The coolest thing in another country

This is a meme I picked up from ManiaRavings, my old buddy Jaffer’s blog quite a while ago. Now I don’t usually do memes because most of them kinda seem too clichéd…talking about a single color or animal or whatever; but unlike most other blog memes I’ve seen lately, this is something which asks you to write on (yup, you guessed it!) the coolest thing you’ve seen in another country.

(By the way if you’re wondering, a meme is a kind of a tag thing that goes around the blogosphere – people write on certain topics, and then someone else picks it up and puts their side of the story on it and so on.)

I’m not too sure if this qualifies to fit the description of the ‘coolest’ thing (I don’t believe in coolness); but I’d like to put forth my contribution – this picture – and explain the most awesome thing I’ve seen recently.



The picture above was taken me from an escalator that leads down to “line B” of the city metro in Prague, in the Czech Republic.

The photo in itself may not explain much or look too impressive, but at a steady drop of nearly four floors, this is the most deepest…and not to mention scariest escalator I’ve ever set foot on.

The official depth of the deepest station, Náměstí míru, is 52 meters (that’s over 170 feet for you North Americans!) and for some reason, whoever designed the metro decided that it takes you from ground level to the sub terrarium metro station in one single flight of steps.

This monster escalator runs at nearly twice the speed of a regular one, and still takes over 30seconds to reach the bottom, so you can appreciate how dizzying this is.
Again, I don’t know why but all the escalators in the Prague Metro seem a lot faster than usual.
In fact, they were so fast that just after one weekend, the ones back in Frankfurt almost seemed slow!

And here’s the weird thing:
For some reason, the posters on the sides are tilted to the angle of the descent (instead of being straight up like you’d expect them to be), what this means is that you’d have to tilt your head in order to properly look at them; adding to the already dizzying experience of being hurtled down nearly four floors at twice the regular speed in a claustrophobic tube.

All said and done, it was quite an experience because Prague in itself is a quiet little city with all the charms of an old European town – cobblestone roads, beautiful arch bridges and medieval castles.
It really is worth it to pay a visit if you can.

But in case you do go there…don’t forget to get on the metro!

(p.s. Do feel free to take up the meme and write your experiences. The topic: The coolest/weirdest thing you've ever seen in another country. If you've never been to another country, write on the most fascinating thing you've seen in your country. Looking forward to reading what you have to say on the subject!)