub, drinking cheap, enormous pints.

Then there was the Metro.  Mel and I spent ages jammed in with tourists and commuters, riding long, slow-moving escalators down to the train platforms, gawking at indecipherable ads and stark signs naming each stop in Soviet Bloc reds and yellows.

The most important thing to know about the Prague Metro is this:  it operates on an honor system.  There are no turnstiles.  You buy a ticket that’s good for a certain amount of time—twenty minutes, forty minutes, an hour and a half—and timestamp it before entering the platform.  The only way to pay for tickets is with exact change, in coins.

Mel and I were unprepared for this on the morning of our last day in Prague. We had planned to leave our backpacks in a locker for the day, before taking an overnight train to Krakow.  As we descended into the nearest metro station, we realized that neither of us had change.  We stood before the bright yellow ticket dispenser, trying to decide whether we should venture back up to look for an ATM.  Meanwhile, all around us, suit-clad commuters were striding past into the metro, without so much as a glance at the ticket dispenser.  Maybe they all had annual passes.  Then again, maybe they didn’t.

It would be unfair to say Mel and I were equally at fault.  I remember saying something like, “It’ll be fine; don’t worry,” and starting off toward the escalator.  It was mostly fine.  It might have been completely fine if we had gotten off at another stop.  But as we stepped off the train and set foot on the platform, it was clear that we were already caught.  Two stout, stern-looking Metro police officers stood at the bottom of the stairwell, asking for tickets in English.  We probably could have avoided the encounter altogether by jumping back on the train and getting off at the next stop.  But in that moment, something—probably an overactive sense of honesty—propelled me forward.

With our colorful backpacks and ratty sneakers, Mel and I were obvious tourists, and obvious targets.  The officers approached us almost immediately:  “Tickets.  Hey!  Tickets!”  After a few futile moments of pretending I hadn’t heard them, I pulled out what I knew was an old, expired ticket from the other day.  I guess I preferred they think me stupid rather than dishonest.  Mel, more dignified, or maybe just more resigned, admitted freely that she didn’t have one.  The officer examining my ticket—he was barely taller than me, but that made him no less intimidating—asked where we were from.  I owned up to my American-ness, thinking I could easily keep playing the role of Dumb Tourist Who Doesn’t Understand Public Transit.   Immediately after that, the officer asked for our passports.  “This is it,” I thought, “I’m going to Czech prison.”

Taking our passports with them, the officers led us upstairs to a sign near the platform entrance, pointing out—again in English—the price we would be paying for my error in judgment.  In a few embarrassing minutes, Mel and I were each poorer by 800 Czech crowns (about 30€).  As we slunk away to the lockers, the short officer called us back:  “Girls!  Girls!”  We returned—what could he possibly want now?  He gave us a look I couldn’t read; I caught my breath.  Then he handed us each a blank, 90-minute Metro ticket.

The day improved, but only after Mel and I left the train station and took a self-pity break.  We sat in a tiny café with a pastel color scheme, consuming overpriced tea and pastries, trying to shrug off the shame and the blow to our wallets.  We settled on the following line of thought:  every trip needs a mishap budget for things like this; we had just spent ours.  That night on the way to Krakow we had a good laugh about it.  And for the remainder of the trip, neither of us set foot near a train, tram, or bus without a ticket in hand.

Prague is different from what I had I expected.  But it didn’t mess around.  Neither should you.