While recently pulling together some photos on a talk I was giving about Prague, I took a walk down memory lane to my time working as a tour guide there. As many of you know, I returned back to school as a “mature student” to get my Master’s degree at the age of 33. I wanted to go somewhere inexpensive (both tuition and cost of living) so I decided to look in Europe. I found a program (geopolitical studies) that sounded extremely interesting at Charles University in Prague and decided to go for it.
When I moved to Prague, I was a bit shocked at how much the cost of living was and decided that I really needed to get a job. I love history and meeting new people so when I saw a few job listings for tour guides, I immediately applied. To my surprise, I got hired by two companies. The first one was working as a beer tour guide. This wasn’t like a pub crawl. I actually got paid to take people to nice microbreweries in Prague and explain to them about different types of beer, how they are made and why Czech Republic was so famous for brewing. Nine times out of ten, my tour groups were hot Swedish men. BEST. JOB. EVER. I will be forever grateful to Sarah, the owner of the company, for giving me a chance.
The other company I worked for was a combination ghost tour/history tour company. I started off doing evening ghost tours for them (which is ironic because I am scared of everything and am probably the least creepy person that I know). To my surprise, it was a lot of fun even if I did have to wear a silly hat and a cap. I was eager to make more money and to learn more about Prague’s fascinating history so I quickly learned more tours and rose up in the ranks to be a senior guide. I covered everything from the Prague Castle to the Jewish Quarter and even created a World War Two tour for them. As a huge history buff, this was like a dream come true.
Combining freelance work between different companies is always a challenge when it comes to scheduling and oftentimes, I would race from one tour to the next with barely a break in between. It was amazing though. I loved meeting happy people (Czechs are incredibly grumpy as a population) and telling them what made Prague’s history so unique. I love seeing how excited they would get when I would show them some hidden treasures that you could find hidden around the city and even when they would ask me for my suggestions on where to go after the tour.
Most people that I know who have ever worked as a tour guide loved it and it is easy to see why. You get to be moving around beautiful places and telling people interesting things. You also witness some hilarious things and hear some very off the wall comments and you get paid for it! There is certainly never a dull day when working as a tour guide and it sure beats a day at the office.
Here are some of my best and worst tour guide memories 🙂
- A grown man once asked me if all of the Jewish people in the world live in Prague while on the tour of the Jewish Quarter. He also asked me later what happened to the pre-World War Two Jewish community after the war.
- A very cocky Dutch man once shit his pants during a beer tour. Apparently, it is actually relatively common.
- A couple once wandered off and left me with their teenage daughter on Charles’ Bridge. We waited for about 20 minutes before she finally called them. It is one thing to lose your tour guide but quite another one to actually forget about your own daughter!
- I was once caught at the Prague Castle during a blizzard with a group of tourists. The fastest way to get down was a long, horrible icy slope. Thankfully, we managed to get down with no major mishaps.
- One part of the Prague Castle has some amazing acoustics that you can only hear if you stand in one spot. I always told my guests to yell that “Kristin is the best tour guide ever” and attempted to convince them that it only worked if they said that exact phrase.
- I once had a guest on a ghost tour ask me if Czechs were really mean. When I said that they were, she told me that she was relieved because she thought it was just her.
- During a full day tour of Prague, I had a family and three generation family. The mother was obviously very sick and said she had spent the night throwing up in the bathroom. She was suffering pretty badly during the tour and at the end of it, her family left her alone with me and I had to take her back to her hotel. They never even tipped me.
- There was one spot that I had to stand at during the World War Two tour that allowed you to see a particular building. The giant bubble blower busker used to stand nearby and during nearly every single tour, I had to dodge gigantic bubbles popping around me (including sometimes in my face). Bubble guy was my nemesis.
- I would often get asked at the start of the beer tour where I was “going to put all of the beer” (I was pretty thin then due to a combination of a hatred of Czech food and a stomach bug that lasted months). I loved being the only remaining sober person as these same big manly-man men would proceed to get drunk after a measly 5 beers.
- During one quick history briefing, I asked a group of people if they knew the symbolism of the year 1989. One young woman said that it was the year Taylor Swift was born. A part of me died that day……
- During the full day tours, we would have lunch at a local bar where one beer was included in the price. Most of my tourists would drink a beer and then fall asleep on the river boat ride that immediately followed. It was heaven. I got free food and beer, an hour of “break time” and could enjoy a beautiful boat ride with no questions.
- The only bathroom stop during the Prague Castle tour was at a monastery brewery that just happened to have my all-time favorite IPA. I would try and convince people that they had to go to the bathroom and take a rest simply so that we could grab a quick beer.
