By Jens Deathfoot

Provokator Mag comes very much in handy when exploring the streets of Prague, whether you live here or just come to town for a visit. I strongly suggest you get a copy and carry it with you at all times. Interesting articles save you from dying of boredom while waiting for public transport or dropping some friends off at the pool. Not only are you always up to date with many underground art and music events, but you get a detailed map of inner city prague with all the hotspots already marked, and it can help you in times of urgent need...

It was in such a circumstance that Provokator saved, well, not my life but at least my dignity. Did somebody just say „Dignity has nothing to do with it“? Shut up. We were hanging out at the beer garden at Riegrovy Sady park (if you don´t know it yet and are lucky enough to catch a last sunny day this year, go there!) and I had aquired a somewhat nervous stomach somewhere along the road from Romania which I generally managed to hold in line but a few Czech beers unsettled the fellow again, and sent me hurrying for the - no, I am not going to call it bathroom or restroom, I am not American and while i sometimes actually call it that in more homely settings I refuse to do so in this case. It is a toilet or actually rather a pissoir and deserves to be called just that. I mean, we´re talking about a place of serious beer-drinking and you wouldn´t wanna rest in that facility. After I successfully managed to distinguish male and female entries I descended the stairs to the place where my hopes were focused. You know how even the worst truckstop shithouse sometimes seems like a saving haven when you have a pretty bad urge? I was in for a disappointment though.

Now, there were a few hundred people in the yard so you would expect that there might be WCs according to the numbers of people, but being German, I'm used to laws and regulations for stuff like that. I ought to know because a club i was involved in got shut down, partly, because of the person to shithouse ratio. However, like I said, this is a place for serious beer-drinking and the one who designed the toilethouse probably thought „ok, people drink so they need to get rid of the liquids, forget about the WCs in the boys-room, one will do.“ One toilet for a few hundred people? Yes. I never did Yoga, Yedi or any of those „mind over matter“ arts but i think i came pretty close here to achieving something while waiting for the other person to get the hell outta there. When he finally did, I rushed in to find out that the place has a window (good) but basically all the glass and part of the frame is missing (bad) and the window is positioned in such a way that you can look right in while coming down the stairs (very bad).

Enter Provokator. I somehow remembered the issue was in my fatigues. Unfold, duck and cover. Relieve. It doesn´t last very long though the next problem I am being confronted with is- you guessed it – the absence of toilet paper. Now, I must say that I did hesitate for a moment to rip up the mag because a) i had already gotten in trouble before with one of the editors for allegedly disrespecting the paper and, well, how low can you go? and b). if you are reading this in print check the quality of the paper… I must say it was more of a scraping job. Can you believe that during communist times in the former Eastern bloc there was no such thing as soft toiletpaper? I know the dreaded grey stuff they had in East Germany and that´s like grade 60 sandpaper. How the hell…? Somebody was telling me though that there are tricks to deal with it like moisten it (with saliva?) and fold it up, or something like this. (Note to editor: can we maybe have a drawing with the instructions for this as an illustration? Answer: no.)
To finish my little adventure, when I stepped out of the booth I bump into my friend who was already sieging the door. While I rounded the corner I hear him exclaim: „but there´s no paper!“ Smirking I hand him the rest of Provokator.

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